Sometimes there are opportunities to take some great shots but you want a high resolution image but can't face lugging the SLR style camera around all day long just so you can amaze your friends with the images later and so it was that we were faced with this very dilemma when heading for a party, but as luck would have it one of our number laid their paws on a Sony DSC T1.

Now while the Sony DSC T1 is small in dimension just 91mm x 60mm x 21mm and 180grams in weight you still get the full Sony feature set all accessed from a rather funky 2.5 inch TFT screen sunk into the rear of the camera which we all agreed is in effect about the size of a deck of cards. The new Sony optical lens allows this size of camera as the lens operates within the camera meaning it can zoom without a protrusion extending from the main camera body, this 3 times optical zoom then culminates with a 5 mega pixel CCD chip.

Anyhow we get to the party (late as usual) and its time to start taking a few snaps of the inebriated guests with the DCC T1, simply slide back the cover and the Sony's LCD panel lights up ready for action, now despite our technical wizardry (ahem!) its still best to keep things in auto and here Sony make life really simple the point and squeeze technique works a treat with excellent auto focus which can work down to 25cm in standard mode (8mm in macro). The DSC T1 auto focus was hard to upset the five point system managed to cope with what we have to call some unique off centre framing induced by a few to many beers in fact the auto exposure settings are equally good, there are a number of pre programmed setups which seem to cover most likely scenarios.

As darkness descended we had a chance to try out the DSC T1's low light capability which is nothing short of impressive in fact this was proven when one of our party managed to take an incriminating shot in near darkness ah the joys of digital photography, luckily we were not connected to the joy of the internet or the picture may well have made it into the wild. Now you can delve into the depths of the Sony's settings and operate in a very manual way which is perfect for getting the best out of the 5 mega pixel CCD chipset and when trying this a few days later we couldn't help being impressed by the lack of graininess that had been in some of our "auto" party shots, there seems to be a definite trade off between ease of use and performance.

Back to the party and another top feature of the Sony DSC T1 is the rapid fire system, just push and holder the shutter button and the camera will take shots at one second intervals great for action shots and it can work even faster with a burst of 4 stills in just 2 seconds not that anything was moving that fast by this point in the evening, Sadly Sony only give you a 32mb memory stick duo with the T1 which is a little stingy given the cost of the unit and also a little pointless given the size of the images we captured, being realistic you should budget for at least a 128mb stick when you buy a DSC T1.

Getting images off the camera can also be achieved by USB either by direct attached cable or by sitting the T1 in the cradle and using its USB connection, the memory stick Duo comes with an adaptor which allows you to slide the memory stick into any Sony device suitably equipped like the Vaio laptop range. Battery wise we managed about 2 and a half hours of near constant use from the rechargeable lithium Ion battery but you can always use standard batteries should you run out of juice mid party!

Overall this is a competent performer which is compact yet controllable and offers reasonable point and shoot performance and even better image quality if you can be bothered to delve into the Sony DSC T1 menu system.

More Digital Cameras -

[ Sony DSCT3 ] [ Pentax Optio 555 ] [ Olympus Mju 400 Digital Camera ] [ Canon Ixus i5 ] [ Canon Ixus I ] [ Canon Ixus 500 ] [ Sony DSCT7 Review ] [ Olympus Stylus Verve ] [ Pentax Optio S4 ] [ Sony DSC T1 ]