Digital Home Thoughts: Sony DSCU60 Digital Camera Reviewed

Patience, Dear Boy!
The interesting thing about a camera this dinky is that you just want to start pointing it at things & taking photos. Well, who reads manuals these days :D Actually, it turns out that it is quite important to read the manual carefully, particularly the first few pages that deal with the batteries. It stresses several points about the batteries, including:

• Only NiMH batteries should be used and then, preferably Sony. No surprises about the preference for Sony, I suppose, but the requirement for NiMH did catch me out – I made the mistake of using alkaline batteries instead whilst on holiday when the rechargeables had run out. The alkaline batteries did work, but they didn't last very long before the battery warning light comes on. The manual does say this :oops: The alkaline batteries weren't exhausted – it is just that the process used to determine the battery life is meant for NiMH batteries and therefore gets the answer wrong if you aren't using the right ones.
  
  (The reason I didn't just recharge the batteries was because I thought I could get away with using alkalines & I'd left the charger at home. D'oh!)
  
  
• NiMH batteries suffer from memory effect and, therefore, should be used until drained before recharging.

I must admit that I was a bit surprised that Sony had opted for NiMH batteries given the memory effect problem, and I was also surprised that the camera couldn't cope with ordinary batteries. Some of their other products (e.g. Minidisc players & recorders) can use alkaline batteries instead of the supplied rechargeables. I suppose that one difference between these devices would be that you wouldn't want the battery running out on the camera whilst it is writing to the Memory Stick, whereas with the Minidisc devices, you are more likely to be playing discs and not recording to them.

Using the camera, though, is really easy and all managed by using the buttons on the back (see Figure 8 for a close-up view). Start by moving the blue mode select switch (bottom left-hand corner) to "photo" (the middle option) and turn the power on by pressing the top left-hand button … errr, the one marked "Power" – see … I said you didn't need the manual :wink:


Figure 8: The functions on the rear of the camera. Click on the image for the full size image. (149KB)

The camera powers up and the display gives you a view of what the lens is pointing at, with a variety of symbols across the top, as shown in Figure 9.


Figure 9: Setting up the shot.

From left to right, Figure 9 shows the battery remaining indicator, red-eye reduction mode (second row), image size indicator (currently set to 2MP), recording folder indicator, remaining number of recordable images indictor (second row) and finally an indicator of the capacity remaining in the Memory Stick.

The different flash modes are automatic (no indicator), red-eye reduction (as shown in Figure 9), forced flash (symbol looks like a flash of lightening) and no flash (flash symbol in a circle with a line through it). The modes are cycled through by successive presses of the top right-hand button shown in Figure 8. If the flash is going to be used, an indicator lights above the flash symbol on the case to show that the lamp has charged and is ready for use.

It is possible to create & use multiple folders on the Memory Stick for saving the photos. The naming convention has to be a three digit number (101 to 999) followed by MSDCF. The menu system allows you to create the folders (you don't have to connect the camera to a computer to do this) and you can also change the folders as you wish so that you can decide where each photo is saved as you take it. You cannot delete folders, though, from the camera's interface, nor can you move photos from one folder to another. Both of these can be achieved when you connect the camera to a computer.

Pressing lightly on the shutter button causes the camera to auto-focus, during which the auto-exposure/auto-focus indicator (a green circle) blinks. When the camera has finished setting up the shot, the indicator stays on solidly, as shown in Figure 10.


Figure 10: The AE/AF lock indicator (green circle).

Pressing harder on the shutter button takes the photo … which then has to be transferred to the Memory Stick, as shown in Figure 11. The transfer process takes roughly a second and you cannot use the camera in this time.


Figure 11: Transferring the photo to the MemoryStick.

The screen display is clearly visible, particularly with the display light turned on. Under a lot of conditions, you can also use the display with the light turned off, thus extending the battery life. Where I did find the display let me down, though, was in trying to gauge how well a photo had turned out. There were a few occasions where I thought I'd got a really good shot stored on the camera but, when I transferred the image onto my computer, the image was out of focus. There probably isn't a simple solution to this, given the size of the screen. You can, in playback mode, zoom into an image 2.5 & 5 times magnification, but you cannot scroll around the image – you are left looking at the centre of the image only.

By default, the photo will be 2MP (1632x1224). It is possible to reduce this to VGA (640x480) or burst mode – the latter being where the camera takes up to five VGA-sized photos in quick succession. If you release the shutter button before all five have been taken, the camera stops shooting when you release the button. Apart from a reduction in resolution, the other main restriction is that you cannot use the flash – not unreasonably, I suppose, given the time it can take to recharge the flash lamp. It is a shame, though, that Sony couldn't or wouldn't design the camera to handle the 2MP images in burst mode.

The camera incorporates a self-timer mode which causes the photo to be taken approximately 10 seconds after activation. During the countdown, the self-timer lamp flashes red and a continuous beep sounds.

There isn't the capability to use a tripod with this camera, but the base of the camera is flat and in the right place to hold the camera at the correct angle for the photo to be level.

Using The Camera Underwater
And so to what must really be the main reason for buying this camera – using it underwater. It is waterproof to depths of 1.5m or five feet. This depth is just about right for snorkelling, but not diving. The manual does advise against using the camera where it might be subject to high water pressure (although it says direct jet streams of normal temperature fresh water are OK), hot springs, bathtubs or any water hotter than 30°C.

The first time I took the camera into the sea was a bit nerve-wracking … would it really be waterproof? Would I drop it & lose it? No, everything was fine and there was something liberating about taking high technology into water :P

Here are some examples of photos taken underwater (in Barbados :P ). Click on each image to see it full size (245KB, 419KB, 404KB and 524KB respectively).


Figure 12: Some underwater photos.

The reason for the diamond-shape artefacts in the photo of the turtles was because I had the flash on. This was one of my first uses of the camera underwater and I wasn't sure how well they were going to come out – the water looked a bit dark. It would appear that using the flash underwater is a bad idea :oops:

On the whole, I am very pleased with the quality of the underwater photos. However, using the camera underwater is a very different experience from using it on land for a few reasons:

• Since the camera has no zoom, it becomes important to try to get the camera as close to the subject as possible if you want it to come out clearly. However, if you are snorkelling, it can be tricky to stay close to the top of the water for breathing and yet get the camera near the object of interest.
  
  
• The further the camera is away from you, the harder it becomes to see the display and, therefore, what the camera is actually pointing at. Since the fish often didn't oblige by posing for the photo but, instead, insisted on swimming around all of the time, I ended up adopting a tactic of following them and pressing the shutter button as often as I could in the blind hope that one of the photos would actually capture the shot I was after.
  
  
• The lag in the auto-focus became a bit of a nuisance, particularly with the fast moving fish. No sooner had the camera sorted itself out than the fish had moved on 8O I tried fixing the focus instead of using the automatic mode but you then struggle to gauge what distance to set the focus to.

That said, I think that using a digital camera underwater beats a traditional film camera underwater hands-down. You may end up taking loads of photos, but at least you can very quickly see if you've got one that works and, if not, try again. You simply cannot do that with a traditional camera – you still have to take loads of photos (just in case) but you won't see the results often until it is too late to do anything about it.