Sony DSC-TX7 10.2MP CMOS Digital Camera with 4x Zoom with Optical Steady Shot Image Stabilization and 3.5 inch Touch Screen LCD (Blue)

Many times with electronics there are features that sound great but don't really live up to expectations. The TX7 has a very interesting feature list and the great thing is none are a let down, IMO. Everything just works. The low light ability of this camera is a real stand out. If you're like me and dislike photos taken with a flash you'll love handheld twilight. In this mode the camera takes 6 photos with different settings in less than a second and combines them into one that results in a low light picture that looks exactly like what you see with your eyes. Most of the time you'll probably have the camera in iAuto mode and it works excellent. The nice thing is it instantly shows the setting it's picked for you on the screen just by pointing the camera so you know it's working, and on that same point can manually change the settings if you want something different. Turn on iSCN+ while in iAUTO and it'll take 2 pics (instantly, with one press) with different settings and saves them both, so you almost always end up with a shot you like in auto mode. The panorama mode is very cool and fool proof. Then of course there is the HD video! 1920x1080 60i HD video with stereo audio. Video quality is excellent and wrapped up with everything else this camera offers makes it a great choice. With electronics something better always comes out after you buy a product, but I believe with this camera you can buy it now and use it for years to come without feeling compelled to upgrade because it has great features and great quality photo and video.

I've got my Sony DSC-TX7 from Amazon just a few days ago. First impression - it's very small and thin. Feels very solid and a dark blue color looks pretty good. A wrist strap has been already attached at the factory; otherwise it can easily slip out of your hands. It is pretty good for a party - you can put it into your pocket and do whatever you want, even dance, and this camera will not bother you with its presence. PROS: - Very attractive stylish and solid design, especially in dark-blue color - Ultra-slim body fits any small pocket - Dust-free optics since the lens is not retractable - Big high-resolution 920K colorful display looks like a small TV - Pretty short startup time, no shutter lag, up to 10 frames per sec in burst mode - Accepts SD/SDHC memory cards as well as Sony's proprietary memory-stick cards - Wide 25mm (equiv.) lens - good for indoors and parties - High-precision auto focus and effective image stabilization - Sophisticated noise reduction algorithm greatly improves high-ISO pictures quality - Advanced Hand-held Twilight mode for low-light pictures - Special Backlight Correction HDR mode for high-contrast scenes - Wide auto-stitch panorama mode - High-quality front-side stereo microphones - Smooth and silent zoom, auto focus, and optical image stabilization - Very nice Full High-Definition 1080 60i video - Unusually good video quality and high sensitivity in VGA mode - Intuitive well-thought-out menu with the easy to use touch-screen CONS: - New "Exmor R" sensor seems much faster but more noisy than CCD ones - Aggressive noise reduction is prone to obliterate small picture details - Relatively short battery life and slow charger BUILD: The build quality is very good and I generally like its construction. The only issue is the shifting of the lens cover to turn camera on and off - that mechanism is pretty tight but the lens cover does not have any kind of prominence you could grasp to move that resisting shield up and down. STARTUP: The startup time is pretty short - about 1 sec. The time of recording of a single picture into the memory card might vary from 1 to 2 sec without flash and about 2 sec with flash. In the burst mode you can take 10 shots for just 1 sec but then you should wait for about 10 sec while they're being writing to the memory. The menu provides a friendly interface to manage those groups of shots. DISPLAY: TX7 has a big 3.5" bright high-resolution display with 920K pixels and a wide angle of view which is easily visible even in a direct sunlight. With its vivid colors and clarity it looks like a small TV with a 16:9 wide-screen. MENU: Most of the camera's functionality is accessible via that touch-screen display. TX7 has a very intuitive menu which is visually divided into 3 parts - narrow left and right vertical bars and a big central area. On the top of the right bar you can see the remaining battery charge indicator, available number of pictures, current shooting format and resolution. In the lower part there are the two buttons: Shooting Mode and Playback. If you touch the mode button a list of the available modes will appear in the central part: Intelligent Auto, Program Auto, iSweep Panorama, Movie, Anti Motion Blur, Hand-held Twilight, Backlight Correction HDR, and Scenes. The left navigation bar has a "Menu" button on the top with 4 predefined icons below. It you touch that "Menu" button the central area will display icons of the parameters which in conjunction with the left-bar ones represent all the available shooting attributes for the currently selected shooting mode. The most interesting is that if you touch the gearwheel icon on the top, then you can drag with your finger any of 4 icons from the left bar toward the center of the central screen area and drop it there. And then you can touch any other available icon from the central area and the similar way move it to the empty slot on the left bar. By doing this you can customize that quick-access menu separately for each shooting mode the way you need (make sure you touch firmly and drag slowly). And the same way you can choose those quick-access icons for the playback mode as well. ADVANCED FEATURES: TX7 has a number of advanced modes which could be helpful in the difficult light conditions. THH: "Twilight Hand-Held" mode can help either to improve a low-light picture quality when the using of flash is prohibited, or to get a picture in so challenging light conditions where otherwise you could not get one at all. In that mode the camera automatically sets the lowest possible ISO and shutter speed, takes 6 consecutive shots within about 1 sec and then combines them into one picture with much less noise. It can be very useful for shooting landscapes in the dusk, the indoors interiors, or museum pieces. If you're going to take pictures of people in that mode then it might be better to tell them "freeze!" instead of "cheers!" :-) AMB: "Anti Motion Blur" is another low-light mode which also takes a number of consecutive shots and then composes their superposition. Unlike the THH-mode this one sets high ISO and fast shutter speed to catch the subjects which might be slightly moving like pets or kids. For example, if for the certain indoors conditions in THH mode a camera can set ISO-200 and the shutter speed 1/30, then in AMB it might set ISO-3200 and 1/200. BTW in a number of cases I noticed the pictures in THH mode were a kind of underexposed and oversaturated with some red or blue tint, so I had to apply some exposure compensation when shooting - about +1.0 - +1.3 and also to do some post-work to adjust the white-balance. Actually both modes use a noise reduction mechanism based on the data averaging. The cornerstone of that mechanism is the fact that the useful data is constant - does not change from one consecutive shot to another, while the noise is fluctuating. So that algorithm when doing the pictures superposition amplifies the constant aspects and reduces the random ones. The processing task in THH-mode is relatively simple: the algorithm should recognize the displacement of each consecutive shot caused by unstable hands and then compensate it while