Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W220

Manual Control Options
This is not a camera designed with a lot of manual control in mind. There is no direct control over aperture and shutter speed, and no true manual focus. Exposure compensation is available to provide some control over light levels in a pinch.

Focus
Auto Focus
There are three auto focus modes: 9-area multi-point, center-weighted and spot. There is also a 'semi-manual' focus option that allows users to choose a distance measurement from 0.5m, 1.0m, 3.0mn, 7.0m or infinity, which strikes us as just about useless.

Face detection mode is also available, for up to eight individuals. In addition to focus, face detection tailors flash, exposure and white balance based on the subjects identified in the frame. And if you like, you can tell the camera to prioritize face detection to favor either adults or children.

As an adjunct to face detection, Smile Shutter mode may prove useful if your family is a cheerful bunch. The camera waits, after the shutter is pressed, until it recognizes a grinning individual within range before taking a photo. After a few generations of implementing this feature certain refinements have been added, including the option to manually take a photo by pressing the shutter if nobody cracks a smile, and to set the camera to prioritize between adult and child smiles.

ISO
ISO sensitivity ranges from 100 up to 3200 at full resolution, pleasingly high at the top end, which pairs well with a relatively fast f/2.8 lens. Auto ISO is, of course, also available.

White Balance
In addition to automatic camera-controlled white balance, there are seven available white balance preset modes, including daylight, cloudy, incandescent, flash and three flavors of fluorescent light; we appreciate having fluorescent flexibility, since a single setting is really inadequate to deal with the range of bulb colors available. What's missing, though, is the option to take a manual white balance reading by shooting a neutral card under available light, the best approach for fine-tuning white balance settings..

Metering
The standard trio of settings is available: full-screen evaluative, center-weighted and spot..

Shutter Speed
There is no direct user control over shutter speed. The automatic exposure system can set the camera within the range of 1/4 second to 1/1600 second, not a spectacularly fast shutter, but adequate for freezing most fast-action scenes.

Aperture
Maximum aperture is a reasonably fast f/2.8.
 

Image Stabilization
The W220 offers optical image stabilization in addition to an automatic ISO-boosting digital stabilization feature.

Picture Quality / Size Options
There are eight image size options, at three different:
 

4:3 format: 12MP, 8MP, 5MP, 3MP, VGA (640x480)
3:2 format: 11MP
16:9 format: 9MP, 2MP
 

 

Picture Effects Mode
When Dynamic Range Optimization is turned on, the camera attempts to manipulate exposure and contrast settings to maintain the widest possible range of black-to-white reproduction. DRO can be set to off, normal or plus.

There are also four available color modes while shooting: normal, vivid, black and white, and sepia.