Sony DSC-S600 Digital Camera Review

Sony DSC-S600 Digital Point and Shoot Camera Review

Sony DSC-S600 Digital Camera Major Features:

1/2.5" CCD imager
6 Megapixels
Up to 1000 ISO
Carl Zeiss 3x wide (31-93mm 35mm equiv) zoom lens
Uses 2 standard AA Batteries
USB 2.0 interface
2" color LCD display
Movie mode, 640x480 @ 30fps with sound
5 Area Multi-Point AF with auto Macro
Auto exposure plus Scene and High Sensitivity modes
7-shot Burst mode at 6M resolution

My experience:
In May 2006, I bought the Sony DSC-S600 Digital Camera from Circuit City for $199.00 which included a 512mb Sony DUO memory card. Since my previous digital camera had issues with low light indoor situations - even with the flash, I took the camera into the garage at night and took a photo. To my suprise the photo came out great. This camera has a super bright flash - so much so that I squint if someone takes my photo with it. The indoor photos are pretty good. Much superior to my older Kodak camera. My old Kodak camera takes great outdoor photos. The Sony does not do nearly as well there. I can probably compensate for it by playing with some of the settings, but that defeats the idea of point and shoot. The menu system is poor at best. Changing settings is painful. If the menu navigation was better I would be more likely to adjust the settings. Focusing can sometimes be sluggish. Sometimes enough to miss the shot. Sometimes it locks on and you think you have the shot when looking at the LCD display. But later when put it on the computer, you see a very blurry unusable photo. Very disappointing sometimes. The transfer software that comes with it is horrible. I ended up making a batch file to do the transfer. Now I have had the camera for 2 years and have taken thousands of photos with no problems. On 2008/11/22 I turned on the camera, took a few photos and the camera wouldn't power off. It looked like the power button was stuck in. So I took the camera apart and didn't see anything obvious and put it back together. It still wouldn't power on. With nothing to loose, I pried around the power button with a small screwdriver and broke the button into pieces. That exposed the circuit board and I could see the small pad used to turn on the camera. I pushed it and the camera came on. I offloaded the photos onto the computer. Later, I took the camera apart again and drilled a small hole in the plastic wrap-around above where the power pad is located. I cut a brass pin from a coax connector and put it in the hole. Put everything back together and it's working again.
View Sony DSC-S600 ISO Image Noise comparision

Sony DSC-S600 Digital Camera Pros:

Good quality indoor photos with flash
High power flash

Sony DSCS600 Digital Camera Cons:

Power button broke
Slow flash recharge time if batteries not at full charge
Focus sometimes too slow
Outdoor photos get washed out by sunlight.
Display too small to determine shot quality
Auto mode is sluggish to go above 80 iso

Sony DSC-S600 Digital Camera Spot Rating: 3 spots
At the time and for the price it was a good deal, but I think it should have been better.

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