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Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/08/review_sony_dsc-t5/

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T5 digital camera

By Stuart Miles, Pocket Lint
Published Tuesday 8th November 2005 15:16 GMT

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T5Review Ultra-compact digital cameras don't come much thinner than the 1.5cm-thick Sony Cyber-shot DSC T5 a supremely pocketable 5.1mp digital camera that will really turn heads towards the lens.

The T5 has swooping curves to the slimline body edges and a sliding lens cover on the front that also provides extra rigidity for its diminutive frame. The cute styling houses a large 2.5in LCD screen that reduces boosts brightness by reflecting light that hits it back out again. It's crisp and clear to use.

There's no optical viewfinder but thankfully the power management has been improved over the old T7, which gobbled battery power at an alarming rate. Here you'll get around 240 shots per charge. Not bad given it's the same rechargeable Li-ion cell as used in the T7.

The camera's 38-114mm 3x optical zoom lens is very sharp Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar glass but with a merely adequate F3.5-F4.4 maximum aperture range.

Focusing and metering work a treat, the former using a wide-range auto-focus set-up with very clear markings and the latter which seems to get the balance about right, even in quite high-contrast scenes. Noise suppression is well handled in brighter conditions but in low light, there's marked shadow noise, even at ISO 100, and which gets worse as the ISO goes up. The sensitivity ranges from ISO 64 to a modest ISO 400 but to be fair to the little T5, the noise is no different from many such models it competes with on the market.

Despite the small size, handling the T5 is actually not bad with only a minor demerit on the shutter release: it seems very long and can get in the way when using back-plate controls. And the zoom control is so small it's very fiddly. Otherwise, the camera is easy to use.

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T5

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T5

Menus are of the animated and fun variety with icons that swoop about on the screen as do the menus. The latter are simple to understand and range across the bottom of the screen that sadly necessitates some frustrating scrolling to change settings as there's very little in the way of manual controls. You do get ten scene modes - including the usual stuff such as portrait, landscape and night scene modes - and exposure compensation to +/-2EV in 1/3rd stop steps.

Verdict

The 5.1mp T5 provides enough detail for large prints, even up to A3, meaning if all you need is a small, eminently pocketable digital camera with basic controls but oodles of wow factor as standard, then this a digital camera that's sure to hit your sweet spot.

 

Sample images from Sony DSC-T5
Click for full-size image (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/08/t5_2.jpg)  Click for full-size image (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/08/t5_1.jpg)  Click for full-size image (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/08/t5_3.jpg)

Review by
Pocket-Lint.co.uk (http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/)

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T5
 
Rating 80%
 
Price £280
 
More info The Sony DSC-T5 site (http://www.sony.co.uk/view/ShowProduct.action?product=DSC-T5&site=odw_en_GB&pageType=Overview&category=DPH+Digital+Still+Cameras)

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