Sony CyberShot DSC-S60 Review

Overall Rating

Reasonably small but solid.

Uses 2 ordinary NiMH (Nickel-Metal Hydride) or alkaline AA cells, so no dependency on an expensive proprietary battery and special charger. Exceptional battery life with NiMH batteries (never tried alkaline).

Fast start-up and shot-to-shot times.

Bright clear 2 inch LCD screen.

Excellent straightforward intuitive menu system, and the controls are placed exactly where a right-handed person needs them to be.

Focus illuminator allowing photography of reasonably close subjects, even in total darkness.

Fairly powerful flash.

Manual exposure control, as well as time/date imprinting on images available.

Excellent auto-focus and image quality from Carl Zeiss optics to consistently produce very sharp natural photos.

Optional histogram display to assist exposure adjustment if required (usually not).

Fast USB 2.0 PC connection.

It records pretty high quality movies with sound when fitted with a Memory Stick Pro.

The actual photos taken are significantly wider and taller than what shows in the optical viewfinder. It's better to rely on the LCD screen to frame a picture.

There's a slight tendency for bluish fringes to appear around very bright objects (e.g. sunlight reflecting from chrome surfaces), but in practice it's hardly ever noticeable.

In the middle of 2005, my Olympus C-350 digital camera (reviewed here a long time ago) started forgetting the time, date and file numbers; plus it had a couple of irritating traits from the start.

I did a lot of net searching for a similar small digital camera to replace it, and finally found consistently good reviews of the Sony CyberShot DSC-S60. Sample pictures convinced me that this was the one to get.

All I can say is that the DSC-S60 has exceeded all my expectations. It's basically a point-'n-shoot camera, but with (only slightly limited) manual control capability for those who are interested in using it, like me. I've taken some stunning fireworks photo's with it. OK, so the macro mode won't let you get close enough to make a ladybug fill the frame, but it takes terrific close-up photo's of flowers! The bottom line is that it consistently takes very sharp, very natural, well-exposed photo's, which look fantastic when printed out by a photo lab, which has one of those Fuji Frontier photo printers. In fact I was so impressed by the Sony DSC-S60, that within 6 weeks I bought a Sony DSC-H1 camera for taking serious zoom and macro photo's with. The rest of the time I use the DSC-S60 which is always with me, and it produces photo's indistinguishable from those taken by the DSC-H1.

I love this camera and I'd recommend it to anyone.