Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony CyberShot W130 Digital Camera - Black (8.1MP, 4x Optical Zoom) 2.5" LCD

I finally decided to take the plunge and replace my old Kodak 5 megapixel digital camera. I wanted a good quality digital camera with modern features like anti red-eye reduction, decent digital zoom and good quality video recording, so having done my homework the Cybershot seemed like the best choice.

Other reviewers have criticised the Cybershot's navigation menu and buttons, but I'm still on the fence. When you're flicking through menus on screen you are given a helpful description of what each option does. I found this useful. However operating the camera has not quite become second nature to me yet, but then I guess that's because there are a lot of tweaks and options if you feel like delving beneath the surface.

I've tended to stick to 5 megapixels for my photos so far, as 8 megapixels tends to fill up my PC hard drive rather quickly thanks to the bigger file size. Unless you're running off A3 prints then you don't need to select more than 5 megapixels in my opinion.

There are lots of useful features including "continuous shoot" which lets you take multiple photos while the shutter button is held down, auto red eye reduction (not one red eye in hundreds of photos so far), and steady shot which automatically compensates for my shaky hands. I've been quite pleased with the zoom level so far - much better than my old Kodak's 2x - but the real test will be my son's Christmas play!

Quality-wise the photos look very good, and bearing in mind I'm a total amateur I've been quite pleased with some of the effects when taking photos in bright sunlight in the early evening for example. As another reviewer recommended, I tend to shoot in "Vivid" colour mode because I prefer more vibrancy in my photos. The supplied Sony software has quite basic functionality when compared to the suites offered by some other manufacturers (eg Kodak Easyshare does just about everything you want), but essential tasks like cropping can be carried out without fuss.

The slideshow feature is excellent, and with the supplied cable you can plug the camera directly into your TV's RGB socket and play it on the big screen. We did this with our recent holiday snaps (over 100 of them!), and the camera even plays background music and has transition effects between photos. Very professional, and if you have a DVD recorder then you can always record to DVD-R - great for giving to the grandparents!

A 4GB Sony Pro Duo memory stick will give you over 1,000 photos at 5 megapixels, and over 50 minutes of high resolution video. I managed to pick one up new for around £26 from another online store - they can be around £50/60 in some high street shops!!!

As you'd expect from a Sony product, the Cybershot's video recording quality is excellent. Each clip can be up to 10 minutes in length, which is more than enough for our needs. One nice touch is that you can shoot in sepia too, which you can also do with still photos.

Battery life is OK, but I only have my old Kodak to compare against and it used to get through AA rechargeable batteries like anyone's business. All I can say is that we went on a foreign holiday for a week and in just one charge I shot over 100 photos plus a couple of short videos, and there was still life in the camera when I got back. The Cybershot comes with its own battery charger so you don't need to keep buying batteries. Which is great, but my only gripe is that my battery seems a bit loose in the charger.

Overall I'm very pleased with this digital camera. Looks-wise, the black brushed steel is very sexy and contrasts nicely against the chrome Carl Zeiss lens. Performance-wise, it's a solid choice for someone like me who wants to take photos and videos of family holidays, etc. I can heartily recommend the Cybershot.

I bought this camera a few weeks ago to complement my main camera which is a DSLR. I wanted something compact either to take out when not wanting to carry a bulky SLR and lenses, or to allow me to just have a big lens on the SLR and use this for landscape and portrait shots.

After a bit of use I have a few gripes with it that its worth noting :

The optical viewfinder is too small to be of much use though which is a shame - as one of the few compacts these days to feature one you'd think it would be more practical. The other compromise made to make it so small is that the buttons are absolutely tiny - if you have big fingers you'll really struggle to navigate the menus.

The way the menus work is also a bit odd - some menus appear or disappear depending on the mode you have selected via the mode dial. This means for "easy" mode there are virtually no menu options at all - the camera handles everything, up to the program modes where lots of menus appear, and the scene modes somewhere in between. This is probably great for people who just do want to point and shoot but is a bit confusing when you're getting to grips with what the camera can do.

Also confusing is the bewildering array of icons on the LCD screen at times... a lot of them aren't very intuitive and they can really clutter the screen. Likewise navigating through the menus is not intuitive - i keep trying to use the circular disk below the mode dial to move through the menu options and end up setting up the timer or macro mode by mistake. I'm sure once you're used to it everything makes sense but its quite different to most digital cameras I've used.

My final gripe is that battery life is average at best and a spare Sony battery for this camera will set you back about £30. 3rd party manufacturers do make "compatible" batteries for half the cost but my camera complains about using them - it will power on and function fine for about 10 seconds before displaying an message that it needs a compatible battery. A little research on the web shows this is a common problem and Sony will just tell you to buy a genuine Sony battery.

So thats the complaints.. one the plus side :
- Face detection works well - I assumed it was just a gimmick but it really works
- Image quality is good as you'd expect (although not as good as I've seen with earlier cybershot models).
- Extremely compact.
- Offers something to both the point and shoot market and those looking for more control.
- 4x Optical zoom is good for such a small camera.
- The menu system allows you to create folders on the memory card to organise your photos which is quite handy when you have large memory cards

On balance it does what I want it to do - it just takes a bit of getting used to if you want to do anything other than snap away in "easy mode", and its a bit underhand of Sony to prevent the camera working with 3rd party batteries.

After being really impressed with the picture quality from a friends Sony Cybershot DSC-W100 I decided to take the plunge with a Sony camera. This model took my eye because of the black design. After a few months of playing around (being a casual photographer) I am very happy with my purchase.

For me, the major plus points are:
sharp high resolution images at 8.1MP
a hefty 4x optical zoom
powerful flash that gives you superb photos in poor light
user-friendly menu and navigation
great looking camera

The low points are:
the camera is smaller than I imagined, feeling awkward in my clumsy hands
relatively small LCD screen - at 2.5inch (my old Kodak camera had 3inch)
annoying music when you turn it on - I havent got round to turning the sound off

I also advise getting a decent case as the screen looks like it will scratch easily.

Only had this cam for a few days and its a great small smart does all you need. If you are thinkig of buying one you will need a 4 gig stick for it that will get you 1250 pics set at 8 mega pix. And also a spare battery np-fg1i is the model number and it will also tell you how long is left in mins

This is a nice camera to use. It comes with a fairly basic printed manual and a much more comprehensive one on the CD. The camera is very slim - easily pocketable - and the metal case makes it feel substantial. The battery/memory card door has a solid feel to it, unlike many of the flimsy plastic ones on other cameras . Importantly, the camera has a viewfinder which I consider essential, otherwise it is almost impossible to frame a shot on an LCD screen in bright sunlight. (Also it avoids the need to put on reading glasses to see the screen every time I want to take a photo!) Like most of the compact cameras that do have a viewfinder it only shows about two thirds of the final image, so if you use it to frame a shot correctly you will need to crop the outer parts of the photo later to get rid of the area you didn't take into account. There is no true manual setting but there are plenty of options to cater for most occasions. I found I had to set the colour to 'vivid' as the standard setting seemed, to my eye, a bit insipid and lifeless.

So why only four stars? Well, I've found the photos to be a bit soft, lacking in sharpness for my taste. This can be corrected in photo software on the computer or at the printing stage, but I'd have liked the images to be a bit crisper and cleaner straight out of the camera.