doing the pictures superposition. However in AMB-mode in addition to that shaking hands instability the camera should also identify the subjects which are moving by themselves (like kids or pets). For the static areas the AMB-algorithm can apply as the same averaging noise reduction as in THH-mode, but for the moving subjects the AMB-algorithm should try to identify their trajectory and overlay them separately to reduce their noise. If the AMB-algorithm can not dynamically align them then it takes an image of that moving subject from one of the consecutive shots and just presents it without any noise reduction (the worst-case-scenario). That might happen if the subject is moving too much or if its shape is changing, for example - a jumping dog. I did some testing and found - the less subject moves the better AMB-algorithm can perform its job and so the less noise is visible on the final picture. HDR: "Backlight Correction HDR" - One more useful mode. It is not only about backlight conditions but it also might be very helpful in any case when your picture consists of the fragments with very different brightness. Camera does the two shots in a quick succession, each of which is optimized for the lightest and the darkest areas and then combines both of them into one shot. That mode is only effective when there is a huge difference in the areas' luminance. The good news is that even in the earlier models (like my old DSC-T100) and even for the regular shots Sony has been doing a pretty good job of extending the dynamic range. I did not know that until about two years ago I purchased an advanced Kodak's P&S camera and found that on the same subjects where the Kodak's camera completely washed out some most illuminated areas, the Sony's T100 happened to handle them pretty well! The same is true for TX7 as well. PANORAMA: Another interesting feature is the iSweep Panorama mode. You can shoot either a horizontal or vertical panorama, and there are the two modes: standard and wide. A standard horizontal panorama can cover up to 180 degrees (or less), while with the wide one you could shoot almost the entire circle. Just remember: you should take your horizontal panorama within 10 sec. A standard vertical panorama covers about 130 degrees and the wide one - about 180 degrees, and you should complete it within about 8 sec. Be aware that zoom does not work in that mode and the recording is done at the most wide angle (25 mm equivalent focal length). The resulting horizontal panorama is not of a high quality - it has just 1080 pixels of the vertical resolution. If your subject does not fit the frame or if you want the better resolution you can do this trick: 1) switch to the vertical up-to-down panorama, 2) choose the wide one, 3) turn you camera 90 degree counter-clockwise and shoot your panorama from left-to-right within 8 sec. In this case you will have 1920 pixels vertically. One more hint: Before starting panorama point your camera to any object which is at the average distance and half press the shutter button to catch the right focus. Then holding the button half pressed, turn to the most left position, press the button all the way down and start shooting. It is important because if in your starting direction there is any object which is much closer than most of the objects in you panorama then you would catch a wrong focus and most of the panorama would be out-of-focus. LENS: The TX7 model, unlike many other recent Sony P&S cameras, was lucky enough to get a genuine Carl Zeiss zoom lens. Its mechanics is just great - it performs zooming, auto-focusing, and the optical image stabilization in absolute silence. However if you start zooming while shooting video and then quickly release that tiny zoom lever you will get a kind of "clatz-z" short noise on the recording footage. If you try to release that lever very smoothly you will get gentler "click-h" replica. The optical image stabilization of the Carl Zeiss lens in conjunction with the digital one provided by Sony works pretty well and allows to shoot pictures at a very low shutter speed around 1/8 - 1/10 sec so you can use lesser ISO and therefore get better picture quality in the low light condition. Auto focus works well in both daylight and low light situations, especially if in your settings the AF Illuminator is ON. Just be aware the auto focus and image stabilization works all the time your camera is on. It might be convenient from one prospective, but on the other hand is sucks the battery much faster. On my Panasonic ZR1 and ZS3 I can choose a mode when the auto focus is activated only when the shutter button is half pressed and the image stabilization is turned on when you're actually making a shot. It would be nice if Sony provided the similar functionality which would greatly prolong the battery life. Meanwhile open the lens cover only when you're really going to make a shot and close it right after that. ZOOM: The lens has a very convenient for the party (and any indoors) shooting zoom range starting with just 25 mm (of the 35-mm equivalent). It allows to make good framing in pretty small compartments. The quality of the pictures taken at 25 mm are pretty good, however if you apply the full zoom - up to 100 mm (35-mm equivalent) you might experience some quality decrease. Generally when you zoom-in you expect to see the bigger size of the shooting object and to get more visible details. Most of the times when I took a picture of a certain subject first at wide 25 mm focal length and then stretched to the full 100 mm it did not show much more details. The image was bigger, as expected, but more fuzzy with less contrast and saturation. When I was physically walking 4 times closer to the subject and making a shot with the initial 25 mm (equivalent) - the picture was sharp with good contrast and saturation. So if you want to get nice sharp shots - take pictures without much zooming. From my prospective the biggest Sony's achievement and at the same time a source of the picture quality problems in TX7 is the noise reduction mechanism implemented by Sony in this camera. SENSOR: Actually the root cause is the "Exmor R" sensor: regardless of all that hype around its low-light performance my own experience with the two Sony cameras - WX1 before and TX7 now shows that sensor is actually at least as the same or even more noisy than its CCD predecessors. May be in theory it should have some advantage, but in the real implementation they either could not make it working properly or may be some other unpredictable problems of that design came to the scene and not only eliminated the anticipated positive effect but also spoiled the entire performance. On many pictures taken with my old Sony DSC-T100 at its lowest ISO-100 I could not admit any noticeable noise. On some pictures taken by TX7 at its lowest ISO-125 some areas, which I guess the processing algorithm did not recognize, show pretty much noise. But that is a relatively rare case because most of the pictures are entirely processed by the Sony's noise reduction mechanism. IMHO the problem is - they're over-processed and even those which were taken at the low ISO. NOISE REDUCTION: That algorithm generally works very well for the evenly-painted surfaces. One of my indoor pictures (without flash) displays a man surrounded with the light-painted walls and also a part of the glossy-black door is visible as well. The picture was taken at the relatively high ISO-320, but that black door shines without a single pixel of noise and the bright walls look very good also. The man's clothes look also clean without any noise and the only problem is his face - it looks like having a thick layer of make-up on it. The picture was taken from the distance just about 3 feet but you can not see the man's eyelashes, and even his eyebrows have