Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony DSCH3B Digital Camera (8.1MP, 10x Optical zoom) 2.5" LCD

I rate this camera highly. I was considering the Canon SX100IS and Panasonic TZ3 but went for this as it's cheaper and looked and felt more rugged. I looked at test shots for all three cameras and to me the Image Quality from the H3 looked better. Sony did a good job in reducing noise problems as the pics made with the H3 in iso400 or iso800 are much better than pics from the Canon SX100IS and Panasonic TZ3

Problems:-
1) It's far too easy to rotate the mode button by mistake.

2) No built in lens cap.

3) Most manufactures now seem to use SD cards but Sony use their own format memory sticks so if this is your first Sony allow for the expense of the new memory format.

But this is a small price to pay for great IQ and super low light performance.

(£159 from Amazon, the price seems to have increased by £15 since I bought it at the start of the week!)

Up-date 22/5/08
I have used the H3 for almost 5 months now and have had great fun using it to capture lots of great shot's. I have just sold the H3 and have replaced it with a Sony H10 which is basically the same camera with a bigger/higher resolution screen. I'm still glad I bought the H3 but if you're in the market for a small zoom camera the H10 would be a better buy now.

I've been using this camera for a few days and am very impressed with it. The zoom quality of the lens is excellent and the photos produced with it are good. The burst rate is good too compared to others in the price range - you can get 10 or so very rapid photos at whatever zoom setting you are using. Another feature which seems good is the macro setting which enables you to take up things very close, a feature which was missing altogether on a slightly cheaper camera I bought recently.

How I wish i could take the plunge and buy some no-name brand electronic and be blown away, but truth be told, after months and months of research, it always comes down to the best known brands. And for good reason. This camera was the right choice. I didn't want the bulk of an SLR but the flat square "fit in your pocket" point-and-shoot is just far too simplified for my grand photography attempts :)
So my final decision came between this one, the Panasonic Lumix FZ-18 or the Lumix TZ3. FZ18 was just that little bit tooooo big for convenience, and the Lumix TZ3 flash was a little too bright.
The picture quality of the Sony H3 is grand! The zoom on screen seems a little underachieving, but when you download the pics to your pc, the zoom truly is excellent!! The flash can be set from -2 to +2 so you indoor portraits are not overexposed as with alot of compact cameras. There are various scene settings like snow, beach (which works great on the beach...funnily enough) landscape, fireworks etc. Then you have fully automatic...which is fully automatic (duh) and then you have M and P modes. which allow you more control, exposure settings, apeture priority, etc.
My pictures are great, i will upload some soon so you can see!

Every review should have a negative point, no matter how trivial, so here are mine.
You cannot set the white balance by metering. There are presets, but you cannot meter it yourself. Not tragic but i do feel its a little bit of a let down.

If i had the choice to choose another camera in retrospect, would i? most definitely not!
Sony is fast becoming my favourite brand, almost against my will ;-)

I bought this camera as my first camera. I've had little experience with cameras before but this camera makes things easy.

I love the way this camera looks. It certainly isn't designed to slide into your pocket, or look cute in your handbag, but it looks the business.

I found that just using the auto setting, i could get great photos, straight out of the box, no messing around. However, if you're wiling to experiment with the manual settings, you can achieve some fantastic effects.

At first i felt daunted by the manual settings, not really knowing what each function would do, but for the most part the screen shows you how the function will effect the picture as you change the settings.

The macro function is amazing, and the digital zoom makes distant pictures easy too.

A brilliant camera whether you want to just take snap shots or whether you want to experiment.

This camera is awsome. Picture quality is excellent, battery is good and zoom power is also quite well.
100% recommend this product to anyone who needs a cheap camera with good lens power, say a preliminary purchase before SLR.