Sony DSC-TX7 10.2MP CMOS Digital Camera with 4x Zoom with Optical Steady Shot Image Stabilization and 3.5 inch Touch Screen LCD (Red)

Many times with electronics there are features that sound great but don't really live up to expectations. The TX7 has a very interesting feature list and the great thing is none are a let down, IMO. Everything just works. The low light ability of this camera is a real stand out. If you're like me and dislike photos taken with a flash you'll love handheld twilight. In this mode the camera takes 6 photos with different settings in less than a second and combines them into one that results in a low light picture that looks exactly like what you see with your eyes. Most of the time you'll probably have the camera in iAuto mode and it works excellent. The nice thing is it instantly shows the setting it's picked for you on the screen just by pointing the camera so you know it's working, and on that same point can manually change the settings if you want something different. Turn on iSCN+ while in iAUTO and it'll take 2 pics (instantly, with one press) with different settings and saves them both, so you almost always end up with a shot you like in auto mode. The panorama mode is very cool and fool proof. Then of course there is the HD video! 1920x1080 60i HD video with stereo audio. Video quality is excellent and wrapped up with everything else this camera offers makes it a great choice. With electronics something better always comes out after you buy a product, but I believe with this camera you can buy it now and use it for years to come without feeling compelled to upgrade because it has great features and great quality photo and video.

The features that made me buy this camera are: Zeiss Tesar Lens, Memory card type, HD video feature and the fact that it's a Sony and my previous experience with cyber shot and cam corders is amazing. All the features of this camera, as advertised are awesome, however I have encountered many flaws. 1. The Zeiss Tessar lens is very luminous and one of my favourite optics, however in this camera, a very high number of the images turn out distorted. This may be due to the camera's capability to go from macro to regular portrait to panoramic in a jiffy, however it is quite a let down to see this happen. Perhaps this can be avoided but I guess it will take some time to master. The luminosity of the lens makes it possible to shoot in the dimmest light and get great results. 2. Portability is delicious, with the light camera fitting in a pocket. 3. I picked it because it uses the same memory stick pro that other Sony products use -and I have way too many to switch to something else- however, when I tried to use a previously used mem stick, i got a message stating that the images would NOT be readable!! -not a good thing- 4. Its connectivity is very much a disaster. To download jpeg files, you can use a regular card reader, however, if you wish to download HD video, one MUST use the included cradle and program which is compatible ONLY WITH WINDOWS!?!?!?! If you wish to use a MAC, it is imperative that you have the latest version of IMOVIE or you get the Pro version of Quicktime. -Both at an extra expense- I work on Final Cut Pro and the camera is not compatible with last year's version. If you wish to use previous versions of these programs on a MAC, you must NOT use the HD feature -which is one of the very reasons to buy this camera-. In a world which is run on MAC to a very large scale, it is about time Sony would think of compatibility. The camera has a sort of 'blue-tooth' transfer device which works only with VAIO computers, which you can understand because they are trying to sell you an extra gadget, but there is no point in paying for extra bells and whistles which you can't actually benefit from. Sony ought to make a plug in or program to make it work with MAC without having to buy new expensive software. 5. Battery life turned out to be better than I expected, but it runs out quite fast if you review every picture or video you take. 6. I still don't see why this 'wonder' would go with less megapixels (10.2) than its sister the DSC-W220 which has 12 MP. However, when images are so distorted, MPs hardly matter. Overall, this is a good camera, but I regret having bought it instead of a less sophisticated but more compatible one. I believe -or rather hope- that future models would repair these flaws. Last comment is towards Amazon and not the product. I ordered this camera in RED and got it Blue! If you buy it, just go ahead and ENJOY IT!!!

