» Price: $699 (T500) and $599 (T700) » Available: From authorised Sony retailers
THE Cyber-shot T500 and T700 are two slim shooters from Sony's stylish Cyber-shot T series. Both offer a resolution of 10.1 megapixels, 3.5-inch wide touchscreens and Carl Zeiss lenses.
The T500 is the bulkier of the two because of its protruding grip on the sliding lens cover. This is useful though, for steadying the camera.
Both cameras have Optical SteadyShot - found in Sony's dedicated videocams - and it works wonderfully in reducing shakes.
Movie quality from the T500 is good but like other compact cameras, its small imaging sensor means noisier images at low-light.
The T500 records movies with stereo sound, which sounds very clear on playback. There is no noise from the zooming mechanism.
The camera allows you to snap a photo while recording video. Just touch the photo icon on the screen, aim and shoot; the video-recording will not be disrupted.
I found that a minute's clip at the highest setting takes up 60MB to 70MB of disk space. So a 4GB card would be enough for about one hour of recording.
As for the T700, its draw is a slimmer and cleaner design. There are hardly any protruding parts. It records videos of up to 640 x 480 pixels.
The T700 also has 4GB of internal memory, so no worries about forgetting to pack the memory card.
While the T700 has a slightly shorter 4x optical zoom, it makes up for it with a nifty Smile Shutter feature. This has been improved to allow better smile detection sensitivity. It never misses a smile, no matter how small.
What's cool is that both cameras can play a slideshow, complete with transitions effects like fades and wipes as well as music tracks. While it is highly customisable, even the basic settings yielded impressive results.
The battery life of both cameras is a little short. It dropped to half within just a day of testing even though it was rated for around 200 images.
Final say
Both cameras have a sleek design and great music slideshow features.
By Mike Lee, a freelance IT writer
This story was first published in The Straits Times Digital Life on 24 December 2008.
