Labs

The DSC-W7 may not be the smallest compact camera, but whether you want a friendly point-and-click snapper or something with which to get creative, it should perform well. Sadly, its Video mode dropped a few frames in our tests, resulting in stuttered playback. Other than this, our only complaint is that there is no Delete All function for pictures stored in the memory.

Images

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are captured at breakneck speed. It can power up and take a shot with the flash in under two seconds and another one a second later. The auto-focus usually takes less than half a second, but is slower for nearby subjects. There's an optical viewfinder, but the 21/2" screen comes into its own when accessing the manual settings. Adjustment of shutter speed and aperture is immediately reflected in the brightness of the image and with exposure metering, and even flash setting is taken into account. There's no shutter or aperture priority, though - just automatic or fully manual.

Image quality was consistently excellent, capturing natural colours in all sorts of lighting conditions with more detail than any other camera on test. The DSC-W7 also excelled at flash photography, illuminating large scenes brightly and evenly. The video-recording problem is disappointing, but if video holds little interest for you then this is the camera to buy.