Digital Trends

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-S600

February 9th, 2006 | by David Elrich

Performance

The Cybershot DSC-S600 is good to go in less than two seconds similar to new digicams from better brands. Initially shooting in Auto indoors and out gave an excellent sense of the LCD's quality. It was quite good, working well in dark rooms as well as strong light. Still I was happy to have the viewfinder in really bright sunshine. Sony may have cut the size but the real-world results were more than acceptable.

Shot-to-shot times were also very fast with very little shutter lag. In some instances the shutter seemed a bit too sensitive, firing quickly before I thought the focusing process was complete. When I reviewed the images, I realized the camera simply focuses very rapidly and this wasn't a fault.

One thing I dearly missed is Sony's to-the-minute battery readout found on its lithium-ion based cameras. Here it was just a shaded battery. On the plus side, AAs are readily available anywhere in case you run out of juice at the worst moment. I found standard alkalines gave it up before the rated 160 shots. It's recommended you use NiMH rechargeables for Mother Earth's sake and for almost three-times the life of standard AAs.

I took a variety of shots outdoors in the crisp winter air as well as some indoor still life images using the Auto settings, scene modes and the High Sensitivity setting using a number of ISO options (1000 is the fastest). If you're wondering how was digital noise at 1000 I'll quickly state it was pretty terrible. I hadn't seen such a swirl of dots since I marveled at some Pointillism-style paintings of Georges Seurat. However, the noise at 400 was under control but still noticeable. Sony and other manufacturers are trying to tame the noise beast in compact point-and-shoot digicams and are making some headway but there's no panacea this side of a D-SLR. Focusing was very fast with no grabbing but there was some slight delay for flash shots as the AF Illuminator did its thing (it's worth the wait).

Using the Cybershot Viewer software I quickly download images to my PC (it's USB 2.0 Hi-Speed). This software is radically improved compared to the Picture Package with a simple user interface and storage options for your shots. In default they are downloaded to a folder with the day's date. Then if you want to look for images by date you can go to calendar view. The software doesn't provide all the tweaks of Photoshop Elements but you can do the basics such as Auto correction and you can adjust brightness, sharpness, saturation, crop and remove red-eye, about all the target buyer of this camera would want to deal with. I would like to see an auto delete function of images on the card once the download is successful. Perhaps in Version 1.01...

Prints were made with a Canon MP780 with no editing done to the files. I made a number of 8.5x11s on glossy paper (Canon Photo Paper Pro) then checked the results. Unfortunately quality was uneven. Some of the shots, particularly those taken indoors with the flash were spot on. Colors were very accurate and not too over-sharpened. However, when I took shots of the same subject (an art pottery vase) using available light at different ISOs, the colors were different from setting to setting (ISO 200, 400, 800, 1000). This was very surprising as I typically like the output of Sony cameras. Yet when I shot in straight Auto, the images were just right of the various still life subjects and furry cats.

Results outdoors were similar. Shooting in Auto, the camera worked just fine, shooting in Program while adjusting ISO, quality was uneven. While shooting outside I did miss the telephoto close-ups but I'll give that up for the 31mm wide angle view anytime.

Image Courtesy of Sony