Sony dsc s700 software

There's almost no grip on the outside edge. There's no optical viewfinder on the Sony S, so you compose your shots with the 2. It's not so much smaller than the more common 2. Outdoors in bright sunlight the Sony S's screen was nearly impossible to read, and the shiny surface picks up reflections indoors. Shiny LCDs should show off deeper blacks and more contrast, but this LCD really gave us the wrong impression about our exposures.

I thought I had some real dogs only to find they were quite nicely exposed when I saw them on my computer. Compared to its competitors over the last couple years, the Sony S's two-second startup time and 1.

That's good news when you're living on AA battery power and don't have an optical viewfinder. You won't be penalized if you like to turn the Sony S off when it's not being used for a bit. The Sony S's autofocus lag is above average, too, even if pre-focus lag is just average. Cycle time ranks above average, as does Flash cycle time. Download speeds are just average use a card reader. Feature-wise, the inexpensive Sony S racks up average rankings for its LCD size, optical zoom and weight. Getting more than a 3x zoom is worth the effort, although I prefer a little heft like the Sony S The Sony S's zoom lens smoothly tracks from wide-angle to full telephoto and slips pretty quickly into digital zoom.

It's also responsive enough to stop when you let go of the Zoom lever, making composition precise. This review was written without benefit of our usual test shots, so I'll discuss image quality in relation to my gallery images.

The color rendering was natural to my eye and I don't see much distortion. I do, however, see some noise, particularly on the front doors. I also see some chromatic aberration on the figure in black at the right side.

Detail, however, is pretty good. You can clearly see the wire locks on the newsstands. Chromatic Aberration. Looks good until you view the full resolution image. Lots of purple fringing.

The Sony S's chromatic aberration bit us again on another softly lit image, the leaves along the iron fence. Take a look at the white litter in the full resolution image to see what we mean, although parts of the fence exhibit the same problem. I don't usually see it this bad, I have to say. Blown highlights are a common problem, however, and the image of the stone wall painted white is a good example of just how poorly the Sony S handles highlight detail.

Remember, this was shot under overcast skies. As you follow the white wall toward the back, it loses all detail. But the Sony S did render the shadows and midtones accurately. Except for the highlights, that's what the scene looked like. High ISO. The tradeoff in quality is really an issue of noise. In the Sony S's case, that translates to a loss of detail at the expense of maintaining color. Two shots in the gallery illustrate this. They were both taken inside a restaurant using available light.

The light itself was mixed with the warm artificial light of the restaurant contrasting with the cooler outdoor light of the street. Moments before, I had taken two similar shots with the Sony S, but of the opposite wall a bit darker, in short. The low ISO shot was unusably blurred from camera movement.

But notice how the color in both images is equivalent. There's no desaturation in the high ISO image. That's Sony's strength. On the other side of the coin, take a look at the full resolution image of the high-ISO version.

You'll see a good deal of noise throughout the image that was only barely detectable in the wall and the chairs of the low ISO image. Detail inside the deli case, for example disappears in the high ISO shot. Shooting interiors seemed to be the Sony S's forte with a zoom range of 35 to mm 35mm equivalent.

My zoom range shots from Twin Peaks really didn't get very close, even with digital zoom 3x optical plus 2x digital for 6x total zoom. That's something that can be frustrating on vacation, when you don't have time to get as close as you want.

A 5x optical zoom will do a much better job. QVGA Movie. No zoom, no refocus. Click to download AVI file. Macro performance wasn't bad as you can see from the graffiti on the stone wall , but exhibited a strong blue colorcast in daylight with auto white balance. In short, the image quality of the Sony S left a lot to be desired. I wasn't happy with my results in the field, I thought better of them on the computer, but was again disappointed on closer inspection.

You can do better than the Sony S The Sony S's Movie mode was also a disappointment, offering just x pixel resolution, no zoom and no refocus as my sample movie shows. Overall, while the Sony S is a good looking companion with good heft and decent design, I didn't like the buttons much, and didn't like how the low-resolution LCD fooled me into thinking I wasn't getting good shots.

A previous model, the S, ended up doing very well in the market. The S is a 7. A stylish metal body makes the camera look and feel like a more expensive one. The S is meant to be an easy to use camera. The S has a 7. The S has only a 2. The colors displayed on the LCD are accurate and the brightness gains up and down depending on the lighting conditions. It is very difficult to preview images on the display on a bright day.

Refresh rates are good enough to provide a smooth preview of your shot. This camera gets a fairly typical 3x optical zoom with a 35mm equivalent focal length of mm.

The maximum aperture ranges from f2. As this is a fairly entry level camera, you simply get a normal focus and macro focus. In normal mode, you can focus as close as In macro mode, you can focus on something as close as 2 inches. A green light on the LCD stays solid when a focus lock is achieved.

Focus is determined by a center AF area. There is no multiple-area AF mode available on this camera. The built-in flash has a range of 0. If you zoom in to something, this range narrows to 0. The flash can be set to auto, always on, disabled, and slow synchro. If you want red eye reduction, you have to enable it via the setup menu. Flash modes are set by using the up direction on the control pad. There is also about 24MB of internal memory. Typical of entry-level models, the S is powered by 2 AA batteries.

You can use alkaline or rechargeable batteries. NiMH rechargeables will provide better battery life. I highly recommend that you use high capacity NiMH rechargeable batteries with this camera. As the S is an entry-level camera, there are no manual exposure modes. However, you get an auto mode and a program auto mode. All the shooting modes of the camera are available in the mode dial on the top, which makes for easy operation.

Auto mode is the mode with the green camera icon on the mode dial. In auto mode, your options are limited — you can choose if you shoot a single or burst, the exposure compensation, flash mode, timer mode, and macro mode.

In program auto, you can change color settings, metering modes, white balance, ISO, JPEG compression level, flash level, and sharpness. As you turn the mode dial, a short description appears on the LCD. Movie mode is another slot on the mode dial allowing easy access. You can adjust the color, metering method, and white balance. Mono sound is recorded and optical zoom is not available during movie capture.

During movie capture, you can set white balance to auto, daylight, cloudy, fluorescent, and incandescent. For still capture, in program auto mode, you get an additional choice of flash. Some white balance settings will be unavailable at different times. For example, if you have the flash set to always on, you can only set the white balance to auto or flash. Control over the ISO setting is only available in program auto mode.