Digital Camera Review

Digital Camera Review

Jan 26, 2005 - By Emily Raymond
Another lean Cyber-shot T-model made its debut at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The DSC-T33 will go on sale in March for $450 (USD)—fifty bucks cheaper than its vanished predecessor, the Sony Cyber-shot T3. The T3 was announced last August, but never hit the market in the United States. Sony hopes to make it up with the Sony Cyber-shot T-33, which is nearly identical to the T3. Both cameras have 5.1 megapixels on their 1/2.4-inch CCDs. Both models share the same shooting options, 2.5-inch LCD, and 3x optical zoom lens. The only difference is the size.
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Movie Mode
There are three shooting settings within the Movie Mode. The Fine mode shoots at 640 x 480 at 30 frames per second. The Standard mode shoots at the same resolution, but at 16.6 frames per second. The Video Mail Mode shoots 8.3 frames per second at 320 x 116. All of these options capture movies with audio in MPEG file format. Clips are only limited by the memory card’s capacity.

Drive/Burst Mode
There are several burst modes on the T33, but none are very impressive. There is a Multi-Burst mode that takes 16 consecutive shots at 320 x 240 and strings them together into a single 1280 x 960 picture. At full resolution, the T33 takes a leisurely one frame per second. In the 4-shot burst mode, the camera can shoot a frame every 0.33 seconds. There is also a 100-shot burst mode that can capture a still photo every 0.71 seconds. The resolution is at 5 megapixels for the 4-shot burst mode, but the 100-shot mode is only at 640 x 480 resolution. These burst modes will suit most digital camera users, but will be insufficient for a sports shooter who wants to shoot more than 4 frames at full resolution.

Playback Mode
The Playback Mode is accessed by pushing the Mode Switch, which is on the right side of the T33, to the bottom. Still photos and movies can be played back with audio, thanks to the built-in speaker on the back of the Sony camera.

Custom Image Presets
Within the Menu, there are nine scene modes for users to choose from: Beach, Candle, Fireworks, High Speed Shutter, Landscape, Magnifying Glass mode, Snow, Twilight, and Twilight Portrait. This is a decent selection, but misses one of the most important scene selections on most digital cameras: Portrait. As most people use their cameras to take pictures of people, a regular portrait mode is a welcome feature for beginner and point-and-shoot users. Once novices advance in their picture-taking skills, scene modes aren’t as necessary as good manual functions.

Design / Layout Page 6 of 12 Control Options
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