become partly obliterated by the aggressive noise reduction. It seems that noise reduction algorithm recognizes the 3 types of picture areas: relatively even panes, sharp edges or transitions, and the parts with a complex structure which can not be divided into the first two categories. It strongly removes the noise from those flat panes pretending they do not have any significant details which are worth to keep, it probably makes some sharpening to the edges, and I guess does nothing to the complex structures because it does not know what would be better to do with them. That assumption comes from the observation of some portrait-like photos taken in iAuto mode with the flash, where a mid-aged person has a plastic-even face with a few scars. The thing is that algorithm put heavy make-up everywhere on the man's face and therefore hid the sensor noise altogether with the most man's wrinkles, but it "recognized" a couple of most visible wrinkles as "edges" and therefore not only showed them but even made more sharp and contrast what made them looking like scars. The pictures taken with Panasonic ZS3 looked much more natural and showed the real skin texture as well as all the small and big wrinkles the way they were. It seems that noise reduction algorithm is mostly effective for the indoors and in particular for party shooting because most of the interior objects are of either big or medium size with relatively even panes and sharp edges. And the most interesting on such shots is catching of what people were doing instead of their portraits. Sometimes I go to the park and take some shots there. On the pictures taken in the late autumn with my old Sony T100 I can recognize every branch on the numerous trees across a small pond. Of course they're not sharp, but at least I can see the distinct trees with distinct branches. On the similar pictures taken by TX7 many areas with those distant trees look like the picture was rubbed out and the average color was spread across those areas, however some odd tree branches can strike out of those indistinct areas. It seems that happens only on the low-contrast areas, however if there is a bright sky behind the numerous branches of trees in your shot then the picture looks sharp and clear. And by the way, if you are taking pictures of somebody against such a background then your attention will be mostly attracted to that person(s) and you will hardly admit some minor imperfections in the back. MOVIE MODE: The most interesting and I believe the best feature in this tiny package is the full-frame High Definition 1080 60i AVCHD movie mode. Shortly - it's really good! Actually there are the 3 available movie modes: 1080 AVCHD, 720 MP4, and VGA 640x480 MP4. In all the P&S cameras I have now and had before the VGA mode was nothing to write home about. In WX1 it was a complete trash and even in Olympus E-P2 it was not much better. In the EP2's review I wrote its HD video clips in low-light look like a Wide-VGA, not HD. But with TX7 it's quite opposite: I've never seen so good VGA mode before! It actually looks more like a low-level 4:3 HD than a regular VGA. It's pretty clear and sharp, not much noise even in low-light environment. I guess it better fits for indoor shooting because it seems the noise reduction mechanism wipes out the small details. And one more thing - it's got a mono-sound. The intermediate 720 MP4 mode seems good in case if you are not able to view the AVCHD files. Its quality is slightly lower than the 1080's one so I wouldn't recommend it if your computer allows handling the full HD clips. And the full 1080 60i (interlaced) mode with AVCHD codec is just great. Note: sometimes you can see "60i" and the other times - "50i". The latter one is for PAL standard in Europe, while the "60i" one is for NTSC in the US. The quality is very good: really high resolution, sharp and clear. Both the auto focus and image stabilization work pretty well and no audible sound give them away. The Carl Zeiss lens zoom works absolutely silently so no disturbing sounds being recorded onto the footage. SOUND: What I like very much about TX7 as a high-quality camcorder - it has stereo microphones which point to the subject in front of the camera, which means they mostly catch the person's voice instead of collecting the noise from surroundings. On many other P&S cameras the microphones are pointed to the ceiling. The microphones have a wide frequency range, which is good enough even for the music recording. They have a pretty good sensitivity and a remarkably low noise. ADVISE: If you're shooting a movie clip of a person in front of the camera, make sure there is no any visible subject behind that person which is brighter or has much more contrast. In the movie mode you can not set the focus to the center or any other point you choose - the camera selects the focusing area on its own, and if there is something more bright or contrast behind the person you're taking picture of, then camera might focus on that subject behind and the person might be out of focus. UPDATE: A series of photos taken indoors at low light with flash on the other day showed very different result than described above. Instead of "thick layer of make-up" it was quite opposite - all the small details on the face of a woman (in her mid-forties) as well as her eyes looked very sharp and contrast. I had to reduce both sharpness and contrast in Photoshop to make it more natural, but finally it looked much better than the above mentioned one with the man's face under a heavy "make-up". The major difference was ISO: in the first case the camera in "iAuto" mode set automatically ISO=320 (on some other similar photos even 400) while this time I set manually in "P"rogram mode the minimum ISO=125 and used flash. The pictures were slightly darker, but the skin texture was not missed and the overall result after some post-processing looked much better. So the rule number one of having nice pictures with TX7 is to keep ISO at its minimum whenever it's possible. In my Panasonic cameras (ZS3 & ZR1) the light sensitivity in both HD and VGA-video mode is about the same, but it turned out in TX7 in the VGA mode it's approximately twice higher than in HD and roughly 3 times more than the video-sensitivity of the Panasonic cameras. It's definitely a big plus for the low-light shooting. If you're shooting a full-HD video (1080) in AVCHD mode and it gets underexposed and noisy because of lack of light then try to switch to VGA mode - you might loose some details but the clip might look remarkably better because of much less visible noise. I also did some testing for how long time you can shoot high-quality HD video with the fully charged battery. The TX7's battery indicator has 4 segments. When the battery is full all four segments are turned on. I was recording a sequence of 5-min video clips with 1 min breaks in between them and noticed when the battery segments turned off: - 1st segments turned off after about 12 min of recording - 2nd - after about 22 min - 3rd - after about 32 min - 4th - after about 41 min and the battery indicator became crossed and started blinking. After that I could record for about 1.5 min more until the camera closed the file and the entire display became black with a big crossed blinking battery icon in the middle. So it seems with a fully charged battery you can record your clips for about 40 minutes. It's not that bad since my former Sony HDR-SR7 camcorder provided about 80-90 min of HD recording. The size of each 5-min clip is about 630MB what comes to 2.1MB per second and taking into account that 1 byte has 8 bits that will be close to 17 MBit/sec as stated in the manual for this mode. So this Sony DSC-TX7 camera seems mostly suitable for shooting the indoor still pictures and is very good as a HD video camcorder.

