Sony DSC-N1: Quality Three Inch Touch Screen

by Travis
(Spain)

In 2006 I bought a Sony Cybershot DSC-N1 whle living in Taipei. What made this digital camera very attractive at the time was the huge 8.1 megapixel capacity. The other 'futuristic' feature was the large 3 inch touch screen on the rear of the camera.

A nifty little plectrum stylus makes navigation more precise than using your fingers. I found fingers work fine but if like me you have sweaty hands, then the smudged look on a new camera is not ideal. The screen is a smudge magnet.

The plus side is that the Cybershot DSC-N1 camera takes wonderful shots & the resolution & colours are just great when you print out a decent snap on good paper. It has all the standard features you expect to use in different light conditions & locations but as a point and click, its great.

The MPEG videos on the Cybershot DSC-N1 are also quite sharp for MPEG but the built in mic cant handle wind. Making video while moving is best avoided though as there is no image stabiliser function.

You'll need a decent size sony memory stick if you like taking videos as well as full resolution snaps but I found a 1 gig stick to be the minimum requirement. The bigger the better though! You can however reduce the resolution of photos to 5 mega pixels or even 3.2 mega pixels if image quality can be sacrificed.

On the downside, the menu system on the Cybershot DSC-N1 can be a bit hard to navigate around & slightly complicated for simple use. Just not as intuitive as it should be. Another very annoying feature is the way the camera automatically stores a small thumbnail of every pic you have ever taken so even when you delete the master photo a little reminder is always stored on it's internal memory. I hate that!

I have never needed a low resolution back up of any picture let alone one I have deleted. This means you need to delete an image twice. So if you have 50 shots to dump then make that 100.

I still use the Cybershot DSC-N1 digital camera today after 4 years & it works just as well when I got it 4 years ago. It still holds it's own considering cameras can be out dated quicker than a mobile phone these days. I'd give it 8 out of 10.