Sony Cyber-shot DSC-TX55 16.2 MP Slim Digital Camera
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-TX55 16.2 MP Slim Digital Camera
Rating:
List Price: $ 349.99
best Price :$ 267.50
this best price old post please check price update(price will lower or up)
- 16.2MP “Exmor R” CMOS sensor for stunning low-light performance
- Thinner than an AA battery, stylish, and ready to shoot
- Full HD 1080/60i with dual record of stills and movies
- Superior Auto; awesome shots, automatically
- Optical SteadyShot with Active Mode for blur-free movies
The DSC-TX55 achieves high technology in a sleek design.
List Price:$ 349.99
best Price :$ 267.50
this best price old post please check price update(price will lower or up)
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about 10 months ago
An Impressive Small Camera,
Customer Video Review Length:: 3:37 Mins
I was pleased to get the opportunity to evaluate this point-and-shoot entry from Sony. I am usually a Canon shooter and was interested in evaluating something from another manufacturer and this unit did not disappoint.
Image Quality
This of course is what any camera evaluation must center on – as without taking good pictures even the most stylish and easy to use camera will come up short. I have taken a number of pictures in different settings from daylight to night. Images are generally sharp and with good contrast. Focus is usually pretty quick but not always accurate. I was surprised that the camera in low light / auto setting tends to not activate the flash, instead decresing shutter to as low as 1/30 second – which leads to blurriness in pictures with moving kids. When the flash did activate, it was of limited strength and illuminated objects / people only quite close to the camera. For detailed analysis, I took comparison shots with this camera and both a dSLR and another point and shoot camera, both from Canon. I was surprised at how well this camera does with stationary subjects in low light – Sony has really done a great job there. Please see the video portion of this review for details on the analysis. A word about the 16 MP chip on this camera – please don’t make the mistake thinking this camera is significantly better than a 14 MP camera and way better than a 12 MP camera – as that is not a valid assumption. The camera chip is only capable of conveying what the optics deliver to it – and optics on a point and shoot by definition / size can’t deliver what larger lenses with a dSLR can do. What a 16 MP camera does mean, however, is larger file sizes to fill a hard drive more quickly. This is not a criticism of this particular camera but just something to consider when looking at the whole class of high megapixel point and shoot cameras in general. Increased megapixels beyond about 12 are really not needed by very many photographers. On the other hand, one cannot always haul the big dSLR everywhere and having a point and shoot available is critical since the camera you have with you is the best one for the job – and this one does very well indeed.
Form Factor
This is a very small camera. about 3/4 inch shorter than an iPhone and just a bit thicker. It fits very comfortably in a pocket. The lens protector reveals the lens and flash when slid down and also turns the unit on. Buttons are few including an on/off switch and a bit of an oddly designed zoom button which moves back and forth to zoom in and out. The position of the buttons does make operating the zoom function with one hand a bit awkward. Most functions including triggering movie recording are handled via touch screen.
User Interface
This camera is clearly strongly influenced by the iPhone with touch screen providing most of the functionality. As others have said, the touch screen is not as responsive as an iPhone but it works well enough. I did find myself trying to “swipe” from screen to screen which often resulted in inadvertent opening of a menu item. I firmly believe in the principle that a UI should be self-explanatory without referral to manuals and therefore used this camera without looking at the manual (at least that is my excuse for not reading it). Some of the icons were not obvious such as the different quality settings for video, but overall I was able to self-teach the use of the camera over a few minutes.
Memory Storage
I was a bit surprised that the camera uses MICRO SD cards, not the more standard SD cards. I have a bunch of SD cards for other cameras and after opening the box on this one I had to go shopping. I guess I should have been happy that I could use a micro SD card which with an adapter can be used with an SD card reader as Sony could have used only the micro Memory Stick (this camera can use either). Anyone remember Betamax?
Battery
Battery charge was quite rapid – I think it charged fully in less than 45 minutes for me. Battery life decreased by a segment after a few minutes of video and 30 or so pictures, many with flash. It is true that a Li Ion cell does not demonstrate its full potential for several charge / discharge cycles so this may well improve. Battery is rated at 630 mAh which is a pretty low number, however. I suspect this is another sacrifice (along with micro SD card use) to make the camera as small as possible.