this is my first ever review submitted... sony DSC-TX7..just received from amazon yesterday.. downloaded the enclose software.. inserted battery and sd card (a new feature that wasn't available in their earlier models, which was a selling point for me since I have tons of sd cards)and took for a spin this morning.. shot a couple of videos and various pictures using sweep panaromic and iauto mode...both are fantastic...can't say enough about ease of operation and quality of both still shots and videos.. read reviews before buying the camera and was really concerned about being able to download avchd videos to my older vista program pc computer and whether they would play on the computer.. so downloaded various avchd converter programs and players off the internet in preparation for importing and playing avchd videos on my existing computer...I did this because I had read that the software supplied by sony with the camera was not that great.. as it turns out, my concern was unfounded, the software is great, easy to use, and does all that a beginner point and shoot photographer would need, won't be needing any of the other software after all (good thing I did not buy any extra software before hand)... also the sound on the videos are so much better than my older canon powershot 100IS, and an even older kodak easyshare DX7590 both of which still works fine, which I'll still be taking along the canon as a backup for those shots needing a 10 power zoom...but definitly will be using the sony for the majority of my picture and lots of video taking on our european trip this summer... plus the sony can zoom while in video mode, a definite plus..I shot a video of our koi pond and running water, you can actually hear the water fall and bubbler running just like you were standing right there...even heard some birds chirping somewhere nearby in the garden...fantastic... only one minor fault with the camera is its battery life..seems kind of short..so probably should have maybe two extra batteries if planning on a long 7 hour tour with a fair amount of videos to be taken....still would give the camera a five star rating even with this minor inconvenience

Sony DSC-TX7 Camera is very portable camera with good battery life. It has good features. It can detect scenes automatically. It has HDR and panoramic features that are useful. I must admit the HD videos are much better for a tiny camera like this. It's not like the full blown camcorder but good enough for a small camera. Landscape pictures are good. However, the portraits are not always sharp (you can see the noise if you zoom in) compared to good Digital SLR or even the 2003 DSC V1. When you have good light its okay, but if not it's not so sharp. I like sharp faces in my photos. I was very happy with the DSC-V1 release in 2003 with Carl Zeiss vario Sonnar lens. This camera has Carl Zeiss Vario Tessar lens, but the sensors are CMOS. I am not sure where the issue is but this 2010 camera is way behind the 2003 DSC V1 in sharp photos.

I have had this camera for just over a year (meaning the warranty just ran out) and used it primarily as a second camera when I didn't want to carry around my bulky Nikon. For daytime photos and videos, this camera does a great job. For flash photos, I am getting white glare spots all over my photos that can't even be edited out with editing software. SONY customer service told me that because the lens is so close to the flash on this camera, the flash actually illuminates dust particles in the air and those get picked up in your images. It's basically a design defect in the camera and their only solution was to shoot in high sensitivity mode. I will never buy a SONY camera ever again!!!!!!

A) Cameras costing 1/3 the price have greater control over photo settings and equal or better image quality. Want to leave the shutter open for 2 seconds and set the f-stop--you can't do it with this camera. I can do that with my old $99 Samsung L 200 digital pocket camera. Sony's available adjustments (white balance, ISO, etc) provide some control but the resulting images still didn't impress me. I was so disappointed with the image quality of the still photos that I have passed this camera along to a friend who was interested in the camera's movie capabilities. This camera's MP4 and AVCHD movies are better-than-average for a compact digital camera except for the lens distortion. The camera does indeed have lens distortion--especially at the corners as seen on the LCD display. Some of the distortion is easily missed in photos and videos but in some images it stands out like a sore thumb. For full HD video, there are plenty of other quality options at a cheaper price. B) The battery life was way way way too short. Add the cost of an additional battery to your final cost. Or take my advice and don't buy the camera. C) An adapter stand (docking station) is used to connect the camera to a PC/TV and a separate battery charger is used to charge the battery. More stuff to lug around. Sony should ditch the docking station and allow battery recharging in the camera with a USB connection to plug/car/pc. D) Accessories, as one might expect from Sony, are overpriced. Sony makes a waterproof housing that costs you only $249.00 from Sony. There doesn't seem to be a Sony-made protective bumper wrap (I drop stuff all the time). You can connect the camera's docking station to a Standard Definition (SD) TV with the supplied AV cable. HD TV cables are NOT supplied with the camera. You can buy them. I did like the option of using either a standard SD memory card or the Sony Memory Stick. E) The panorama photos rarely produced acceptable results--poor image quality, mostly. It's a fun & useful feature when it works (it does work, just not as well as hoped for); nonetheless, I would prefer to shoot several still shots and stitch them together manually with software. F) The camera is heavy which hopefully means it is well built and will withstand accidental abuse. Hard to say since I didn't drop it or bang it into something. It does feel like it could easily slip out of your hands since it has a very smooth slippery finish. The supplied hand strap should prevent such mishaps. G) The interface is fairly simple to navigate. Some of Sony's settings may appear poorly organized within its menu system; but once found, they're easy to re-find and adjust. I don't like cameras that take too much time to process and store images--this camera is too slow for me. Also, the touch-screen interface seems a tad slow for some functions. Burst mode works well but the images seem degraded. What you want to capture may pass you by due to the slow response of the camera when not shooting in burst mode. And after shooting in burst mode, you must wait for the camera to store images. The PDF manual is a useful read and explains all the camera's features. The supplied PC software is acceptable and handles basic needs like trimming a video and burning a DVD. It doesn't work with 64-bit editions of Windows XP. All of the camera's movie formats opened up in my version of Window's Movie Maker and Adobe Premiere Elements 8.0. Google's Picasa 3 didn't open the AVCHD videos. H) Each AVCHD movie (m2ts extension) has 2 data files associated with it. Each MP4 file seems to have 3 data files associated with it. I can do without them--I think--and would like to have that option. I) I must be color blind because my "Blue" camera looks like a deep black color to me. J) Plenty of nifty features, settings & options within the very readable and usable touch-screen interface, but without a high quality image, who cares?

