Sony DSC-W310 CyberShot Digital Camera

by Donna Lynch
(MI, USA)

About nine months ago, I went into a local Best Buy store to use my gift cards. I wasn't sure how much I had, but I thought around $100 -- it turned out I had about $140, so I decided to buy a digital camera. Luckily, I went with my friend who worked in the camera department, so he told me to avoid the lowest priced (I believe $120) cameras, and to spend the extra $30 on a $150 Sony DSC-W310.

I let the camera sit on in my room for months and only recently started using it frequently in the last month. Overall, I think that it's a great camera.

Let's start with the good: Sony claims to have some sort of steady shot built in, and judging by how many of my photos come out clear, I'm inclined to believe them. The 4x optical zoom, while not amazing, still works well (and beats digital zoom by a mile).

I also started taking video using the camera, and am quite pleased by the quality. It's 30fps, and while not high def, it's still fair quality. Moreover, the sound quality on the videos is decent: I was using it to record at the 2011 NAMM show, and was surprised at the quality.

The only problem I've had with the Sony DSC-W310 was with the auto focus, which is the only setting. 99% of the time it has worked well, there even is face recognition software the finds faces and focuses on them. Still, while trying to zoom in for a long distance shot of a stage, it only focused properly in a fraction of the shots. Maybe it's because it was a dark room with a bright stage, but it made me wish there was some way to manually control the focus.

There also is some smile recognition mode that automatically takes a picture when it detects a smile. It works fine, but I haven't found a use for it -- I'm just as good as the camera at detecting smiles. Perhaps some would find it useful for sneaky shots, but I personally could care less about it.

Overall, I think the Sony DSC-W310 is a great camera for the price, and would recommend it to others. Nearly all my pictures come out clean and clear, and it is nice and small. Obviously not for a serious photographer, but for someone who just wants something better than their cell phone camera, it works well.