Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T700

LCD Screen (7.00)
Sony continues its tradition of offering high quality LCD displays with the highly impressive 3.5' touch screen on the T700, boasting a 921,000-pixel resolution. We're seeing a trend toward cameras with touch screens as their primary camera control, which necessitates screens that are large, sharp and accurate. The T700 certainly has a large screen. It's bright, with almost no solarization at even the most extreme of angles. Even under harsh lighting, screen glare is minimal. There's no doubt about it, Sony makes a handsome screen. However, in order to compete with button-based systems, a touch screen must also be accurate and fast to respond to inputs. Due to the lack of tactile feedback, if you don't receive instant acknowledgment from the camera that you've pressed a button, it can be difficult to know if you're doing it right. This can lead to pressing buttons multiple times, which is frustrating, and can alter your settings in unplanned ways. While the T700 is better at responding to touch input than some others we have used, such as the Nikon CoolPix S60, it still feels sluggish. That annoying delay between when you press an on-screen virtual button and when the camera responds rapidly becomes aggravating as you repeatedly tap the screen.

The LCD is very high resolution, but not responsive enough

Another problem with using a touch screen interface is its propensity for getting smeared by fingerprints. Even after just a few minutes of normal use, it's pretty bad. One can only imagine if you were out at a bar with some friends, and somebody ordered potato skins... Sony attempts to mitigate this problem by including a small stylus that can attach to the wrist strap. Unfortunately, you can't use both the strap and stylus simultaneously, so you either have to hold the camera with your free hand, or detach the stylus, which will allow for one or the other to drop.

While shooting, the T700 offers three different display setups: Normal, Simple and Image Only. This last setting is rather self-explanatory, and Simple shows only the controls on either side of the screen. Normal mode offers additional information, such as battery level, number of recordable images, scene recognition setting, red-eye reduction, flash setting, recording mode, face detection setting, metering mode, focus, AF illuminator, vibration warning, Touch AF indicator (if you tap on the screen, you will focus on that point, and a small icon will tell you you're using touch auto focus), whether you're using the underwater housing, white balance setting and color mode. A histogram can be viewed in any of these modes, and the screen has two levels of brightness.

One problem we noticed with the sharp LCD was that the icons seemed blurry and low resolution. It strikes us that Sony should have created on-screen artwork to take full advantage of their glorious screen. As it stands, you're stuck looking frequently at mediocre images on a great display.

Many of the controls are accessed by tapping on their icon on the screen

Flash (3.50)
The flash, though small, is very bright and powerful. When firing it off in a darkened room, the vignetting (darkening around the corners) is minimal. The flash can be set to three levels of brightness: Normal, Plus and Minus. The flash itself can be set to auto, on, slow synch, and off. Red-eye reduction is set through a separate menu, and can be off, on, or auto (where it activates when it detects a face). Red-eye reduction functions by firing off three quick, low level, bursts of the flash before a final brighter one. This serves to prevent red-eye by causing your subjects pupils to contract, which in turn prevents light from the flash reflecting off the back of their eyes, which is the cause of red-eye.

Sony says the range for the flash is up to 14' on auto ISO, and up to 28' on ISO 3200. However, if you're shooting at a low ISO, expect this number to decrease dramatically.

The flash is small and bright

The corner location and small size of the lens make it easy to block