I have been using the Sony DSC series since the DSC-S70, the camera that got me to quit shooting film. I have bought a few more in the series along the way, and this DSC-TX7 replaced a DSC-W290, which is an incredible value. I had always wanted something smaller and ventured into the smaller Sony models when the DSC-T1 came out but I was disappointed at how hard it was to shoot it unless you left it at full auto. This was one of the very last of the series that came without some kind of vibration reduction, and the camera was so small that it was close to impossible to get a decent shot unless you leaned against something for support. Since my W290 already had vibration reduction, I knew the technology worked and I decided to make the jump to the DSC-TX7 as soon as the TX9 was announced, which made its price drop by about $50. For less than what I was hoping to spend on the TX7 I was able to score the TX7, a microSD card (more on that later) and a fantastic Amazon Basics leather case. The good: It is simply incredible. If you can point a camera at something, you know everything that you need in order to take great photos. Just put it in intelligent auto mode and let it rip. The rest of the modes are just icing on the cake. This is a great camera to carry everywhere, the form factor is almost identical to a credit card, and it is not very thick. The Amazon Basics leather case that I got was dirt cheap ($8 or so) and it is simply perfect for this because I can keep it on my belt. If you are interested in more creative control, there is a lot of stuff that you can play with, but it will never come close to a real "prosumer" camera. This camera is mostly designed for women to carry in a small purse or for men to drop it in a pocket, so their main selling point is the size. That said, for something so small it is very powerful and versatile. If photography is your hobby and size is not the main concern, there is an equivalent to this camera in the DSC-W series that will match or surpass it while being cheaper. The not so good: It isn't perfect. The menus take a while to get used to, regardless of how much you are convinced that you know what you are doing. It took me days to realize that even if I switched it to AVCHD, it was not shooting at 1920x1080. It took me even longer to figure out how to consistently switch back and forth between AVCHD and MP4 and the different form factors. The low light performance is there, but don't expect it to be noise free. You get some and you lose some. That's the only stuff I can complain about. I really love this camera! As I mentioned before, I opted for a microSD card instead of a Sony memory stick. The reason I did this is because my last two cell phones have had a microSD slot, this means I can shoot content, move it to my cell phone and transmit it from there, instead of having to wait until I get to my laptop. The class 6 microSD card cost me a lot less than a what I paid for the Sony Memory Stick pro duo mark 2 of the same size that I bought for my DSC-W290. The panorama mode works. It is not perfect, but it works. The best performance I have seen so far is if the light changes are not drastic, otherwise it seems to be trying to compensate for it too much. It is one of the "wow" features of the camera, and everyone I have shown the panoramas was shocked to learn that these were generated on the spot by the camera, and not by manipulation in the computer. One of the things that weren't obvious in Sony's advertising is that there are two aspect ratios available to do this, if you opt for the most extreme ratio you can sweep a wider arc. You can also shoot panoramas vertically, which creates some cool illusions if you use this feature too close to a building. The speed shutter can consistently take 10 frames per second, and you are able to cancel it in the middle of the write phase. I took some bursts of a moving fan and the auto focus did not get confused by the blades, it focused on the protective rack and everything came into focus properly without any funny artifacts. The macro on this camera is AWESOME. I spent DAYS taking macros of whatever little thing landed on my desk, I simply couldn't stop. HD video: Don't bother shooting AVCHD with this camera if you are only interested in dumping your videos to Youtube. I experimented with this camera extensively, and I can't tell the difference between what I shot in the two AVCHD modes and what I shot in the two MP4 modes, so now I am only shooting 720p MP4. The highest mode for AVCHD is spectacular when you see it through the HDMI to a proper HDTV, but it is simply a waste of time to shoot it to send to Youtube unless you want your archival copy to be at the highest possible resolution and quality. Editing AVCHD can be a problem too, but there are enough workarounds posted online so it shouldn't be too terrible. I would not hesitate to recommend this camera to anyone that is interested in a similar feature set as the Sony DSC-W290 but with better video, better sensor, no protruding lens and the ability to use non-memory stick media. If you don't need SD, and protruding lenses aren't an issue, then you should be looking at the DSC-W290 or something more recent: the way Sony releases the DSC series, there are always one W camera and one TX camera that have really close specifications and capabilities.