Sony DSC-T7

Reviewed October 2005

Image Quality

The salient features of the Sony DSC-T7 are its remarkably thin shape, its extremely compact size, its 5-megapixel resolution, and the fact that it is equipped with a 2.5-inch LCD monitor. All of which make for an interesting product.

The thinness and compactness of the design come at a price, however: places to hold the camera are few, and fingers with no resting place easily gravitate towards the lens, getting in the way of the image. The T7 is a camera that requires a bit of time to get used to.

Remarkably, the tiny lenses that make up the zoom lens are able to produce a sharp image from corner to corner. Only a little bit of barrel distortion can be observed with images captured at the widest angle, as can a bit of pincushion with those captured at the telephoto end. But the distortion is slight, and is only occasionally noticeable when the subject is relatively close and contains vertical or horizontal elements that happen to be aligned near the edges of the frame.

Likewise, a faint chromatic aberration can be discerned on the borders of image elements that are very contrasted, but overall, it too is well-corrected and often undetectable.

The DSC-T7 is a fully automatic camera when it comes to the selection of the shutter speed and aperture. In use however, it becomes apparent that the camera is programmed to use as large an aperture as possible and the lowest sensitivity to minimize noise.

Still, the T7 is relatively sensitive to noise and some can be detected in shadows in images captured at 64 ISO, and occasionally in areas of continuous colour.

While images are perfectly useable up to 200 ISO, noise increases gradually as of 100 ISO and it is probably best to limit the use of higher ISO settings to when the ambient light is relatively soft and obtaining as high a shutter speed as possible is necessary to capture the photo.

Generally, the colours the T7 yields are true to life and pleasantly saturated. With standard and uniform light sources the Auto white balance is reliable, and it is only when there are mixed lighting sources that it becomes less accurate.

The tiny built-in flash provides good lighting coverage, even at the wide angle end of the zoom. However its reach is short and to increase it the sensitivity it needs to be set to Auto, and the camera allowed to increase the sensitivity to improve the effectiveness of the flash. Regrettably, at the full magnification of the zoom, CCD sensitivity is often as high as 320 ISO and while this results in a brighter image, it is also noisier.

On the other hand, under good lighting conditions — outdoors under sunshine for instance — the DSC-T7 yields very good images.

Set to the Fine image quality, the compression applied to the photos is reasonable (in the order of 6:1) and does not introduce artefacts. Moreover, images retain a good level of detail, and are up to expectations for a 5-megapixel JPEG image. And it is only with high ISO images that contain more noise that the compression process starts to soften the level of detail.

Sony's DSC-T7 should please those that appreciate the miniaturization afforded by digital cameras, and it deserves to find a home in purses and briefcases, making it possible for owners to capture images at a moment's notice.