Case is expensive
It really is a small camera. Annoying Sony make a great hard case for it, but it costs £42 !!!.
The cheapest I found if for was £205 with 2 year guarantee at http://www.camerabox.co.uk w I have no link to them
Sony is renowned for its stylish compacts, and the DSC-WX1 is no exception. It not only looks smart, but contains some interesting technology too. At around £300, the DSC-WX1 is aimed at the top-end of the compact market, but do its features and performance justify the price? Sony Cybershot DSC-WX1 Broaden your horizons with …
The official manufacturer's case (which fits perfectly) is always expensive- and usually decent. That said, if it seems like overkill, you can always look at the various little neoprene cases out there- take the camera to an actual meatspace camera shop to see if it fits, though- save your sanity.
Oh, and Crumpler make some really nice small device cases too- which are sturdy and neat.
you were one of those who didn't think the Amstrad PCW using wierdo 3.0" flippy disks was so much of a problem, when all the rest of the world was transitioning from 5.25 (let's say... smartmedia) to 3.5" (SD)? Ironically the latter being a Sony invention.
Apart from that, they've got previous, unfortunately. World + dog using cassette, CDR, DAT or DCC, before moving on to HDD/flash-based MP3? Sony thinks, hmm ... let's try Minidisc. Then MDLP. I even fell for that one for a while. Then the PSP discs... oh dear.
Interoperability is key, that's why it's been so hard and taken so long to ALMOST kill 3.5 floppies and tape - and VHS - yet, I still keep a small emergency stock of each, and appropriate kit, as they may turn up useful for communicating stuff to luddites, such is their ubiquity and endurance. I'll probably do the same for SD cards when the time comes that they become supposedly obsolete in the eyes of the Braying Hordes That Be.
(yet, no-one uses 8-track, or Beta, or 3-inch discs, or MD any more, and I won't be bothered about keeping any Memory Stick remnants when I've finally packed on my last old Sony phone)
So you're saying everyone MUST use an SD card... because you have a few laying around?
I'm fairly sure I remember various types of film for various types of camera. There wasn't the same amout of bitching going on back then, so I don't see why that should make a difference now.
Oh wait, it's made by Sony. Of course.
Yes, of course. Sony made the only MP3 player that didn't play MP3s too. Are you going to tell me I took mine back to the shop because I like bitching about Sony?
No, my friend, I bitch about Sony because they deserve it: they want to bully the world into doing things their way. Well they may have a few gimps who like it, but the rest of us who have a choice in cameras, music players, laptops, PDAs and phones will go with the solution that (and I repeat for emphasis) everyone else uses.
Actually, you don't usually need the adapter to plug the MS Duo card into a full-sized MS slot on card readers, say: you just need to make sure it's central so the pins line up. Having said that, I have come across some on those photo machines which are especially deep and that poses a problem... Asleep yet?
"This is a pain if you simply want to delete your last shot or show someone a shot you’ve just taken."
Isn't that what the play button is for? I have an old W150 and pressing that after a shot shows you what you just taken. On page 2, the image of the back shows this button on this camera.
It's not a big deal to me, but Sony announced at CES this year they will be using SD slots on new stuff. But what PC card reader doesn't have a MS card reader slot?
"But what PC card reader doesn't have a MS card reader slot?"
My camera doesn't have an MS card reader. So I can't re-use SD cards there. And my laptop has an SD card reader built in, but won't read MS cards. And I have an SD card with a USB snap out tab on it so I don't need a reader. Never seen an MS card that can do that.
Sony needs to stop attempting to bully customers, even the gimps commenting here who apparently enjoy being dominated.
No card supplied? Good. How many people use the tiny capacity card that manufacturers include with their products anyway? It just ends up at the bottom of a drawer. May as well keep the price down by not providing customers with something utterly worthless.
Can't argue about the Memory Stick though. I certainly won't be buying any product that doesn't support SD.
