Sony likes to talk about "worry-free digital photography," but what's behind the slogan? Does the DSC-W5 digital camera live up to it? To find out for myself, I reviewed the 'W5 over the course of several days. Here's what I found out.

First things first: The technology inside the DSC-W5

Sony's DSC-W5 is a reasonably compact 5-megapixel camera with 3X optical zoom, and a little something extra. The brain of the 'W5 is Sony's own image processing circuit, the Real Imaging Processor. This processor incorporates 13 million transistors on a single chip, and is a sophisticated piece of engineering for sure. Its primary job is to calculate focus, exposure, and white balance, while also converting the image data into your desired file format after you take a shot. The speed and accuracy with which the processor performs these complex functions contributes to the quality of the image, of course, but it also shapes the quality of your user experience. Sony promises two big benefits here:

• A higher percentage of good shots. With a digital camera, you can easily discard the shots that are out of focus, underexposed or off-color. Nothing is wasted — except the chance to capture a special memory. You want a camera that catches more keepers.
• A big reduction in shutter lag, the Achilles' heel of most compact digital cameras. The 'W5 is ready to shoot right away when you turn it on. It shoots quickly after you press the shutter release. And it's quickly ready for the next shot.

A look at the basic design

The 'W5's 2.5" LCD is huge compared to the smaller 1.5" or 1.8" screens on most digital cameras, making it much easier to frame shots and review images. It also makes the menu screens and on-screen status indicators easier to read. There's also an optical viewfinder, which comes in handy when it's too bright outside to see the LCD screen clearly. (You can brighten up the LCD for use in bright daylight, but the downside is that it uses more battery power than the normal and dark settings.)

Even with such a large screen, the camera remains fairly compact and surprisingly comfortable in your hand. And the eight buttons on back are spaced adequately and easy enough to manipulate for all but extra-large hands.

Once I'd gotten myself familiar with what the camera could do and how it felt in my hand, it was time to test it out. So I took the 'W5 to a youth soccer game. I've never had much luck shooting sports with compact digital cameras, and I was skeptical. The 'W5 made a believer out me.

The DSC-W5 did a good job capturing action shots of this soccer game.

In the field

Before kickoff, I set the camera's autofocus mode to Monitor and turned off the flash. In Monitor mode, the camera is continuously focusing. You don't have to push the shutter button halfway down. Just compose your shot and fire away.

During the game I got good shots in both the Auto mode and the Program Auto mode. In Program Auto mode, the shutter speed and aperture are set automatically, but you can adjust other parameters. I set the white balance for bright sunlight, metering and focus modes to Center, and the ISO to 100.

I started to experiment with Manual mode, to see what results I could get by purposely setting a fast shutter speed. I never quite got the exposure right. However, given a little more time, I'm sure I could have nailed it. To help you set the correct exposure, the camera includes a live histogram, which shows the concentration of pixels at each light value. The histogram is cool, but a fast-shutter scene mode for sports would be more useful. Sony offers a sports mode on some of its other cameras. Why not the 'W5?

I took about 100 shots before the game was over, and the shutter lagged on me just twice. The vast majority of the shots were focused as intended, and most were nicely exposed. Of course, they weren't all print-worthy. Shooting sports action tends to be hit or miss — you have to squeeze off a lot of shots to get a few compelling ones.

Zoom

With a sport like soccer that's played on a big field, you're handicapped if you don't have a telephoto lens. The 'W5's 3X optical zoom range limited my best opportunities to moments when the action came close to my sideline vantage point. I tried turning the image size down to 3 megapixels, so I could take advantage of the Smart Zoom feature, but it only helped a little.

What is Smart Zoom? It's a form of digital zoom that extends the camera's zoom range beyond its optical zoom range of 3X. Unlike other digital zoom circuits, there is no loss of image quality. However, Smart Zoom's maximum zoom scale depends upon the image size setting. You can't use it at all at the top image size of 5 megapixels. If you set it at the lowest image size setting, you get the maximum Smart Zoom of 4X, for a total zoom of 12X.

The controls are comfortable to use.

Helpful controls

You get plenty of control over your photos, and the good people at Sony have made it easy to access the camera's many functions. The DSC-W5 layers the bulk of its commands in menus that you navigate on-screen. Only the most essential functions merit a back-panel button:

• A 3-way button turns the status indicators off at the first press. A second press turns off the LCD screen. A third press turns the screen and status indicators back on.
• Menu on/off
• The bottom button adjusts image size when the camera is in shooting mode and deletes shots when it's in viewing mode.
• Four wedge-shaped buttons arrayed around a round one give you up/down, left/right and select options while you are navigating the menus. While you are shooting the same buttons let you toggle through the flash settings, select macro mode, activate the timer, and quickly view the last shot taken.

