Sony CyberShot DSC-TX7

Full Review

The Sony DSC-TX7 is a stylish compact camera that was announced in CES, January 2010. It comes with some enhanced features and it is the first compact camera from Sony’s stable that supports full HD (1080p at 50fps interlaced) video recording.

Features & Design
The TX7 is a 10.2MP compact camera that has an Exmor R’ CMOS sensor that is only found in Sony’s dSLR cameras.  It employs a BIONZ imaging processor and Carl Zeiss lens that has 4x optical zoom (25mm-100mm in 35mm equivalent range).  The camera features Optical SteadyShot image stabilization, face detection (up to 8 faces), 9-point autofocus system and three metering modes (Multi-Pattern / Centre Weighted / Spot). Its ISO settings start from 125 to 3200 including Auto.

The camera has a handful of shooting modes that let us capture good looking images. We particularly found modes like Handheld Twilight, Anti-Motion Blur and Backlight Correction HDR very useful. In these modes, the camera took multiple images and combined them to get the most optimized image for the selected mode.

The camera has a 10fps burst mode in full resolution which is impressive for a compact camera. It also captures full HD (1080i) movie at 50 fps, and it is the first full HD capable compact camera we've seen. Lower resolutions like 1440x1080 are recorded in MPEG-4 format though. Fortunately, it supports SD/SDHC cards apart from the Sony’s own Memory Stick Pro Duo and it has 45MB of onboard memory. The Sony TX7 came with a dock to connect the camera to a PC or a display via its onboard HDMI and S-Video out. The battery is rated at 230 shots only which is average by today’s standards.

The compact TX7 has a classy and slim design. The look is clean and the brushed metal design with a glossy finish makes the camera look very classy.  The body is slim and pocketable but weighs in a little heavy at 149g. The glossy brushed aluminium body also ensures lasting build quality. The camera has a non-protruding lens protected by a slide-down lens cover on the front like the older Sony TX1.

The autofocus was quick and very accurate. Even at the tele end (4x optical), the focusing happened without any stutter.

This sliding covers also acts as a power on/off switch. The back is taken up by a 3.5-inch TFT display with 921k colors support but this leaves no room for a thumb-rest. Despite the Sony’s simple touchscreen interface, we still prefer those dials and buttons when it comes to accessing camera controls. There are only a few buttons on the device on the top- a power on/off button, shutter release, playback button, dedicated video button and the zoom lever. The touchscreen is bright and responsive. It’s simple and customizable interface design is very easy to use and does not require much time to get used to. Images captured are nicely categorized and they can be edited as well.

Performance
The Sony TX7 had a start-up time clocking 1.4 seconds which is reasonable. The shutter lag with pre-focusing took 0.1 seconds while without pre-focusing it measured anything between 0.3 to 0.5 seconds which is also decent. It also managed to capture 10 frames per second in burst mode which is excellent for a compact camera.
The autofocus was quick and very accurate. Even at the tele end (4x optical), the focusing happened without any stutter. The inclusion of touch focus gave the Sony an advantage over non-touchscreen cameras as it gave us the freedom to focus where we wanted in the frame through mere touch. The face recognition worked well and the camera also let us change the priority faces among the eight detected faces by just touching them on screen.
The wide-angle end of the Sony TX7 is a bit soft on the corners but the centre showed good sharpness. Chromatic aberration was noticed on lightly contrasted areas.  Barrel distortion at wide angle was perceptible only when viewing at full resolution but it was still more visible than what we saw with the Panasonic ZR1 which also has a 25mm wide angle lens. The camera let us capture subjects as close as 1 centimetre which is amazing and our  macro shots came out well with slight noticeable chromatic aberration.  Overall, the optical lens performance is above average.

Colors were accurate and there was no oversaturation. Contrast was great and pictures came out with vivid colors and acceptable details. However, when viewing the images in full resolution on a 22-inch LCD monitor, the sharpness and details could have been better but still better than what the Sony WX1 and TX1 could offer.  The Backlight Correction HDR mode on the other hand let us capture good amount of shadow details. From ISO 125 till ISO 200, the noise presence was minimal but at ISO 400, the noise reduction process took its course and details degraded. Beyond this point, the noise presence and loss in details spoiled the overall picture quality.  However, the Handheld Twilight mode let us capture very impressive night shots with great details and very acceptable noise levels. Overall, the image quality is good but not great.

The full HD videos captured at 50 fps (interlaced) were very good by digital compact camera standards. Compared to the 720p HD videos captured with Sony’s earlier Cybershots like the TX1 and WX1, or even the Panasonic ZR1, the Sony TX7’s videos had better details and better frame rates. Colors looked vibrant but purple fringes were also visible in highly contrasted areas. The optical zoom also worked smoothly in video recording mode and there was no unwanted mechanical zooming noise. All in all, the Sony recorded decent full HD videos.

At Rs. 22,990, the Sony might be at the top of the compact camera price range but its excellent features, stylish design coupled with its decent full HD video quality make it a top-notch digital compact camera.

Bottom Line

A stylish compact camera, the Sony CyberShot DSC-TX7 captures very good quality images and offers features that actually are dependable and useful. Its full HD video recording feature is one of the many worth-mentioning features.