This is interesting. My first TX7 produced significant flare in backlit scenes. Flare creates milky areas or streaks in the image, and is caused by stray light bouncing around inside the lens. Very difficult, if not impossible, to correct in editing. I didn't know if this was something inherent in the lens design or whether I just got a defective camera. So I bought a second TX7 and ran side-by-side comparisons. The first continued to show flaring, the second did not. So when you read a review that says "This camera takes awful pictures!" there may be nothing wrong with the camera design--the person probably just got a bad one, like I did. (BTW, the return of the first TX7 couldn't have been easier. Amazon sent a UPS truck to pick it up at my home, free of charge. No wonder it's a successful company.) PROS: Excellent resolution For a compact, good performance at higher ISO's Slim design fits easily into your pocket Innovative low-light functions Touchscreen is quick and intuitive Wide angle on the zoom is truly wide angle, and distortion-free to boot Overall feeling of quality CONS: Disappointing HDR No auto exposure bracketing Telephoto isn't much of a telephoto Low battery life Purple fringing at high magnifications I also got an HX5V, so I could compare the two. See my separate review on that camera. Anyway, I've been doing photography for four decades, and during that time the technological strides have been profound. In 1970, when I got my first SLR, a camera like the TX7 would have been pure science fiction--in fact, it would have seemed more science fiction-y than colonies on Mars. But despite these advances there are still two major challenges in photography: dynamic range and low-light performance. That's why I was interested in the two Sonys, since they attempt to address these problems. The HDR Mode on the TX7 tries to increase the dynamic range of an image by taking two shots in succession, one slightly underexposed and the other slightly overexposed, and then integrates the two to get the best of both worlds. A good idea, but the results are merely OK. Sony doesn't say, but my tests show that the range is just -1EV/+1EV. That's not enough. If you've done research on this, or if you have an HDR program like Photomatix, you know that you need -2EV/+2EV to get a really good range. I'm surprised Sony stopped so short here, since expanding the range would have been easy. In fact, you can manually adjust the exposure by 2EV either way in Program Mode. But if you do this, you'll have to have a tripod, because you'll have to change the exposure each time. There's no auto exposure bracketing, where one touch of the shutter takes three successive shots at your preset exposure range. This is surprising, almost shocking, since AEB doesn't add to the cost. If this were a middle-of-the-road compact selling for $150 the omission would be understandable, but the TX7 is supposed to be a top-of-the-line, full-featured, as-good-as-it-gets compact (it's certainly priced that way). It makes you wonder just what the people at Sony were thinking when they designed this camera--it's hard to believe someone didn't bring this up. Sony makes up for this, though, with very good low-light performance. First, Sony has traded lower MPs (10 vs. the 12 or 14 in most compacts) for better quality at higher ISOs, an excellent trade. The TX7 beats every other compact except the Canon S90 at higher ISOs, and the Canon achieves this through a larger sensor and hence a larger camera. You can see this for yourself by visiting [...] and comparing the full-size images of various cameras (as of this writing there are no samples for the TX7, but those for the TX5 would be identical). You will also see that there is no better compact than the TX7 on lens resolution. This is quite surprising since the TX7's lens is so small. The suberb resolution by itself makes the price of this camera worthwhile. However, I did notice some purple fringing at the juncture of certain bright and dark parts of the image, which is due to the lens design. But this is noticeable only at very high magnifications. The second way Sony addresses the low-light problem is to offer two different low-light shooting modes: Twilight Mode and Anti-Blur Mode. Both take a series of six shots and then merge them into a single image--in other words, you get six times the amount of light that you'd get with a straight shot. The Twilight Mode uses slower shutter speeds and lower ISOs, while Anti-Blur does the opposite. Also, the white balance on the Twilight Mode is distinctly warm, no doubt to compensate for the bluish light in twilight or early morning scenes. What if you want to use the Twilight Mode indoors under incandescent lighting so you can get the lower ISO? You'd want to do this if you didn't need the higher shutter speed that Anti-Blur gives. To avoid an overly-warm image simply switch the white balance from auto to incandescent and you'll be fine. Which leads me to the touchscreen, which has turned out to be my favorite feature on the TX7. Changing the white balance, and doing anything else, is quick and easy with the touchscreen. I've seen some reviews which say that you have to use the supplied stylus, but I've never had to. Plus, the text and icons are very readable and even elegant in appearance. In fact, the overall build of the camera is quite good. You might even say luxurious. This is an expensive camera for a compact, but it looks and feels expensive. The panorama feature is interesting, but a bit gimmicky. You can do panoramas yourself in Photoshop or other editors in those few occasions when you need a panorama, which in my experience isn't very often. Plus, when you take your own pictures for subsequent integration into a panorama each shot is separately (and hence correctly) exposed. Not so with the Panorama Mode on the TX7. When you press the shutter the exposure is set for the entire panorama, so if you begin in an area that is a lot lighter or darker than the rest of the scene your integrated shot won't be properly exposed. However, you can adjust for this by using the AE lock. I'm not a Scene Mode fan, but if you are this camera's for you. There's even a Gourmet Mode (for taking pictures of food), a Beach Mode, and a Pet Mode. OK, say you're spending a day at the beach and you want to take a particularly cute shot of your dog eyeing a hamburger. What to do? Beach Mode? Pet Mode? Gourmet Mode? You could make a case for any of them. While you're dithering over this the moment has passed. Just take the damn picture! The TX7 has a Burst Mode, for taking up to 10 shots in rapid succession. How rapid this is depends on the three choices the TX7 gives to you. At first I thought that this was a bit over-the-top, but in actual use I've liked having the three different rates. It's hard to explain, but in some action scenes it's better to have one over the other. Be careful with this feature, though. It's easy to load up lots and lots of images that are a pain to go through. The camera has a limited zoom range, but it's a good one: an effective 25mm through 100mm. Yes, 100mm isn't much of a telephoto, but remember that you can always crop. You can't make a photo any wider than the widest zoom range on the camera, and as far as I know there's no compact which gets any wider than 25mm. Moreover, there's no distortion at this focal length. My previous compact, a Canon SD700IS purchased in 2007, goes out to only 35mm and has pronounced barrel distortion at that setting. This is another huge plus for the TX7. Most reviews mention the short battery life, and that's indeed true. Of course, that's the price you pay for a tiny camera like this. What Sony should have done is to enable recharging through the dock. As you probably know, there is no direct cable from the TX7 to your computer. Instead, Sony