Photography News - The latest digital photography hardware and software news, reviews, articles, tips, techniques and more!

“The H3 is essentially a long-zoom point and shoot camera that performs well as long as you let it do its thing in Auto mode. Once you develop an ambition to set your own shooting parameters things get a bit more tricky. This is partly because some manual settings are simply not available, but also due to the fact that changing the settings that are actually there can be a fairly time-consuming process. This is owed to the slightly counter-intuitive menus and user interface in general. The lack of a manual White Balance option is particularly unusual on a modern digital camera. It is even more painful if the white balance presets are not particularly reliable (as we experienced in our studio tests). The H3 does not offer Aperture or Shutter Speed Priority modes although there is a fully manual ‘M’ mode. But, with only 2 possible aperture settings at a given focal length, its use is seriously limited.”

Sony has announced the HDMS-S1D Digital Photo Album for shutterbugs who want to archive, organize and enjoy slideshows of their digital photos. This compact device features an 80GB hard drive, connects to a high definition television via HDMI and showcases up to 50,000 high resolution photos.

The new digital photo album offers several methods for importing photos, including multiple flash memory card formats, CD, DVD, USB or Ethernet. Once imported, photo collections can be managed with the supplied remote control and the device’s intuitive interface.

Photos can be organized by date, special occasions such as birthdays and travel (using pre-selected icons), or into as many as 3,000 different photo albums– enough for every major family milestone. The digital photo album also provides the ability to review, edit, rotate, delete and arrange photos for a slideshow or digital scrapbooking with Sony’s x-Application® features.

So then, the W80 is a camera that is capable of producing surprisingly good results in good light at ISO 100 and is perfectly usable at ISO 400-800 in low light if you don’t want big prints (the church interiors in the samples gallery, for example, are better than I expected), but a camera that falls down in what I consider to be one of the most important areas for a camera such as this; pictures of people indoors in low light - with or without flash. If you’re after a ‘walk around’ camera for scenery then it’s not a bad buy for $200-ish, but if you actually have friends and family, and are still awake taking pictures after sunset it’s hard to wholeheartedly recommend it when there are so many better alternatives out there.

Sony is expanding its family of CompactFlash® cards with two new 300x high-speed memory cards designed for high-end photographers requiring fast processing times. These high-speed cards are targeted towards users of digital single-lens reflex cameras, especially the new α(Alpha) DSLR- A700 model.

The Alpha A700 is the highly anticipated second DSLR from Sony and the first to be entirely designed by Sony itself. Announced in September 2007 it fills a gap above the original A100 body, targeting serious enthusiasts and semi-pro photographers with higher resolution and more powerful features.

Teaming great looks and superb imaging performance with a powerful 6x zoom lens, the Cyber-shot S800 opens up the exciting world of digital photography to everyone. Weighing just 185g (without battery and media), the beautifully compact S800 stands out from the crowd thanks to its sleek lines and luxurious all-metal body. It’s also incredibly easy to use, even if you’ve never picked up a digital camera before.

Pulling you closer to the action, the 6x optical zoom lens offers the highest magnification ever from a compact Cyber-shot model – boosted further still to 12x with digital zoom. In macro mode it’s possible to focus right down to 2cm for fantastic close-up views of any subject.