I'm thinking of buying a Sony Cybershot DSC N2 camera. Has anyone used one? What do you think?

Question

I want a compact camera with 10 mp so that I can crop and still have quality results. Also like the idea of being able to focus by touching the LCD screen. How does that work?

Answer 1

i had the dsc n1. basically the same. i thought it was nice with the 3 inch screen. i had it for a couple months before i got it stolen. i replaced it with a canon sd800is. i liked the size of the sony much better but the format of the movie mode wasn't compatible with my editing software. when i made a little compilation of a vacation also using movie clips from a friend's canon. the image quality was so grainy with the sony while the canon was clear. one more thing. i noticed that when i had the sony, i had to edit all the pics in photoshop because they came out too dark. hardly any editing with the canon. the canon doesn't have isn't fully manual. but i realized i never really used it with the sony.

Answer 2

I have worked in the digital camera department of a store for over two years and have trained everyone in the dept. We carry this camera. It is a good camera and the 10mp is nice. Here is my view on it though...The touch screen may be nice, but can be a hassle. The main purpose of the touch screen is to do editing on the camera (basically, write on a picture and add little color star or heart stamps...). The screen is large which is nice but it will also drain your battery faster. It does NOT have a viewfinder, which is a nice thing to have in case you are outside in daylight and there is a glare on the LCD screen. Also, if you have a low battery warning, by using the viewfinder and turning off the LCD screen, you can still take plenty of pictures. Sony cameras are good but Canon's optics are better. If you dont mind a suggestion, I would reccommend the Canon SD900. It is small, has a decent size screen and a viewfinder. Also, Canon uses an SD memory card which is more common. It is used in every digital camera except for high end SLRs, Sony, Fuji and Olympus. Sony has their own proprietary memory card, the Memory Stick Pro Duo. They constantly change the memory card so more than likely a few years down the line it may be harder to find and/or if you buy a new camera you wont be able to use the memory card because it will be obselete. Canon also has neat features such as Color Accent where you make everything black and white except for one color and Color Swap, where you switch the colors in the picture. They are fun features and not hard to do. It saves you the time of messing around with photoshop too! Also, if you will be doing any action shots of kids, pets, sports, or anything where you will be doing continuous shooting, Canon is faster with its 3fps (frames per second). If you are going to be taking those type of shots, you will probably want to think about an Ultra II memory card (made by SanDisk) because it is 9x faster than the regular memory card. What this does for you is saves the picture to the memory card faster so that you can take the next picture sooner. Its great for any continuous shooting, as well as if you were to do any video clips. It is not camcorder quality, but it IS decent and Canon has the best video quality on a digital camera and most sensitive microphone.

I am not trying to discourage you from the N2. It is a good camera, but there are several downfalls in which I wanted you to be made aware of. Hope this helps!

Also, the Canon SD800IS is lower megapixel but has stabilization. If you aren't going to be blowing up pictures to posters, you probably do not need the 10mp. Also, the higher the megapixel, the larger the picture size, meaning you will need a larger memory card and you will have to do a lot of shrinking of the picture size and quality if you tried to email it or post it on a website.