provides a dock. You set the camera in the dock, and then transfer the pictures. Some reviewers have complained about having this separate item, but I found it slightly more convenient than inserting a cable. As I said, though, it would be great if the camera could be recharged through the dock. My first compact, a Fuji I got in 2002, did this, so I don't see why Sony does not. One last thing: I purchased what is described as the "blue" model. This is a joke. The camera is jet black. There's not even the slightest hint of blue. Overall, the TX7 is a great camera. It's small size, especially the slim profile, means you can easily slip into your pocket, even your shirt pocket. If in the next generation Sony expands the HDR, provides for AEB, and allows charging through the dock it will have close to a perfect little camera. This is interesting. My first TX7 produced significant flare in backlit scenes. Flare creates milky areas or streaks in the image, and is caused by stray light bouncing around inside the lens. Very difficult, if not impossible, to correct in editing. I didn't know if this was something inherent in the lens design or whether I just got a defective camera. So I bought a second TX7 and ran side-by-side comparisons. The first continued to show flaring, the second did not. So when you read a review that says "This camera takes awful pictures!" there may be nothing wrong with the camera design--the person probably just got a bad one, like I did. (BTW, the return of the first TX7 couldn't have been easier. Amazon sent a UPS truck to pick it up at my home, free of charge. No wonder it's a successful company.) PROS: Excellent resolution For a compact, good performance at higher ISO's Slim design fits easily into your pocket Innovative low-light functions Touchscreen is quick and intuitive Wide angle on the zoom is truly wide angle, and distortion-free to boot Overall feeling of quality CONS: Disappointing HDR No auto exposure bracketing Telephoto isn't much of a telephoto Low battery life Purple fringing at high magnifications I also got an HX5V, so I could compare the two. See my separate review on that camera. Anyway, I've been doing photography for four decades, and during that time the technological strides have been profound. In 1970, when I got my first SLR, a camera like the TX7 would have been pure science fiction--in fact, it would have seemed more science fiction-y than colonies on Mars. But despite these advances there are still two major challenges in photography: dynamic range and low-light performance. That's why I was interested in the two Sonys, since they attempt to address these problems. The HDR Mode on the TX7 tries to increase the dynamic range of an image by taking two shots in succession, one slightly underexposed and the other slightly overexposed, and then integrates the two to get the best of both worlds. A good idea, but the results are merely OK. Sony doesn't say, but my tests show that the range is just -1EV/+1EV. That's not enough. If you've done research on this, or if you have an HDR program like Photomatix, you know that you need -2EV/+2EV to get a really good range. I'm surprised Sony stopped so short here, since expanding the range would have been easy. In fact, you can manually adjust the exposure by 2EV either way in Program Mode. But if you do this, you'll have to have a tripod, because you'll have to change the exposure each time. There's no auto exposure bracketing, where one touch of the shutter takes three successive shots at your preset exposure range. This is surprising, almost shocking, since AEB doesn't add to the cost. If this were a middle-of-the-road compact selling for $150 the omission would be understandable, but the TX7 is supposed to be a top-of-the-line, full-featured, as-good-as-it-gets compact (it's certainly priced that way). It makes you wonder just what the people at Sony were thinking when they designed this camera--it's hard to believe someone didn't bring this up. Sony makes up for this, though, with very good low-light performance. First, Sony has traded lower MPs (10 vs. the 12 or 14 in most compacts) for better quality at higher ISOs, an excellent trade. The TX7 beats every other compact except the Canon S90 at higher ISOs, and the Canon achieves this through a larger sensor and hence a larger camera. You can see this for yourself by visiting [...] and comparing the full-size images of various cameras (as of this writing there are no samples for the TX7, but those for the TX5 would be identical). You will also see that there is no better compact than the TX7 on lens resolution. This is quite surprising since the TX7's lens is so small. The suberb resolution by itself makes the price of this camera worthwhile. However, I did notice some purple fringing at the juncture of certain bright and dark parts of the image, which is due to the lens design. But this is noticeable only at very high magnifications. The second way Sony addresses the low-light problem is to offer two different low-light shooting modes: Twilight Mode and Anti-Blur Mode. Both take a series of six shots and then merge them into a single image--in other words, you get six times the amount of light that you'd get with a straight shot. The Twilight Mode uses slower shutter speeds and lower ISOs, while Anti-Blur does the opposite. Also, the white balance on the Twilight Mode is distinctly warm, no doubt to compensate for the bluish light in twilight or early morning scenes. What if you want to use the Twilight Mode indoors under incandescent lighting so you can get the lower ISO? You'd want to do this if you didn't need the higher shutter speed that Anti-Blur gives. To avoid an overly-warm image simply switch the white balance from auto to incandescent and you'll be fine. Which leads me to the touchscreen, which has turned out to be my favorite feature on the TX7. Changing the white balance, and doing anything else, is quick and easy with the touchscreen. I've seen some reviews which say that you have to use the supplied stylus, but I've never had to. Plus, the text and icons are very readable and even elegant in appearance. In fact, the overall build of the camera is quite good. You might even say luxurious. This is an expensive camera for a compact, but it looks and feels expensive. The panorama feature is interesting, but a bit gimmicky. You can do panoramas yourself in Photoshop or other editors in those few occasions when you need a panorama, which in my experience isn't very often. Plus, when you take your own pictures for subsequent integration into a panorama each shot is separately (and hence correctly) exposed. Not so with the Panorama Mode on the TX7. When you press the shutter the exposure is set for the entire panorama, so if you begin in an area that is a lot lighter or darker than the rest of the scene your integrated shot won't be properly exposed. However, you can adjust for this by using the AE lock. I'm not a Scene Mode fan, but if you are this camera's for you. There's even a Gourmet Mode (for taking pictures of food), a Beach Mode, and a Pet Mode. OK, say you're spending a day at the beach and you want to take a particularly cute shot of your dog eyeing a hamburger. What to do? Beach Mode? Pet Mode? Gourmet Mode? You could make a case for any of them. While you're dithering over this the moment has passed. Just take the damn picture! The TX7 has a Burst Mode, for taking up to 10 shots in rapid succession. How rapid this is depends on the three choices the TX7 gives to you. At first I thought that this was a bit over-the-top, but in actual use I've liked having the three different rates. It's hard to explain, but in some action scenes it's better to have one over the other. Be careful with this feature, though. It's easy to load up lots and lots of images that are a pain to go through. The