"Candle" mode captured the atmosphere of a candlelit scene.

The top includes the power button, the shutter release, and the mode dial. The mode dial lets you select the viewing mode, movie mode (which lets you shoot surprisingly good movie clips), and 10 still photography modes:

• Auto mode (green camera icon). This is what most people will use most of the time. Just point and shoot.
• Program auto mode. Automatically adjusts the exposure, but lets you go into the menus and manually adjust the metering type, white balance mode (incandescent, fluorescent, sunlight, clouds), ISO film speed equivalence, flash level and several other parameters.
• Manual mode lets you set the exposure manually and adjust all of the other parameters.
• Seven scene modes, which are detailed below.

Shooting movies

Movie clips are recorded in MPEG1 format at camcorder quality in fine mode. Clips can be as long as your Memory Stick will allow (more than 12 minutes in fine mode on a 1GB card). There is also a mail mode (160 x 112) for recording lower quality clips that can be e-mailed. You can also record movies in macro mode. You can divide movies in two, using cue and review controls to set your division point. This makes your movies more presentable, of course, but it also lets you free up memory space by deleting portions of videos that you don't want.

Shooting in "burst" modes

In regular Burst Mode, you can shoot images until the maximum number of images is shot when you press and hold the shutter button. The maximum number of images shot continuously depends on the image size and image quality settings.

Memory

This camera has 32 MB of internal memory. It's best to think of it as a reserve tank, should you fill up your Memory Stick®. The DSC-W5 doesn't come with a Memory Stick, but it will accept almost any variety of Memory Stick. You'll want to purchase at least one stick, because the internal memory will only hold about 12 shots at the highest image quality setting.

Lens

The Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens has a focal length of 7.9mm to 23.7mm, which is equivalent to 38mm to 114mm in 35mm photography.The camera has a 5-area multi-point autofocus. The camera calculates the distance in five areas to the top, bottom, left, right and in the center of the image. This is helpful when your subject is not centered in the frame. You can also choose Center AF, which focuses only on the subject framed in the AF range finder in the center of the image.

You get three autofocus Modes:

• Single AF: This mode is good for shooting stationary subjects.
• Monitor AF: This mode shortens the time needed for focusing. The camera continuously adjusts the focus.
• AF Illuminator: The AF (auto focus) Illuminator briefly provides fill light to focus more easily on a nearby subject in dark surroundings.

There's also a macro focus mode, for capturing extreme close-ups. I used the macro focus mode to catch this delicate daffodil. With the zoom set fully wide, the camera can focus on objects that are less than 3 inches from the lens.

Macro mode made this detailed daffodil close-up possible.

Outstanding battery life

Sony claims that the Real Imaging Processor consumes up to 70 percent less power than the off-the-shelf processors used in many other cameras. This means you get hundreds of shots before you have to recharge the DSC-W5's included "AA" NiMH batteries (you can also use regular alkaline batteries in a pinch). The included batteries take approximately 6 hours to fully charge.

Viewing your shots

You can view your shots on the camera's screen or use the included adapter to view them on a TV screen. In addition to viewing images one-by-one in full screen, you can view multiple images at once in the index mode. This feature lets you to display nine or sixteen images at a time, allowing you to easily find the image you want and select it for full-screen display.

The Slide Show function lets you play back images one after the other. The interval between the pictures can be adjusted, allowing you to choose 3, 5, 10, and 30 seconds or 1 minute.You can enlarge a recorded still image up to five times the size of the original image. You can also record the enlarged item as a new file. To select the area to be enlarged, you can move the enlargement "frame" up/down/left/right with the arrow buttons, and adjust the zoom with the W/T button.

Printer-friendly features

Using the supplied USB cable, you can connect this camera directly to any PictBridge-compliant printer and make prints.The DSC-W5 conforms to Exif Print, a worldwide standard. Camera settings (such as exposure mode, white balance, exposure time) and scene data are recorded to the image file when it is captured. Printers compatible with Exif Print are able to use this information to automatically "correct" your images and make better-looking prints.

Conclusion

Using this camera gave me a good sense of its strong points. Here's how I would sum this camera up:

Who's it for?

Beginning and mid-level shooters who want a compact camera with plenty of versatility. It also makes a great second camera for an advanced photographer.

Highlights

• Impressive 2.5" LCD viewscreen makes framing shots and reviewing pictures easy.
• Real Imaging Processor produces remarkably fast response, minimizing shutter lag and maximizing battery life.
• Flash-based tutorial on included CD-ROM that is much easier to learn from than the owner's manual.

Concerns

• No sports (fast shutter) scene mode.