Product Reviews

Compact digital cameras have become increasingly multi-coloured over the past year, but metallic green sets a new standard for radical styling. Whether you go for green, pink or a more demure black, white or blue finish, the DSC-T2 looks gorgeous. The sliding lens cover doubles as a power switch and a bare minimum of buttons interrupt the camera's elegant curves.

All the camera's functions except shutter release, zoom and playback are accessed through the 2.7in touch screen. Some touch screens can slow a camera down, but this one is responsive and accurate, and the interface exploits it well. Key photographic controls line the edge of the screen, and adjusting them simply involves pressing them to call up a list of options. The spot focus point is set simply by touching the screen. Image stabilisation is built in to counteract camera shake, although its advantage is offset by the f/3.5 maximum aperture. This lets in less light than the lenses on other cameras, so longer shutter speeds are necessary more often.

The most startling feature is the 4GB of built-in memory - enough for 1,300 shots at maximum quality. This makes the card slot largely redundant, especially as it isn't possible to record directly to a memory card. Saved images can be copied to a card, though, and the memory adds around £25 to the value of the camera. However, it appears that this memory is a performance bottleneck. Continuous shooting set off at an impressive 1.6 frames per second (fps) but fell to 0.9fps after just eight shots. Otherwise, performance is excellent, with extremely fast focusing times helping to achieve an average of 1.5 seconds

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between shots. Battery life is just about acceptable at 302 shots.

Face detection is almost ubiquitous in cameras these days, but the DSC-T2's implementation is one of the best we have seen. The camera tracks multiple faces quickly, resulting in excellent exposures when shooting against dark or bright backgrounds. However, face detection isn't nearly as exciting as smile detection. After selecting this scene preset and pressing the shutter button, the camera waits for your subject to smile before taking a picture. If you're shooting a group of people, you can touch the screen to determine which one the camera should keep an eye on. It recognised only huge toothy grins and maniacal grimaces, and not subtler smiles, and there was a delay of anything up to a second, which may be too slow if you're trying to capture a smile from a reluctant subject. However, smile detection works well as an alternative to the self-timer function, and the novelty factor alone should ensure that you end up with lots of grinning mugshots.

It's great to see a premium compact camera that doesn't have a massive megapixel rating just for the sake of marketing. However, the DSC-T2's photos aren't as sharp as those from other 8-megapixel cameras. It appears that Sony uses some sophisticated digital sharpening to improve the perceived detail in shots of subjects without complex textures, but hair, skin and other textures reveal the camera's limitations. This is disappointing, because images are otherwise excellent. Photos were expertly exposed, with natural-looking white balance under artificial lighting. Low-light shots looked a little mottled due to struggling noise reduction, but ISO 1600 shots looked surprisingly smooth - albeit with an even greater loss of detail. High-contrast scenes were handled well, although clipped highlights tended to have a halo of yellow around them. Casual users are unlikely to spot most of these issues, but the lack of detail is harder to ignore.

Ultimately, the DSC-T2 is a camera for gadget lovers rather than photographers, but that's not necessarily a criticism. Models costing half as much offer better image quality, but the DSC-T2 is such fun to use that it still deserves its three-star rating.