Sony Cyber-shot DSC-F505

Sony appear to be leading several real camera makers in this field these days. The Cyber-shot DSC-F505V, an upgraded version of the same model without the 'V' on the end, is certainly one of the highest quality cameras on the market.

The Memory Stick provided with this model is 8Mb, twice the size of the last version, and this means that you can store a respectable amount of shots. Personally, I tend to take pictures to put on web pages more than anything else, so most of my shots don't need to be bigger than 640x480. I was over the moon when I discovered that I'd be able to take 118 photos at this size without having to download them.

For those who like their pictures hi-res and their files large, the Cyber-shot will do you a nice 2240x1680 interpolated image. Now I don't actually know what interpolated means, but when I've taken images at this size and displayed them on a good monitor (or my TV - composite video connectivity comes as standard), they've always been met with approving noises.

For me the use of the Memory Stick is not a problem, although it's not exactly a popular format yet, because I already had other MS devices, and for most people, downloading the images via USB will be fine, although I wasn't able to get the camera to talk to a Windows2000 PC via USB, so be warned. I'm sure Sony will sort this out soon though. For getting the images printed, you can download to a PC or go straight from the Memory Stick (using Sony's digital photo printer if you only want small prints, or Jessops who now support pretty much any digital photo storage format I can think of).

I'm no expert in the field of photography or digital cameras, but I must say that from the time I unpacked this little beauty I've been able to produce some pretty impressive images (you can see some on my website - just add a www. and a .co.uk to my name). That's because the controls on the 505V are all right where you want them to be - under your fingertips. The menu is easily navigable and all of the most used functions are on seperate buttons.

There's a built in flash mounted on the top of the large, but fantastic, Carl Zeiss lens, which appears to be adequate for most occasions, but when taking close ups you might pick up a shadow of the lens housing because of it's position. However, for landscapes at night you will be wanting to use the camera's rather fantastic 'Twilight' feature which uses a long exposure and (I believe) digitally enhances what light there is. This requires a very steady pair of hands (or a tripod), but I've been very impressed with some of my results in the evenings taken without leaning on anything.

The 'Twilight' mode also produces some pretty decent colour definition in my experience (for the amount of light around), and overall my favourite thing about this camera is the colours it picks up. This is in no part down to it's fantastically simple one-touch white-balance. Point the lens at something white in the lame light condition as your subject (I use a sheet of A4!), press the little button on the side of the lens housing, and magically white things will be white in your picture and all the other colours will have been adjusted accordingly so that you get really acurate colours.

There's a movie mode for taking short MPEG clips, and the camera has a built in microphone to pick up the sound, although I must admit that I haven't bothered with this since I bought this as a replacement for a digital video camera that I only ever used to take stills. The normal camera mode lets you handily review the last snap you took (and delete it if you wish), and there's a playback mode which lets you view all the images on the stick and carry out a variety of operations on them. I've found that it is handy to be able to copy an image, zoom in on areas and re-sample at smaller file sizes before deleting the large original.

The macro mode gives very respectable close-up images (as good as I'd ever ask for), and so long as you select a suitable auto-exposure mode, wider shots are excellent. All in all I don't have anything really bad to say about this camera. It's large lens section makes it look more like a serious camera than a toy, and although it's lack of an optical view-finder is thought of as a disadvantage by some, I tend to think that you're just as well off this way since you see exactly what it is you're going to snapshot.

It's not the cheapest camera on the market at 700+ quid, but I think it's well worth it. Nice one Sony.