Subscores
The Sony W series is a line of budget compacts with a bare minimum of tech specs and features. Although the Cyber-shot W530 launched at £120, it still has a big-name Carl Zeiss lens. In an entry-level compact, that'll either be an empty promise or a very pleasant surprise ...
Handling
As a budget compact, it's no surprise to see that the W530 has a decidedly plastic build. However, it's a well-built camera and the chrome-effect buttons do make for a slightly higher-end look. The buttons feel reassuring to touch as they're not wobbly or loose, and the shutter release button is almost better than the one seen in the higher-end W570. That said, even on the W530, it may take you a while to get used to finding the 'half press' position on the shutter release button.
As soon as you switch the camera on some of its initial shine wears off. The screen is 'very TN' with practically non-existent vertical viewing angles. In fact, the on-screen image starts to lose contrast as soon as you're about ten degrees above it and goes black from about ten degrees below. Even from the sides, the image soon becomes difficult to see. The screen's definition is no saving grace either as its 230,000 dots are only too visible. Our screen sensor tells the same story too, with a very limited contrast of 342:1 (the blacks are completely washed out!), an irregular gamma with overexposed light greys and inaccurate colour reproduction.
The menus are typical Sony stuff, with a few options accessible at the first level of the menu (corresponding to a Quick Menu in Canon or Panasonic cameras, for example), and more advanced settings available a bit further in. On the whole, the menus are clear and user-friendly, making the W530 a very easy camera to use.
Responsiveness
The autofocus works just fine and the W530 is neither especially fast nor especially slow; it's just average. Start-up is a little slow at around 3 seconds and the photo-to-photo turnaround of 2.8 seconds can prove rather tiresome. That said, it's still more acceptable than the W570, whose processor seems to have a little trouble coping with those 16 Megapixels.
On the whole then, it's all pretty average.
Picture Quality
The W530 handles the various ISO settings in a very typical way, just like most other compacts with a 14-Megapixel CCD. Noise is visible in 100%, full-screen pictures at fairly low ISO settings, and smoothing appears at 400 ISO with lost detail and noise becoming problematic at 800 ISO.
Comparing noise at 800 and 3200 ISO on a 8" x 10" (20 x 27 cm) photo. From left to right: 14-Megapixel CCD, 16-Megapixel CCD, 16-Megapixel BSI CMOS. The perfect results would be a solid block of black.
The good news is that this sensor does a better job than the 16-Megapixel CCD with the same generation image processing system. With the higher-end W570, shots at 800 ISO look grainy and blotchy, while with the W530, although noise is no less pronounced, the overall granularity is finer, more regular and less overtly bothersome. All that goes to show that if the sensor is the only thing that's different between two cameras, then you're better off picking the 14-Megapixel CCD model than the 16-Megapixel CCD camera—it'll probably be cheaper too!
The lens may bear the signature of Carl Zeiss but it bears no other traits of this excellent German lens manufacturer! In wide angle, on a full-screen picture or a 4" x 6" print, the shots are visibly less sharp around the edges. For an 8" x 10" print, the results are really quite striking (see above) with the centre of the frame coming out good to excellent but the outer edges looking very blurred, with more than just fine detail lost—in fact, certain smartphones can do better!
As you zoom the edges become noticeably sharper. The W530 even does better than the W570 in this field ... although that doesn't take much!
Video
VGA resolution, no optical zoom, mono sound and low-grade picture quality. Need we say more?
Handling
As a budget compact, it's no surprise to see that the W530 has a decidedly plastic build. However, it's a well-built camera and the chrome-effect buttons do make for a slightly higher-end look. The buttons feel reassuring to touch as they're not wobbly or loose, and the shutter release button is almost better than the one seen in the higher-end W570. That said, even on the W530, it may take you a while to get used to finding the 'half press' position on the shutter release button.As soon as you switch the camera on some of its initial shine wears off. The screen is 'very TN' with practically non-existent vertical viewing angles. In fact, the on-screen image starts to lose contrast as soon as you're about ten degrees above it and goes black from about ten degrees below. Even from the sides, the image soon becomes difficult to see. The screen's definition is no saving grace either as its 230,000 dots are only too visible. Our screen sensor tells the same story too, with a very limited contrast of 342:1 (the blacks are completely washed out!), an irregular gamma with overexposed light greys and inaccurate colour reproduction.
The menus are typical Sony stuff, with a few options accessible at the first level of the menu (corresponding to a Quick Menu in Canon or Panasonic cameras, for example), and more advanced settings available a bit further in. On the whole, the menus are clear and user-friendly, making the W530 a very easy camera to use.
Responsiveness
The autofocus works just fine and the W530 is neither especially fast nor especially slow; it's just average. Start-up is a little slow at around 3 seconds and the photo-to-photo turnaround of 2.8 seconds can prove rather tiresome. That said, it's still more acceptable than the W570, whose processor seems to have a little trouble coping with those 16 Megapixels.On the whole then, it's all pretty average.
Picture Quality
The W530 handles the various ISO settings in a very typical way, just like most other compacts with a 14-Megapixel CCD. Noise is visible in 100%, full-screen pictures at fairly low ISO settings, and smoothing appears at 400 ISO with lost detail and noise becoming problematic at 800 ISO.
Comparing noise at 800 and 3200 ISO on a 8" x 10" (20 x 27 cm) photo. From left to right: 14-Megapixel CCD, 16-Megapixel CCD, 16-Megapixel BSI CMOS. The perfect results would be a solid block of black.
The good news is that this sensor does a better job than the 16-Megapixel CCD with the same generation image processing system. With the higher-end W570, shots at 800 ISO look grainy and blotchy, while with the W530, although noise is no less pronounced, the overall granularity is finer, more regular and less overtly bothersome. All that goes to show that if the sensor is the only thing that's different between two cameras, then you're better off picking the 14-Megapixel CCD model than the 16-Megapixel CCD camera—it'll probably be cheaper too!
The lens may bear the signature of Carl Zeiss but it bears no other traits of this excellent German lens manufacturer! In wide angle, on a full-screen picture or a 4" x 6" print, the shots are visibly less sharp around the edges. For an 8" x 10" print, the results are really quite striking (see above) with the centre of the frame coming out good to excellent but the outer edges looking very blurred, with more than just fine detail lost—in fact, certain smartphones can do better!
As you zoom the edges become noticeably sharper. The W530 even does better than the W570 in this field ... although that doesn't take much!
Video
VGA resolution, no optical zoom, mono sound and low-grade picture quality. Need we say more?Pros
- Reasonably well made
- 26 mm (possibly a little more) wide-angle lens
- Pleasant interface
Cons
- Poor-quality lens, especially in wide angle
- No stabilisation
- VGA video with no zoom and poor sound
- Not very responsive, slow to start-up
- Low-def screen with laughable viewing angles
Conclusion
At a time when the same money will buy you a stabilised compact with a 720p video mode, it's hard to see why you might think of buying the Sony Cyber-shot W530, especially since its picture quality is so disappointing.
OUR SCORE
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