The headline grabbing feature of the Sony DSC W300 is likely to be its 13.6 megapixel resolution. In my opinion this offers two big advantages. The first is that you can crop a photo and still be able to make a print. The second is that it gives you flexibility to be able to choose between shooting at a very high resolution or to increase the amount of zoom at your disposal. This is achieved through a feature Sony refer to as super zoom and it become available as you shoot at lower resolutions. There is a maximum of 19x zoom available when shooting at the lowest resolution.
You will notice that I have not included picture quality in the big advantages. This is because I feel that extra megapixels are not the most important factor in taking a high quality photo. There is also a school of thought that in squeezing more and more pixels into a small sensor picture quality may even be harmed rather than improved owing to the fact that each pixel has to be smaller and smaller.
The Sony DSC W300 is a point and shoot camera, but with a number of extra features when compared to other similar models. To start with there are settings for widescreen television playback and 6 x 4 inch prints without the need to trim the image in order to fit it on to the paper for printing. Next up come image stabilisation to counter any handshake when taking a photo and face detection focusing. This is for producing sharper portrait photos.
If you want to take a photo every time someone smiles then the DSC W300 can achieve this through its smile shutter setting. It looks out for someone smiling and automatically fires off a shot.
You can adjust sharpness, saturation and contrast as well as trying to combat noise with the noise reduction setting. After a portrait photo has been taken using flash you can also try to clean up any red eye in the shot by using the red eye correction tool. The power of the flash can be increased or reduced to suit the photo opportunity.
Colours are well catered for too. Alongside the standard black and white and sepia options there are colour filters for red, green, blue, warm and cool.
More advanced features such as continuous shooting for 100 shots and bracketing are available too.
Another classy point and shoot camera with more options than standard is the Canon IXUS 970 IS.
Rating: Average
When it comes to picture quality I can’t describe the Sony DSC W300 as outstanding, but it does a decent job in most situations.
Summary: For a full review, ratings and sample images please visit: Sony DSC W300 review and ratings