Product Description

The Sony DSC-T300 offers excellent performance and an elegant, sophisticated design. It includes Face Detection technology to optimize focus, exposure and color for up to eight faces. The compact body houses 10.1-Megapixel resolution and a beautiful, wide 3.5" touch-screen LCD for easy operation. A Carl Zeiss 5x optical zoom lens give you the power to get even closer to the action, a real benefit for distant landscape views and dramatic portraits. A huge 3.5" widescreen Clear Photo LCD Plus LCD display includes an anti-reflective coating that provides for excellent visibility to help you compose, view, and share photos with superb clarity and color reproduction, even in bright sunlight. With high sensitivity of ISO 3200, you can shoot effectively in low light without flash to preserve the mood, while the Sony Clear RAW Noise Reduction system helps suppress the color noise that can degrade low-light shots. PhotoTV HD compatibility allows the camera to be connected to a PhotoTV HD-capable Sony BRAVIA HDTV via the optional HD output adaptor, for highly detailed, high-definition color images displayed in unprecedented realism and full HD quality in 16:9 High-Resolution Mode. 1/2.3 Super HAD(TM) CCD Shutter Speed - Auto (1/4 - 1/1,000) / Program Auto (1 - 1/1,000) Aperture Range - Auto (F3.5-F10) / Program Auto (F3.5-F10) Movie Modes - MPEG VX Fine with Audio (640x480 at 30fps), MPEG VX Standard with Audio (640x480 at 16.6fps), Presentation Mode (320 x 240 at 8.3fps) Self-Timer - 10 seconds and 2 seconds Scene Modes - Beach, Fireworks, High Speed Shutter, High Sensitivity, Landscape, Snow, Soft Snap, Twilight, Twilight Portrait, and Smile Shutter Flash Modes - Auto, Forced On, Forced Off, and Slow Synch Operating System - Microsoft 2000 Professional, Me, XP Home and Professional, and Vista, Macintosh OS 9.1/9.2/OS X (10.1-10.4)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1116 in Camera & Photo
• Color: Black
• Brand: Sony
• Model: DSCT300/B
• Released on: 2008-03-21
• Dimensions: .39 pounds
• Memory: 15KB
• Display size: 3.5

Features

• 10.1-megapixel Super HAD CCD captures enough detail for photo-quality poster-size prints
• Carl Zeiss 5x optical zoom lens; Smart Zoom feature
• 3.5-inch widescreen Clear Photo LCD Plus display; Face Detection
• Intelligent Scene Recognition; HDTV compatibility
• 15 MB internal memory; capture images to Memory Stick Duo/Pro Duo media

Manufacturer Description

With Sony’s Smile Shutter technology, the DSC-T300 helps automatically capture smiles as they happen, while Face Detection technology controls flash, focus, exposure, and color for up to eight individual faces, resulting in more accurate, natural skin tones. You can expect stunning detail thanks to its 10.1-megapixel resolution and Carl Zeiss 5x optical zoom lens. Intelligent Scene Recognition automatically selects your camera’s settings based on detected lighting conditions, helping you get great photos even when shooting in difficult lighting environments. The huge 3.5-inch Clear Photo LCD Plus display makes it easy to compose your shots or view your photos with family and friends.

Cyber-shot DSC-T300 Highlights

10.1-megapixel Super HAD CCD More megapixels give you more detail and definition when you make big prints or crop in tight on your subject. The advanced Sony Super HAD (Hole Accumulated Diode) CCD design allows more light to pass to each pixel, increasing sensitivity and reducing noise.

Carl Zeiss 5x optical zoom lens 5x optical zoom gives you the power to get even closer to the action -- a real benefit for distant landscape views and dramatic portraits.

3.5-inch widescreen Clear Photo LCD Plus display A huge 3.5-inch widescreen Clear Photo LCD Plus LCD display includes an anti-reflective coating that provides for excellent visibility to help you compose, view, and share photos with superb clarity and color reproduction, even in bright sunlight.

15 MB internal memory Even if you forget your flash memory card, you can get the shot because 15 MB internal memory lets you capture a limited number of shots with in-camera convenience, then easily transfer your shots to a PC or optional Memory Stick Duo media.

Memory Stick Duo media convenience A built-in slot accepts optional Memory Stick Duo media or Memory Stick Pro Duo media -- the compact, high-capacity storage media that make it easily to upload photos to your PC and are compatible with millions of devices worldwide.

