Unpredictable

I've owned another Sony Cybershot for the past several years and have been very happy with it, but wanted to upgrade to a sleeker model with image stabilizion, higher megs, and ISO, and face detection , along with smile detection was a novelty I couldn't pass up.   The Cybershot W120 got good reviews, the appearance was very stylish, I chose the pink, and it seemed like a very good value for the price.

As soon as I got it home I started some test shots under various lighting conditions and settings. After viewing the results,  I was very disappointed.

First problem was the exposure, some pictures, even from shot to shot under the same lighting conditions differed, either too light or dark, but with a tendency to overexposure by +.5-+1.  While you can manually adjust the exposure either way, since it's unpredictable, it's hard to compensate.  Plus, on auto mode, who wants to have to bother with taking that extra step? Most of my pictures had to be adjusted in a photo editor afterwards, very time consuming.

I also found when using face detection, some faces were in focus, while others weren't. This was due to the fact that not all faces were always picked up by the focusing mechanism. Again, giving unpredictable results.  I did however find the smile detection feature to be accurate when only one person was the subject. That was kind of cool.

I also found the focus to be soft, not crisp and clear. In one test self portrait one eye was in focus and the other wasn't !  I'd say out of taking 20 self portrait shots, with the camera on a stable surface, using the self timer, in medium lighting conditons, maybe only 4 were usable.  Not good!

In addition coloring from shot to shot often differed using the same settings. My experience was the colors were either washed out, natural looking or tended towards a yellowish/greenish tinge. Again, highly unpredictable, and again pictures had to be retouched and corrected in an editor later on.

While the flash appears to be quite strong, which would be desireable for lighting up a room, I found it to be too strong, over exposing my pictures, even when choosing the low flash intensity setting. The lag time between flash shots was too long as well.

I also found the LCD display to be quite grainy in comparison to my older Sony S90. and when composing shots, the autofocus was difficult to see in the display .limiting creativity.

And lastly, there isn't a delete button, you have to go out of record mode and into playback mode to delete ,  extra steps that are time consuming.

All in all I've been very disappointed . I was expecting it to fair as well as my older Sony Cybershot, that while it was only a 4 meg,  took absolutely great pictures . They were always in focus and very color accurate.  I think I'll just ocntinue to use my old one for now as I find it to be reliable and predictable, and above all, that's what I want in a new camera.

Sorry to say it's going back tomorrow........