camera has a limited zoom range, but it's a good one: an effective 25mm through 100mm. Yes, 100mm isn't much of a telephoto, but remember that you can always crop. You can't make a photo any wider than the widest zoom range on the camera, and as far as I know there's no compact which gets any wider than 25mm. Moreover, there's no distortion at this focal length. My previous compact, a Canon SD700IS purchased in 2007, goes out to only 35mm and has pronounced barrel distortion at that setting. This is another huge plus for the TX7. Most reviews mention the short battery life, and that's indeed true. Of course, that's the price you pay for a tiny camera like this. What Sony should have done is to enable recharging through the dock. As you probably know, there is no direct cable from the TX7 to your computer. Instead, Sony provides a dock. You set the camera in the dock, and then transfer the pictures. Some reviewers have complained about having this separate item, but I found it slightly more convenient than inserting a cable. As I said, though, it would be great if the camera could be recharged through the dock. My first compact, a Fuji I got in 2002, did this, so I don't see why Sony does not. One last thing: I purchased what is described as the "blue" model. This is a joke. The camera is jet black. There's not even the slightest hint of blue. Overall, the TX7 is a great camera. It's small size, especially the slim profile, means you can easily slip into your pocket, even your shirt pocket. If in the next generation Sony expands the HDR, provides for AEB, and allows charging through the dock it will have close to a perfect little camera. This is interesting. My first TX7 produced significant flare in backlit scenes. Flare creates milky areas or streaks in the image, and is caused by stray light bouncing around inside the lens. Very difficult, if not impossible, to correct in editing. I didn't know if this was something inherent in the lens design or whether I just got a defective camera. So I bought a second TX7 and ran side-by-side comparisons. The first continued to show flaring, the second did not. So when you read a review that says "This camera takes awful pictures!" there may be nothing wrong with the camera design--the person probably just got a bad one, like I did. (BTW, the return of the first TX7 couldn't have been easier. Amazon sent a UPS truck to pick it up at my home, free of charge. No wonder it's a successful company.) PROS: Excellent resolution For a compact, good performance at higher ISO's Slim design fits easily into your pocket Innovative low-light functions Touchscreen is quick and intuitive Wide angle on the zoom is truly wide angle, and distortion-free to boot Overall feeling of quality CONS: Disappointing HDR No auto exposure bracketing Telephoto isn't much of a telephoto Low battery life Purple fringing at high magnifications I also got an HX5V, so I could compare the two. See my separate review on that camera. Anyway, I've been doing photography for four decades, and during that time the technological strides have been profound. In 1970, when I got my first SLR, a camera like the TX7 would have been pure science fiction--in fact, it would have seemed more science fiction-y than colonies on Mars. But despite these advances there are still two major challenges in photography: dynamic range and low-light performance. That's why I was interested in the two Sonys, since they attempt to address these problems. The HDR Mode on the TX7 tries to increase the dynamic range of an image by taking two shots in succession, one slightly underexposed and the other slightly overexposed, and then integrates the two to get the best of both worlds. A good idea, but the results are merely OK. Sony doesn't say, but my tests show that the range is just -1EV/+1EV. That's not enough. If you've done research on this, or if you have an HDR program like Photomatix, you know that you need -2EV/+2EV to get a really good range. I'm surprised Sony stopped so short here, since expanding the range would have been easy. In fact, you can manually adjust the exposure by 2EV either way in Program Mode. But if you do this, you'll have to have a tripod, because you'll have to change the exposure each time. There's no auto exposure bracketing, where one touch of the shutter takes three successive shots at your preset exposure range. This is surprising, almost shocking, since AEB doesn't add to the cost. If this were a middle-of-the-road compact selling for $150 the omission would be understandable, but the TX7 is supposed to be a top-of-the-line, full-featured, as-good-as-it-gets compact (it's certainly priced that way). It makes you wonder just what the people at Sony were thinking when they designed this camera--it's hard to believe someone didn't bring this up. Sony makes up for this, though, with very good low-light performance. First, Sony has traded lower MPs (10 vs. the 12 or 14 in most compacts) for better quality at higher ISOs, an excellent trade. The TX7 beats every other compact except the Canon S90 at higher ISOs, and the Canon achieves this through a larger sensor and hence a larger camera. You can see this for yourself by visiting [...] and comparing the full-size images of various cameras (as of this writing there are no samples for the TX7, but those for the TX5 would be identical). You will also see that there is no better compact than the TX7 on lens resolution. This is quite surprising since the TX7's lens is so small. The suberb resolution by itself makes the price of this camera worthwhile. However, I did notice some purple fringing at the juncture of certain bright and dark parts of the image, which is due to the lens design. But this is noticeable only at very high magnifications. The second way Sony addresses the low-light problem is to offer two different low-light shooting modes: Twilight Mode and Anti-Blur Mode. Both take a series of six shots and then merge them into a single image--in other words, you get six times the amount of light that you'd get with a straight shot. The Twilight Mode uses slower shutter speeds and lower ISOs, while Anti-Blur does the opposite. Also, the white balance on the Twilight Mode is distinctly warm, no doubt to compensate for the bluish light in twilight or early morning scenes. What if you want to use the Twilight Mode indoors under incandescent lighting so you can get the lower ISO? You'd want to do this if you didn't need the higher shutter speed that Anti-Blur gives. To avoid an overly-warm image simply switch the white balance from auto to incandescent and you'll be fine. Which leads me to the touchscreen, which has turned out to be my favorite feature on the TX7. Changing the white balance, and doing anything else, is quick and easy with the touchscreen. I've seen some reviews which say that you have to use the supplied stylus, but I've never had to. Plus, the text and icons are very readable and even elegant in appearance. In fact, the overall build of the camera is quite good. You might even say luxurious. This is an expensive camera for a compact, but it looks and feels expensive. The panorama feature is interesting, but a bit gimmicky. You can do panoramas yourself in Photoshop or other editors in those few occasions when you need a panorama, which in my experience isn't very often. Plus, when you take your own pictures for subsequent integration into a panorama each shot is separately (and hence correctly) exposed. Not so with the Panorama Mode on the TX7. When you press the shutter the exposure is set for the entire panorama, so if you begin in an area that is a lot lighter or darker than the rest of the scene your integrated shot won't be properly exposed. However, you can adjust for this by using the AE lock. I'm not a Scene Mode fan, but if you are this camera's for you. There's