16:9 High-Resolution mode In addition to the standard 2-megapixel size, the convenient 16:9 aspect ratio shooting mode for HDTV 3display can now be shot in 7-megapixels, making it possible to obtain beautiful, high-definition prints with the same aspect ratio as HDTV.

HDTV compatibility High-resolution images can be enjoyed in all their beauty simply by connecting the camera directly to a Sony Bravia HDTV or other compatible HDTV. This provides an excellent alternative to viewing photos as prints or on a computer monitor, and is ideal for users who want to share photos in the comfort of their living room. Optional HD solutions include a Cyber-shot cradle/charger with component cable output, or component cable directly to your HDTV.

Automatic Macro shooting Standard Auto Focus now covers the macro focus range, eliminating the need to manually change focus modes for close-up photography. The Macro mode has not been eliminated, and enabling it accelerates Auto Focus when shooting at point-blank range.

Burst mode You can fire off three shots automatically at 1-second intervals (VGA standard mode) or 2-second intervals (full resolution mode) -- a great way to capture a child’s first steps or a pet’s best tricks.

Convenient Photo modes To adjust quickly for specific shooting situations, you can choose from several convenient photo modes, including Auto, Program Auto, and Scene Selections such as Twilight, Landscape, Soft Snap, Snow, High Sensitivity, and Beach environments.

Dynamic Range Optimization Powered by the exclusive Sony Bionz high-speed processing engine, Dynamic Range Optimization preserves image data in bright highlights and reveals more detail in shadows or backlit areas -- for great results even in difficult lighting conditions.

Easy image management To help you find the right image among many, Date View mode and Favorites mode have been added to the standard Folder View. Date View mode displays a calendar view, while Favorites mode shows only user-selected images. Furthermore, you can filter photos by face types such as portrait, child, baby, and smile.

Easy Shooting mode A simplified camera environment especially attractive to beginners or digital camera users who want to keep things simple, Easy Shooting provides easy-to-read, on-screen instructions and limits the number of camera settings to help prevent misuse of the camera while still providing excellent results.

Enhanced Paint function In-camera retouching continues with the ability to "paint" decorative borders or graphic stamps like hearts, stars, arrows, and hand drawn words or symbols to add charm and fun to photos you save, print, or send via e-mail (Internet connection required).

Face Detection Face Detection technology automatically controls focus, exposure, color, and flash to help reveal faces in shadows, make skin tones look more natural, reduce red-eye, and eliminate harsh facial glare, so your photos bring out every expression on every face in every shot.

Function Guide This beginner-friendly function helps manage various functions and settings by displaying the description of chosen functions or settings on the LCD screen. The Function Guide can also be switched off.

HD Slide Show with music It’s the high-definition viewing experience that makes photos more entertaining to watch, accompanied by your choice of visual effects and any of four preset musical selections stored in memory or your favorite music downloaded from PC to your camera for use as background music.

High Sensitivity (ISO 3200) mode With high sensitivity of ISO 3200, you can shoot effectively in low light without flash to preserve the mood, while the Sony Clear RAW Noise Reduction system helps suppress the color noise that can degrade low-light shots.

In-camera retouching Add creative effects to photos after you shoot using any of 10 editing functions, including: Trimming, Red-Eye adjustment, Soft Focus filter, Unsharp Mask, Cross filter, Partial Color filter, Fish-eye filter, Retro, Radial Blur and Happy Face. The Happy Face effect uses photo retouching to put a smile on faces, with smile levels adjustable from 1 to 5.

In-camera red-eye reduction Irritating "glowing eyes" can ruin even the most creative photos, but in-camera red eye reduction corrects your photos at the touch of a button to reduce lingering red-eye effect that other systems might miss.

Intelligent Scene Recognition mode Intelligent Scene Recognition mode automatically detects six different types of scenes and selects the appropriate camera setting: Backlight, Backlight & Portrait, Twilight, Twilight & Portrait, Twilight with Tripod and Portrait. Intelligent Scene Recognition has two different modes, advanced and auto. Advanced mode takes two shots, one with the standard automatic settings and the other with optimized settings. Auto mode takes a single shot, arbitrarily deciding on the proper setting.

