Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony DSC-P51 Digital Camera [2.0MP 2xOptical]

For many years now, I have researched digital cameras. I am a professional photographer and needed a great point and shoot for family photos, so I was looking for a middle of the range camera that gave me a bit more manual freedom than a normal point and shoot. When I finally decided to take the plunge, Amazon was offering the Sony DSC-P51 for a great price and after much comparision I bought it.
I have to say that this camera is better than I ever imagined. I never thought that a digital camera could offer such great detail in its imaging. In fact, The DSC-P51 offers several different size options - and the smallest of which is better detail than I could hope for. And of course, in that smaller format, the size of the image is very small compared to the scanned prints I used to send via email to my family and friends.
I have read in other reviews that one should consider buying an additional memory stick if they want to take more than 24 photos - HOWEVER, in my tests I have found that the smaller image sizes are quite impressive and in the smallest mode, the 16mg memory stick provided can hold up to 96 photos... so I am glad I didn't buy the additional stick right away.
The camera offers a few manual features, like distance settings and exposure settings, which is wonderful for the odd photo that requires more thought than a basic point and shoot. Although, most photos taken on auto focus and exposure are simply brilliant. The menus are easy to understand and the camera is easy to use. Downloading to your PC couldn't be simpler.
If you are wondering which middle range digital to go for, look no futher. The Sony DSC-P51 is absolutely the best value for money I have found in my travels ..

I bought this camera as an upgrade from a very basic (non Sony) model and am very impressed with it. Picture quality is excellent, even on the 640x480 image size and using this mode, the standard memory stick holds in the region of 240 images.
The LCD screen is clear and presents the menu information in a logical manner. It has many useful features including the ability to view photos taken on your TV with the supplied leads.

Rechargeable battery life is OK and can be used with standard AA batteries also. Only minus point is that no soft case is included.

Overall, its a well designed easy to use camera giving an image quality that is good enough to enable me to give up on my conventional 35mm camera.

The sony dsc-p51 is a fairly small digital camera and a great style only made by sony. Although it is still 2.0 million megapixels, it is an upgrade from the sony dsc-p31 as it has many other creative effects on it and especially contains an optical zoon as well as a slightly stronger digital zoom. It also has three great flash modes, red-eye reduction and close-up macro focusing. The m-peg films are also great fun to play with and are a handy extra feature. The LCD screen also allows you to view your photos and you can delete them as neccessary. Finally, the new form of battery have longer life and the USB ports give faster downloading onto a PC and the TV cables allow you to view the photos on a TV. There are also a wide range of accessories such as a tripod and a carrying case is a handy as it protects the camera. Overall, the camera is great to use for photography as it allows you to delete photos and view photos you have just taken, but it is slightly more complicated to use then the sony dsc-p31 camera and so may be for more advanced users, but I give this camera 5/5.

Picture quality, build, functionality, options, design, etc are all as good as you would expect from Sony. Battery life in particular is very impressive. As is start up time & time between shots.

However there are a couple of little quirks. The most annoying of these by far is the fact that the Flash is OFF by default & resets to default every time you switch it on. Surely AUTO flash would have been the best default. Have had a couple of photos spoilt because had forgotten to turn flash onto auto. first.

Video without sound is a shame though only a minor annoyance.

There are lots of various metering & focus options but very little explanation of them & their various merits in the instructions. As a complete amateur it took me quite a bit of experimenting to get the options set to their optimum.

However, despite those minor complaints it's got everything else in its favour - especially the price.

I bought this camera mainly because it was well discounted and I already have other devices that use memory sticks. I'm very happy with the results, the pictures are clear and the auto-exposure works well.

The 16MB memory stick supplied with it is a bit small and the supplied battery charger is incredibly slow, so budget for a fast NiMH charger and a bigger memory stick if you're going to buy one.

A major advantage is that Sony (for once) went for standards-compliance when designing the camera. When you plug it into your PC it shows up as a USB hard disk. This means you can use it as a generic memory stick reader and also that it works with any operating system that supports USB mass storage devices.