The "money" shots, have mostly been because I was there and had a camera with me. (Was it Robert Frank who gave the advice to aspiring photographers asking about equipment, "F8 and be there"?)
I also appreciate "exhibition quality" photographs. After comparing a fine ink jet print compared to my best darkroom effort, I threw out the chemical darkroom.
When I want great quality, I use a DSLR. For every day, I use a pocket point and shoot. 99% of my images are shot with the pocket camera.
Recently it was time to hand down my camera and after careful consideration I opted for the little Sony DSC W300. Here are my comments after more than 500 shots.
![w300 front.jpg](http://lh4.ggpht.com/peterbmarks/SI7b_duEEUI/AAAAAAAAAeA/pVvg7FwQMAA/w300%20front.jpg?imgmax=800)
It's a lovely looking camera with a titanium coating that I think resists scratching while being light weight. Small and flat enough to really fit in my top pocket was one of my primary requirements.
Only a 3X zoom which is not outstanding but the lens is a maximum of f2.8 so it's worth it. (Those huge zooms are incredibly slow even though the font element might look big).
13.6 megapixels is more than I need so I run it at 5Mp normally.
Starts up reasonably fast, not as quick as a film camera though.
The display on the back is great, the UI is a little bit flashy, with animation and so on. Sometimes I hunt around for things but generally I find them. The main features: macro, flash, and self timer are directly available except for exposure override (+- EV) which requires you to go through the menu button and then possibly more pushes.
The dial has the useful functions I want including High ISO and higher ISO. (More on this later).
Battery life seems very good. I would take it away for a week without worrying.
There's a bunch of fancy functions like recognising faces and focussing on them, even recognising faces and focusing on children's faces rather than adults! (Really, I kid you not). But generally I don't use these.
The best feature is that it has an optical view finder. Very small but there. Being able to hold the camera steady against my face is a great feature for me even if it isn't very accurate.
Complaints
Doesn't take standard memory. Like SD. I had to buy some mysterious Sony Memory stick to put in this thing. For the features I was prepared to suffer this pain but this is a real negative. Just give me an SD slot next time!
The cable for plugging into the computer is not only proprietary, but I always plug it in the wrong way up first.
![w300 socket.jpg](http://lh5.ggpht.com/peterbmarks/SI7e5pSQ5nI/AAAAAAAAAeE/_txSdfD9qGU/w300%20socket.jpg?imgmax=800)
It looks almost the same on both sides and there is no visual clue as to which way is "up".
Photos
This is all academic, until you see some shots. I took the shot in this early blog post in a lift under very strange lighting. The point is, I had the camera on me.
In daylight, the photos look great:
![team.jpg](http://lh4.ggpht.com/peterbmarks/SI74jXhE_pI/AAAAAAAAAeI/t4uv1wPq9Go/team.jpg?imgmax=800)
What's really impressive is that in near dark like the shot below, available light f2.8 1/20th sec, ISO6400, pictures are still somewhat usable:
![Vanessa.jpg](http://lh5.ggpht.com/peterbmarks/SI75MD8-xQI/AAAAAAAAAeM/WifwZoAAeo4/Vanessa.jpg?imgmax=800)
Overall, I'm happy with this camera. As I said above, I hate the storage card, the cable and I'd like to tweak the options that are available directly on the buttons. I love the high ISO, screen, and viewfinder.
This review was inspired by the other camera I considered, the Ricoh digital reviewed by Alastair.