I bought the Sony CyberShot DSC-P71 camera back in June of 2002. It has been a good camera and has withstood the daily use/abuse well. The only problems I have had with the camera is the lens cover which has broken and had to be removed from the camera, so now I have had to get good at cleaning the lense. I believe this camera is good for a beginner but if you are a professional or someone who is serious about their photographs, I must say to look elsewhere. The camera has a very slow shutter speed so it's not good at taking "action" photographs. Also, my photographs at times come out grainy, (if anyone can advise on how to get around grainy pics, please advise). The size of the camera makes it great to take on vacations. I can stick it in my pockets or backpack and have it out and ready in a minutes notice. Overall, it is simply a "good" camera, not a great one.

I love this Sony CyberShot DSC-P71 Digital camera for the quality of the pictures at a decent resolution.

The default 16Mb stick is just pointless unless you only want 640x480 pics in which case you can save a few. But load up with a couple of 128Mb sticks and you can't go wrong.

My advice though it to have a couple of sets of spare batteries (Sony ones cost a fortune, better quality replacements can be had from Dixons and the like with fast rechargers etc.) as mine has a life of its own when it comes to battery life. One set will take 100 pics+, another will be at half power by the time I switch it on (I guess that could be a battery fault).

All in all I think its great.

Well i`ve owned this Sony DSC-P71 now for well over a year,and now im used to it i must say it can perform some the most proffesional pictures ive ever taken,and i have owned a 35mm slr for well over 15yrs now.Trust me it is a fantastic point and shoot, just leave it in auto and the results are amazing.Also if you want to get a little creative you can dont get me wrong not as creative as you can with an SLR but still some pretty neat stuff eg..portrait,and my favourate type of shot close-up flower pics the macro system is very good it stays focused up to 3-4 cm away not bad for a digital camera.My advice is buy it if it has to have a down side then i think a faster shutter speed would have been nice for fast wildlife or sports pics but still for £200 what do you want ..the earth? buy it

I bought the DSCP71 for like 6 months now, and despite my excitment on buying my first digital camera, i am slowly getting bored with it.

It seems that everytime i take a photo, the noise factor is so high it's impossible for me to take a clear, crisp picture. The objects are always blurry at close up viewing on computers and the movie does not record sound! How disappointing!

If anyone can give me some tips on how i can improve my photographic technique, all comments are welcomed. Thanks.

Overall I like the Sony DSC-P71 digital camera. It is small enough to be easy to carry. Once the software issues were resolved it seems to be working fine with my pc.

I have had occasional problems with underexposure in difficult conditions, where my SLR wouldn't make any mistakes. The red eye reduction is not always very good. There have been occasional focussing problems as well, where the picture has not been pin-sharp. The LCD viewer is slightly small, but shouldn't be a problem until I get older. Other than that, it's extremely easy to use and produces fantastic pictures considering its low cost. Strongly recommended.

I use mine for fun and a little bit of business. I love it's ease of use and with the 128Mb stick I can shoot all day on the highest res. Works beautifully with Mac OSX and iPhoto. Manual adjustments of exposure, white balance etc. are all there, but I've hardly ever had to use them. The highest quality video is limited to 15 sec. no audio, but when clipped together in iMovie and music overlaid, you'd never miss it. Macro is great - I can 'scan' an A4 page with enough resolution to run it through OCR! Superb for quick record taking. Would recommend to anyone wanting 'almost' 35mm SLR quality without spending the big bucks.

This Sony DCSC-P71 is my first digital camera. i am amazed. i thought only professionals could take pictures so fine. no problem with red eye or highbackground light. focus features work great. great colors. don't know why anyone would fault this camera.

I have had the Sony DSC p71 digital camera for several weeks now. It really is a great camera for me - i am really happy with this camera.
Only the memory stick is a little low on memory for this resolution. My advice: when you buy the cam also buy a greater mem.stick and a pair of batteries to go with it..

The Sony DSC-P71 Cybershot digital camera is a very good price/quality. I doubt there is a better priced camera with the same quality and options.

The Sony DSC-P71 Cybershot digital camera has 3.2 MPix, but picture quality is still low. Software takes up lot of space on PC, and its not terribly good. Ok if you only want to see images on a PC, but photo reprodcution is not high quality (low res.).