As I mentioned in the previous post, last Sunday was my 32nd birthday; but I don't celebrate it. This obviously also means I don't get many presents for my birthday. My parents gave me some clothing stuff and Daniel gave me a very cool light stand and shoot-through umbrella for my flashgun; but that's about it. But the best gift came from someone that I deeply admire and respect: myself!
About a year ago I bought the Kodak Zx1 pocket camera that records 720p video's on SD cards. While the camera works fine and is water resistant; it has some limitations that really got on my nerve, and so I decided to look for a replacement. The thing that mostly annoyed me was the fixed focus. While fixed focus is fine for most outdoor situations, it does get annoying if you want to get a slightly closer look at something and it just ends up as one big blurry blob on your photo or video.
My criteria were clear to me, and I started to look for a compact camera with autofocus and 720p video recording ability. My eye finally fell on the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W350. It's a tiny and very cute little point and shoot camera with a ton of features. It's about the size of a credit card, and it's only 16.7mm thick.
It has a 14.1 megapixel sensor and with the 35mm equivalent of a 26-105mm f/2.7-5.7 lens it gives quite decent image quality. Aside from decent pictures, it can also record 720p video with autofocus and even zoom ability. Especially the zoom is quite nice, because that is a feature that most compact point and shoot camera's don't have. The last feature I'd like to mention is that you can make panorama photos on this camera by just sweeping it from one side to the other. While the quality of the panorama photo is not the best, it's good enough for some funny pictures for websites.
I'm really happy with this little camera. Because it's so light and small, I can bring it with me at all times. So from now on my videos and "on the road" photo's will be much, much higher quality. Stay tuned for more of those 