even a Gourmet Mode (for taking pictures of food), a Beach Mode, and a Pet Mode. OK, say you're spending a day at the beach and you want to take a particularly cute shot of your dog eyeing a hamburger. What to do? Beach Mode? Pet Mode? Gourmet Mode? You could make a case for any of them. While you're dithering over this the moment has passed. Just take the damn picture! The TX7 has a Burst Mode, for taking up to 10 shots in rapid succession. How rapid this is depends on the three choices the TX7 gives to you. At first I thought that this was a bit over-the-top, but in actual use I've liked having the three different rates. It's hard to explain, but in some action scenes it's better to have one over the other. Be careful with this feature, though. It's easy to load up lots and lots of images that are a pain to go through. The camera has a limited zoom range, but it's a good one: an effective 25mm through 100mm. Yes, 100mm isn't much of a telephoto, but remember that you can always crop. You can't make a photo any wider than the widest zoom range on the camera, and as far as I know there's no compact which gets any wider than 25mm. Moreover, there's no distortion at this focal length. My previous compact, a Canon SD700IS purchased in 2007, goes out to only 35mm and has pronounced barrel distortion at that setting. This is another huge plus for the TX7. Most reviews mention the short battery life, and that's indeed true. Of course, that's the price you pay for a tiny camera like this. What Sony should have done is to enable recharging through the dock. As you probably know, there is no direct cable from the TX7 to your computer. Instead, Sony provides a dock. You set the camera in the dock, and then transfer the pictures. Some reviewers have complained about having this separate item, but I found it slightly more convenient than inserting a cable. As I said, though, it would be great if the camera could be recharged through the dock. My first compact, a Fuji I got in 2002, did this, so I don't see why Sony does not. One last thing: I purchased what is described as the "blue" model. This is a joke. The camera is jet black. There's not even the slightest hint of blue. Overall, the TX7 is a great camera. It's small size, especially the slim profile, means you can easily slip into your pocket, even your shirt pocket. If in the next generation Sony expands the HDR, provides for AEB, and allows charging through the dock it will have close to a perfect little camera.

I have been using the Sony DSC series since the DSC-S70, the camera that got me to quit shooting film. I have bought a few more in the series along the way, and this DSC-TX7 replaced a DSC-W290, which is an incredible value. I had always wanted something smaller and ventured into the smaller Sony models when the DSC-T1 came out but I was disappointed at how hard it was to shoot it unless you left it at full auto. This was one of the very last of the series that came without some kind of vibration reduction, and the camera was so small that it was close to impossible to get a decent shot unless you leaned against something for support. Since my W290 already had vibration reduction, I knew the technology worked and I decided to make the jump to the DSC-TX7 as soon as the TX9 was announced, which made its price drop by about $50. For less than what I was hoping to spend on the TX7 I was able to score the TX7, a microSD card (more on that later) and a fantastic Amazon Basics leather case. The good: It is simply incredible. If you can point a camera at something, you know everything that you need in order to take great photos. Just put it in intelligent auto mode and let it rip. The rest of the modes are just icing on the cake. This is a great camera to carry everywhere, the form factor is almost identical to a credit card, and it is not very thick. The Amazon Basics leather case that I got was dirt cheap ($8 or so) and it is simply perfect for this because I can keep it on my belt. If you are interested in more creative control, there is a lot of stuff that you can play with, but it will never come close to a real "prosumer" camera. This camera is mostly designed for women to carry in a small purse or for men to drop it in a pocket, so their main selling point is the size. That said, for something so small it is very powerful and versatile. If photography is your hobby and size is not the main concern, there is an equivalent to this camera in the DSC-W series that will match or surpass it while being cheaper. The not so good: It isn't perfect. The menus take a while to get used to, regardless of how much you are convinced that you know what you are doing. It took me days to realize that even if I switched it to AVCHD, it was not shooting at 1920x1080. It took me even longer to figure out how to consistently switch back and forth between AVCHD and MP4 and the different form factors. The low light performance is there, but don't expect it to be noise free. You get some and you lose some. That's the only stuff I can complain about. I really love this camera! As I mentioned before, I opted for a microSD card instead of a Sony memory stick. The reason I did this is because my last two cell phones have had a microSD slot, this means I can shoot content, move it to my cell phone and transmit it from there, instead of having to wait until I get to my laptop. The class 6 microSD card cost me a lot less than a what I paid for the Sony Memory Stick pro duo mark 2 of the same size that I bought for my DSC-W290. The panorama mode works. It is not perfect, but it works. The best performance I have seen so far is if the light changes are not drastic, otherwise it seems to be trying to compensate for it too much. It is one of the "wow" features of the camera, and everyone I have shown the panoramas was shocked to learn that these were generated on the spot by the camera, and not by manipulation in the computer. One of the things that weren't obvious in Sony's advertising is that there are two aspect ratios available to do this, if you opt for the most extreme ratio you can sweep a wider arc. You can also shoot panoramas vertically, which creates some cool illusions if you use this feature too close to a building. The speed shutter can consistently take 10 frames per second, and you are able to cancel it in the middle of the write phase. I took some bursts of a moving fan and the auto focus did not get confused by the blades, it focused on the protective rack and everything came into focus properly without any funny artifacts. The macro on this camera is AWESOME. I spent DAYS taking macros of whatever little thing landed on my desk, I simply couldn't stop. HD video: Don't bother shooting AVCHD with this camera if you are only interested in dumping your videos to Youtube. I experimented with this camera extensively, and I can't tell the difference between what I shot in the two AVCHD modes and what I shot in the two MP4 modes, so now I am only shooting 720p MP4. The highest mode for AVCHD is spectacular when you see it through the HDMI to a proper HDTV, but it is simply a waste of time to shoot it to send to Youtube unless you want your archival copy to be at the highest possible resolution and quality. Editing AVCHD can be a problem too, but there are enough workarounds posted online so it shouldn't be too terrible. I would not hesitate to recommend this camera to anyone that is interested in a similar feature set as the Sony DSC-W290 but with better video, better sensor, no protruding lens and the ability to use non-memory stick media. If you don't need SD, and protruding lenses aren't an issue, then you should be looking at the DSC-W290 or something more recent: the way Sony releases the DSC series, there are always one W camera and one TX camera that have really close specifications and capabilities.