In summary
A superb touch-screen monitor and built-in photo storage give this pocketable camera wide appeal. Imaging performance is above average and colours are accurately recorded.Sony’s recently-released Cyber-shot DSC-N1 camera breaks new ground in the slimline digicam market because it allows users to shoot and display pictures in a totally new – and remarkably engaging – way. As well as boasting a high-resolution CCD sensor, the N1 has a huge, touch-sensitive LCD screen that is used for adjusting camera settings, composing shots and viewing both just-captured and previously-stored pictures. . . [more]
Full review
Sony’s recently-released Cyber-shot DSC-N1 camera breaks new ground in the slimline digicam market because it allows users to shoot and display pictures in a totally new – and remarkably engaging – way. As well as boasting a high-resolution CCD sensor, the N1 has a huge, touch-sensitive LCD screen that is used for adjusting camera settings, composing shots and viewing both just-captured and previously-stored pictures.
Inside the stylish, beautifully designed and built aluminium alloy body is 64MB of internal memory, of which 32MB is reserved for the Pocket Album function, 6MB stores pre-recorded music, and 26MB is available for image storage. When the Album icon is displayed, the camera automatically creates 1M-sized VGA duplicates of each shot and stores them in the Pocket Album memory, which can hold up to 500 images. Each shot is saved with the date on which it was taken to make it easy to find.
Unfortunately, you can’t transfer data from either the image storage or the memory card directly to the Album, so if you want to use the Album facility you must select it before taking pictures. However, you can delete individual shots. Images stored in the Album can be played back as a slideshow, which can be accompanied by any of the four ‘canned’ music selections stored in the camera (Simple, Nostalgic, Stylish or Active) or by music you download to the internal memory as MP3 files. Some snazzy transition effects are provided.
The 3-inch display leaves little room for physical controls. A small wide/tele rocker switch occupies the top right corner of the rear panel, with a sliding mode switch for selecting still, movie and playback modes along the side panel. Below it are buttons for calling up the menu settings and display options. The latter includes a small live histogram. Everything else is done with the touch screen, which is the best we’ve seen yet in either digicam or camcorder.
Although Sony supplies a stylus with the N1 (it clips onto the wrist strap), most of the on-screen buttons are large enough to adjust with a fingertip. Some interesting controls are included. For example, when composing shots you can tap the screen to focus on an off-centre subject or select spot metering to counteract backlighting. In playback mode, dragging your finger across the screen switches from one still shot to the next, or rewinds or fast-forwards movie clips. You can even paint – or put stamps on – still shots and save them separately (handy for creating titles)!
The touch screen can occasionally be a hassle to use, particularly for manual exposure adjustment, where you have to press a button on the camera, another on the screen, and fine-tune by hitting the arrow buttons repeatedly. EV adjustments require similar toggling.
The test camera produced sharp, colourful images with plenty of detail, except in highlight areas in shots taken in bright sunshine, where inherent high contrast and a tendency to expose for shadow detail caused information to be lost. Slight shadow noise was observed and shots taken at high ISO settings were visibly noise affected, with colour noise visible at ISO 800. Overall saturation levels were high but colours were accurately recorded in the main.
Flash performance was surprisingly good and the white balance delivered close to accurate colours with both the auto and pre-set modes. No manual setting is provided. Inherent high contrast produced excellent close-ups and pictures of low-contrast subjects and digital zoom shots were sharp and relatively artefact free. Imatest showed image resolution to be slightly below expectations and revealed low-to-moderate lateral chromatic aberration, but we doubt most users would detect these faults.
We measured an average capture lag of 0.3 seconds, which reduced to almost instantaneous capture when shots were pre-focused. The burst mode recorded shots at one second intervals for four to 15 shots depending on resolution, but it took 10 seconds to clear the buffer memory after a burst.
As a pocketable camera-plus-viewer device, Sony’s DSC-N1 is a superb bit of gear that will appeal to a wide range of digital photographers. As well as providing high picture quality, the basic controls are simple enough for total novices to use, while there are enough manual adjustments to satisfy more expert and demanding photographers. [27]
Specifications
Image sensor: 7.18 x 5.32mm CCD with 8.3 million photosites (8.01 megapixels effective)
Lens: 7.9-23.7mm f2.8-5.4 Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens (38-114mm in 35mm format)
Zoom ratio: 3x optical, 6x digital
Dimensions (wxhxd): 96.7 x 61.1 x 22.7mm
Weight: 151 grams (without battery and card)
Image formats: Stills – JPEG (Exif 2.2); Movies – MPEG1 monaural (VGA at 30fps)
Shutter speed range: 1/8-1/2000 sec. in Auto; 30-1/1000 sec. in manual mode
Exposure metering/control: Multi Pattern, Centre Weighted, Spot metering; Program AE plus 8 scene modes
White balance: Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Fluorescent, Incandescent, Flash
Flash modes/range (ISO auto): Auto, Forced-Flash, Slow Synchro, No Flash; range 0.2-5.0m
ISO range: Auto, 64, 100, 200, 400, 800
Sequence shooting: 1 fps for 4 to 15 shots, depending on resolution
Storage Media: 26MB internal memory plus Memory Stick Duo slot; internal memory holds 6 high-resolution images or up to 397 VGA shots
Viewfinder: n.a.
LCD monitor: 3.0-inch (230,400 pixel) Touch Screen, Hybrid Clear Photo LCD Plus
Power supply: NPBG1 rechargeable lithium-ion battery
Retailers
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Ted’s Cameras
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Rating
RRP: $899
Rating (out of 10):
- Build: 9.5
- Ease of use: 9
- Image quality: 8.5
- OVERALL: 9