A really neat little digital camera…costs about £150...fits in the top pocket of your shirt…is incredibly simple to operate…has all the performance of your old 35mm compact…and looks fantastic in stealth black, metallic blue, or traditional silver! 

Over the years I seem to have collected number of different cameras…the semi-professional SLR camera that does everything but unfortunately didn’t come with a caddy to help lug it around…the 35mm compact that chews up film when you load it…and the really high-tech 35mm compact, brilliant but is so small & exotic that the film is only available in Japan and costs a fortune to have developed…what a lot of hassle! Guess what…all those cameras sit on my cupboard collecting dust! But do not despair…Sony have come up with the Cybershot U20…a digital camera that offers the convenience of a disposable, the performance of a 35mm compact, and is quite literally the size of a packet of cigarettes!    

For about £150 you can buy the basic Sony Cybershot U20 package; this consists of camera, carry strap, two re-chargeable Ni-Cad AAA batteries, battery charger, an 8MB memory stick, a USB interface cable, and some software for your PC….and an excellent instruction booklet that you really don’t need worry about! Ok as a basic kit this isn’t too bad, but I would recommend spending an extra £35 on an additional 64MB memory stick and four re-chargeable Ni-Cd AAA batteries…once you get going with this camera you don’t want to be troubled with battery or memory shortages!

The camera itself weighs 125grams, with dimensions w 8cm, d 2.5 cm, h 3.8 cm, and is available in three different colours; metallic blue, silver, or the very sexy stealth black! At the heart of this little camera is a fairly basic fixed 5mm lens (Auto Macro AF 1:2.8) and a 2 mega pixel CCD chip; this combination limits the camera to the less demanding photography that you might previously have used a disposable or compact 35mm camera for! But don’t let this put you off…the Sony Cyber-shot does this very well…and is so convenient that you will happily take it to parties, mountaineering trips, weddings, etc where to be honest you really would have bothered before!

What about the practicalities of using it? Well first off the Sony Cybershot U20 doesn’t have a viewfinder, so when composing your picture you look through the 1-inch colour Liquid Crystal Display. This same display is also used to set a number of camera features using an intuitive menu screen, set using a miniature toggled switch and two select buttons at the back of the camera. It all works very well, but for some people the compactness might simply be too small! 

How long do the batteries last? Well in my experience battery life is pretty good, even when using the miniature flash extensively a newly charged set of batteries will be good for at least 60 pictures worth of use. Carrying spare AAA batteries isn’t really a problem as they are really small; changing the batteries is very easy, will not affect the storage of pictures you have already taken, and when you get home take about 12hrs to re-charge. My only criticism is that the Cyber-Shot battery life indicator isn’t all that accurate…one minute you have full charge, the next it is telling you to change the batteries!

What about the photo resolution and storage? Sony’s Cyber Shot U20 only has two picture resolution settings; low 640x480, fine for viewing pictures on your PC or high 1632x1224, essential if you want photo quality prints. An 8Mb memory stick will store 16 high-resolution photos, however I recommend that you use at lease 64MBs, which allows you to store 144 high-resolution pictures before either downloading them to your PC or swapping the memory card!

Downloading pictures to your PC! Yep, very easy, simply connect your camera to the USB lead and it automatically files your photos away. However something to be mindful of; due to a software conflict the Sony package would not install onto my PC until I had removed my web-cam driver; ok this might be a trait of the operating system, Microsoft ME, but it was one hassle I could do with out!       

Picture quality and reproduction? Ok, all photography is rather subjective! The Sony Cyber Shot U20 will faithfully record your best efforts. Indoor photography is the most challenging - for good results get close to your subject and ensure the camera flash is set for ‘red-eye’ reduction!  Outdoor photography can produce fantastic results but remember the old rules; good use of natural light, get close to your subject, and compose pictures with balance. If in doubt take multiply pictures and simply erase any less than perfect pictures! You will be able to re-frame many of your pictures back at home using a photo-editor software package…but if you try to ‘zoom in’ many pictures will become very grainy. Printing high-resolution pictures at home really can be very successful; using a HP Desk Jet 930pro, HP photo print paper, and the appropriate printer setting, A4 sized reproductions of ‘photo-quality’ are easily achievable!

Sony DSC-U 20 Cybershot Digital Camera