Extra Features
I was looking forward to the panorama feature as Sony’s TV ads showing that seem to indicate the camera will be taking a series of high-resolution pictures and seamlessly splicing them together for you. If you have ever done that job manually in Photoshop, it is a hassle (though there are now a number of software options for that). In any case, the output from this camera is normally a 4608×3456 image, so I thought a panorama might be, say, 12,000×3456…
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|about 10 months ago
A study in tradeoffs,
It seems like the designers of this camera were given just one instruction – design the smallest, lightest, most compact camera possible. And certainly, this is hands down the sleekest and most portable camera I have ever used. Add a breathtaking 3.3″ OLED display to its gorgeous form factor and you have an awesome looking device. It’s almost a fashion statement in itself! And, as long as one doesn’t expect miracles from a near-credit card sized device, the image quality is quite reasonable.
Unfortunately, a number of tradeoffs were necessary to achieve this.
1. Size Matters
This is definitely a try-before-you-buy camera. There are unique challenges with a body this svelte. I often covered up the microphone inputs (very hard to avoid). The twig-like joystick zoom control felt very unnatural. It was needlessly difficult to open the shutter cover (no grooves to assist your fingers). And, I struggled with inserting the MicroSD card (it is possible to insert it incorrectly – so much so that Sony includes a separate instruction sheet just for this!).
2. Image Quality
I had significantly more keepers with outdoor daylight images than with indoor flash images. Daylight images were sharp, with great color tonality. However, indoor images were much softer and lacked the same “pop”.
3. UI is an acquired taste
The lack of hard buttons increases the need for the touchscreen interface to be just right. Unfortunately the TX55 has some UI quirks.
## The user interface uses non standard idioms. For instance, a finger drag scrolls images, but a single tap zooms into an image. This drove me insane until I figured out the right finger press/flick technique. What’s cool though is that finger flick speed actually controls how many images are scrolled through.
## It takes a ridiculous 3 clicks to get into playback mode when the camera is off. Click to power on. Dismiss a “slide down lens cover to shoot” warning dialog. And then hit a teeny tiny PLAY button!
## Instructional dialogs cannot be turned off. You’ll get one of these each time you customize quick menu buttons.
## Without hard buttons, even the 3.3″ display feels very cramped with all the touch screen buttons. It is surprisingly easy to hit the wrong button, which I did more than once, especially in the Settings menu.
## On the plus side, you can customize your interface by selecting up to 4 buttons that show up in each mode. For instance in Program mode, I have buttons to control exposure, ISO, flash settings, and to start recording.
4. Complicated functions
I find it depressing that cameras today come with so little accompanying information to get a new user started. It took me work to even display exposure details in playback mode, and to figure out user interface nuances. In addition, marketing-speak obscures a lot of the function. For instance, in addition to the standard digital zoom, this camera now has “Clear Image Zoom technology” zoom. The difference? You get 5x optical zoom; then another 5x of Clear Image Zoom (out to 10x); and then a final 10x of digital zoom (upto 20x). I am very sensitive to any kind of digital zooming, and did not care to use this function.
Conclusion:
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The target user seems to be a beginner photographer who values a camera that provides true point-and-shoot capability, is simple to use, is unobtrusive, and is elegantly attractive. Features such as the ability to compose panoramic views and to take in-camera High Dynamic Range (HDR) pictures are becoming standard across Sony’s range, and are present here too. Other features, such as in-camera painting with a provided stylus, while unique, seem less than useful.
It is to be noted that this camera is definitely not targeted at the enthusiast – there is not even the pretense of manual control, and even the usual histogram display is absent. If you’re looking for manual control – then the Canon S95 or the S100 should be your choice.
In the end, my rating of 3 stars felt appropriate, with the loss of two stars for the reasons I mention above.
Personally, I find this just the right camera to have in my pocket when visiting with friends, where my full rig is simply too conspicuous.
Happy Clicking!
~Damodar
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|about 10 months ago
Tiny and Fast,
I got my TX55 10/11/2011 but I have not been able to play with it enough to give it a full review yet. From my initial impressions:
-It is very small and easily pocketable – VERY convenient.
-It is very fast. Can take pictures almost instantly, very responsive.
-The display screen is gorgeous. Video looks amazing on it.
-Video, photo-stitching, and macro modes are quite impressive.
-Overzealous noise reduction
-The lens cover slider requires a lot of force to open. Good that it won’t accidentally open, but it’s probably a bit too much.
-The touch screen doesn’t behave as intuitively nor precisely as I expect coming from years on an iPhone – and it will often process two ‘touches’ when I only want one
I was debating the S95 and XZ-1, but chose this camera for the extreme convenience and superior video. If the S100 were available yet I may have chosen it instead.
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