Sony Cyber-shot W570

The Sony W series is a line of budget compacts with a bare minimum of tech specs and features. The priciest model in the range is the Cyber-shot W570 which still only sells for an RRP of £160. For that, you get a 16-Megapixel CCD (CMOS sensors only appear in the more expensive WX range), a 5x ultra-wide-angle zoom lens and a stylish design.

Handling

The W570 is a great-looking camera. The smooth, rectangular front is nicely designed, as is the more curvy rear face, with a good-quality build and finish for an entry-level product. We're also fans of the two-tone colour scheme: our test model was gold on one side and chocolate brown on the other—original!


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 362:1 (the blacks are completely washed out!), an irregular gamma with overexposed light greys and inaccurate colour reproduction.

One thing worth noting is that it can be tricky to 'half-press' the shutter release, and we often found ourselves taking a photo when we actually just wanted to focus on a scene. You get used to it, but it's a bit annoying.

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 W570 a very easy camera to use.

Responsiveness

The autofocus works just fine and the W570 is neither especially fast nor especially slow; it's just average.

That said, saving pictures is really quite slow. Although in burst mode, the W570 can take a photo every 1.8 seconds, in regular shooting mode (with time to check the focus and exposure) this takes a painful 3.7 seconds. In other words, after taking one photo, you'll have to wait nearly four seconds before taking the next. It may not sound like much, but that's long enough for a child to stop doing that funny thing, for your mates to recover from their laughing fit, or for some other interesting event to pass you by. Our advice: think before you shoot, you might not get a second chance to capture the action!

Picture Quality

First of all, let's see how the sensor and image processing system hold up:



The W570 is the first compact we've tested to use a 1/2.33" 16-Megapixel CCD. With 1.3 µm photodiodes, we were expecting some pretty decent results from this sensor, especially since none of its predecessors have brought any significant gain in picture quality since the good old 10-Megapixel CCDs.

Compared with the 14-Megapixel CCD seen in plenty of last year's compacts, and still used in the W530, noise is less visible at 100 and 200 ISO. A good start, then. However, at 400 ISO, the sensor structure comes through in the shot, with noise forming blotches rather than fine granularity—an effect that's much less attractive on the whole. At 800 ISO, the difference is even more noticeable on an A4 print, and the good old 14-Megapixel CCD clearly has the upper hand, since although there's no less noise in the shot, the fine, regular granularity is much easier on the eye.


You may remember that we weren't particularly impressed with the 14-Megapixel CCD when it first came out. It replaced an equally unimpressive 12-Megapixel CCD that in turn replaced a 10-Megapixel CCD that didn't really bring any major improvements compared with the 1/2.5" 8-Megapixel CCD. Perhaps, then, it's time for manufacturers to stop this absurd and largely pointless race for the most Megapixels!

Note that the BSI CMOS sensor now used in many higher-end compact cameras keeps noise under control much more effectively than regular CCDs.


Unfortunately the lens isn't great either. The image is only sharp (and those 16 Megapixels only ever really present) in the middle of the frame in wide-angle shots. Around the edges, blurring is visible on an 8" x 10" (20 x 27 cm) print. Things get even worse in telephoto too (see above) with a general haze and a visible lack of clarity.

Video

The video mode meets the current market standards for entry-level compacts. The W570 films 720p HD video with mono sound. The good news is that is uses the Mpeg-4 file format (more effective than the classic Mjpeg) and you can use the optical zoom while filming. The bad news is that the mono sound is dull, flat and not particularly accurate.


Finally, one slightly amusing feature of this camera is that lens distortion is only corrected in photos. In videos, barrel distortion is quite spectacular when filming in wide angle, leading to a kind of 'fish-eye' effect in which straight lines effectively become a thing of the past. Just don't say you haven't been warned!