Multi-resizing function Resize your photos in-camera for virtually any purpose! Standard 4:3 images can be resized to widescreen 16:9 and 2 MP resolution for display on an HDTV. Conversely, high resolution, widescreen 16:9 images can be resized to 4:3 size with VGA (640 x 480) resolution -- perfect for sharing with friends and family via e-mail (internet connection required). A simple 4-direction touch-screen control also makes it easy to trim photos.

Photo music Expanding the HD Slide Show with Music feature, PhotoMusic combines images with music to produce fun and entertaining slide shows. The five standard visual effects (Simple, Basic, Nostalgic, Active and Stylish) have been supplemented for a total of eight effects. Additionally, the number of music tracks stored in the camera memory has been doubled from four to eight, and music playback time has been extended from three to five minutes per track. More personalized slide shows are also possible by transferring music from a PC to the camera.

Photo TV HD PhotoTV HD compatibility allows the camera to be connected to a PhotoTV HD-capable Sony Bravia HDTV via the optional HD output adaptor, for highly detailed, high-definition color images displayed in unprecedented realism and full HD quality.

Picture Motion Browser software Supplied software makes it easier to upload, organize, and search photos on your PC. When shooting photos using your camera and an optional GPS unit, the software even provides a convenient map view function that lets you sort photos by location and display their origin on a world map.

Simple Icon Setup Controls To the left and right of the image area on your widescreen display, simple icons allow quick touch-screen operation of essential camera functions. The icons can be switched off to provide a full 16:9 widescreen view of your photos -- and the on-screen Function Guide display helps you learn camera setup operations.

Smile Shutter mode Smile Shutter mode helps you capture smiles automatically as they happen. Used in conjunction with Face Detection technology, Smile Shutter is able to differentiate between children and adults, and can be set to automatically shoot a picture when your subject laughs, smiles, or even grins -- only when focus is fixed. You select the person to watch and the expression to catch -- your Cyber-shot camera does the rest!

Sony Double Anti-Blur Solution The combination of Super SteadyShot optical image stabilization and high ISO sensitivity helps compensate for shaky hands, minimizes blur, and allow flash-free shooting to preserve the mood.

Stamina Battery Power Provides extended battery life and shooting capacity when using a fully charged Lithium Ion battery-- enough to cover a long weekend or a whole vacation.

Super SteadyShot Optical Image Stabilization Super SteadyShot Image Stabilization compensates for shaky hands and minimizes blur with optical sensors that detect camera movement and send correcting signals to a stabilization lens -- so there’s no need to crop in on your shot to reduce blur.

Wide Zoom Display To use the entire image area of the camera’s widescreen LCD and compatible HDTV screens, Wide Zoom automatically expands standard 4:3 images to 16:9.

Customer Reviews

Excellent
I really enjoyed this camera. It has lot of features and the picture clarity is very good.

Good value, takes getting used to
This camera is worth the cost, but you have a steep learning curve. If you're willing to learn how to deal with the arcane menu system, you'll be able to take surprisingly sophisticated pictures. I've had it for a couple of months, and I just returned yesterday from a week in Hawaii, where I really had the chance to use it.

At the outset, let me say that I drastically misjudged the rate of power consumption. I gave it a full charge before departure, but with only moderate use, it was drained by day three of my vacation. I used the camera in the cell phone for the rest of the trip! This was my own fault. I should have taken the battery charger with me. My cell phone is a Verizon LG Dare, which does a good job at 3 megapixels. The Sony is, of course, 10 megapix.

Nevertheless, I keep asking myself how much more is the Sony giving me than I would get with the cellphone camera? I leave that up to the user to decide.

I ordered the special cable that allows me to view the Cybershot pictures on the HDTV. This is a must. I save my pictures on the PC using Picasa, the free software from Google.

Some critics say the pictures from the Cybershot DSCT300 are "noisey." I'm not sure what this means. I think that most people will be quite pleased with the results. I expect that with more familiarity with the camera, my results will improve.

As I said in the very beginning, this is not a "point and shoot" camera. It has a wide array of menus and adjustment options. Without learning what these options do, one is not making full use of the technology. It would be like driving a car in first gear.

Taking movies works best with a stable platform, especially when the zoom is in full effect. My son who is a professional videographer introduced me to the cheap monopod, which works great. They can be had for less than $20.

Great on the budget
This camera does not have automatic photo rotation, NO memory card or case included, and sometimes if you simply touch the slide-down part it turns on then back off again. Seller only gave 10 days exchange/return, and I did not see that in time, or i would have gotten a later version. Otherwise, color is great, handling superb.