A major strength would be the in-built CD burner, just remove the cd, pop it into the PC/laptop and away you go; saves on battery life which would be consumed by downloading them through the USB connection. Battery pack gives good performance, and the LCD screen gives indication of how much power is left - certainly something useful to have! Although carrying a spare is a good idea, as once the low power indicator flashes, you cannot take any more shots.

I've deliveratly tried to take pictures in difficult environments to see how the camera holds up. Two years ago I took a 3 week holiday to northern Canada where the temperature was below -25C. I must admit this did lower the amount of life I got from the NP-FM50 battery pack, and the camera was a bit more slower to respond, but it worked fine; and has never seemingly suffered from the after-effects of that kind of temperature. I also tried to take pictures of an object with harsh sunlight blasting into my face. The pictures came out really good, didn't even need editing! Tried taking some pictures in the garden at night as well, they came out ok. Certainly a good all-round camera.

Its a bit on the bulky and heavy side, although this is due to the CD burner and battery pack, seems like it weighs around the same as a full-size pair of binoculars (maybe a bit less). The time taken from you pressing the button and the picture actually being taken is a little on the sluggish side, although there is an option somewhere for it to fire off 3 shots about 1 second apart? I havent found that yet!

An optical view-finder would be nice to conserve the battery life a bit more when its not necessary to use the LCD display.

I have to admit I was somewhat sceptical about the CD burner on a digital camera; thinking that if it was such a good feature, then why didn't other companies have such cameras outfitted in a similar fashion? I'm very glad to say that I have certainly not been dissappointed. I've had the camera now for about 4 years and have got some really amazing shots with it. Its really an awesome piece of kit to have if you are a serious photographer or some who spends alot of time taking pictures in a non-professional capacity.

Customer Service

Well I've never had to go to Sony with any problems but as far as ordering the camera went - no problems at all, I'm very happy to say.

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