Well, I "don't".... but I _have_. It's a useful thing to test the camera with if it's been bought as a present and the gifter forgot to get a proper card to go with. Or, given the small size and the free-ness, to carry with you as a very much emergency spare (16mb will get you a reasonable number of medium-compression 2mpx images, which do fine for 6x4 prints). Plus if you're then reduced to using the internal memory as a last resort backup, once you've emptied the tiny card, you can use it to retrieve the images stored in the camera without needing a cable.
It's of no practical everyday use if you are, like me, largely using 2 and 4Gb'ers with an old 512 as a running spare, but when they're the size and thickness of a single square of chocolate even when in their carry cases (as are the micro/mini SD converters for the card usually kept in the phone), there's not much reason to not carry it along.
Previously a fan of Cybershots but noticing they're all rather noisy these days - not sure why, and it's the most obvious thing from the sample shots regardless of ISO setting.
However to complain about MS Pro Duo slots - who cares - is this 1999?? I could argue that I've got a bunch of XD memory cards from my Olympus. I don't, but I could. I have a stack of MS Pro Duo cards, not only for PSP, but phone and past cameras.
Bloody Sony keep letting suits shoot them in the feet. Did they not learn anything by losing most of the walkman market share in the era of mp3 players?
Every time you force a special magic Sony format on people, it's a massive turnoff. Memory stick=instant fail. It matters less when there's no alternative (like with the PSP), but there are rather a lot of consumer-grade compact digitals out there, so it's harder to get away with.
Shame, really. It has some good points. I'd prefer manual control and shooting in raw (and before any dillhole chimes in that you don't get that on compacts, both my pocket-sized compacts have manual control and shoot raw). However, even without those, it would be an OK device for a lot of casual users.
However, dearest darling Sony, quit it with the bloody Memory Stick already. I was bored of that on my old Transmeta-based Vaio, years ago, it's getting old now.
Personally I don't care, MS is faster than SD anyway, and pretty much everything I have, has a MS slot.
Sony hating is so 2006...
Why not bitch at Toshiba and Microsoft for creating proprietary formats? (HD DVD)? Wasn't SDcard proprietary in the past? (it still is), when is the point at which it does not become?
The placement of the "smile" button in favour over anything photographically useful such as exposure compensation should tell you which market this model is aimed at. So no surprise that there is no raw capture mode or manual controls.
And 4GByte MS Pro Duo card can be bought for less than £20. That is cheaper than most of the suitable camera cases. Stop your whining!
SD isn't proprietary - anyone can license the spec and use it. Ditto HD DVD while it was still worth doing so.
I have a Sony camera that uses Memory Stick - every other gadget I use has an SD card slot. MS only works if you buy Sony kit and no one else's.
Sony loving is so 1982...
Exposure only going up to 2 seconds?
Auto-panorama - a fantastic tool I wish I had, but... only 256 degrees? Could they not afford to upgrade their architecture to 16-bit, then? A 390-degree one (so you can do a full circle pan and have a little bit left for seamless overlap) surely wouldn't have been impossible?
Plus all the other similar niggles. Gnngh.
And MS Pro Duo. Please. That's such a wierd compromise format... last time I saw it was in my old K750 from about 5 years ago. Make it a proper shortie card, like MiniSD or XD, if you're not going to use the full-fat version.
There is a common negative tone to Sony today.
I too find their products expensive, but when comparing their build quality and style, I have purchased some of their products.
* Vaio S type laptop - 2 years ago - no faults yet
* Sony Photo Frame - Picture was better than the others
* Sony Walkman - Construction was better than others
Price and MS:
300 Pound certainly does seem expensive here, but i guarantee the real price will be a lot cheaper. The price of MS isnt really any problem, so just spend and buy a 2Gb MS card.
Future - SD:
The new model Cyber-shots here in Japan are already SD / MS duo, so this problem will be good and hopefully address most of the complaints in this forum.
Noise:
From other reviews on this camera most commented on the low noise from this sensor compared to other models in the range to I think this is a bit unwarranted...?