By Andrew Liszewski
Usually when a digital camera includes a line about digital zoom in its feature list I glaze right over it, because quite frankly, it’s useless. All they’re really doing is zooming in on the center of the image, which is going to result in a softer, possibly pixelated result depending on the quality of the resizing algorithm it uses. But Sony’s new DSC-TX55 Cyber-shot could be a different story. Besides being just 12.2mm ‘slim’ (thinner than a AA battery) the DSC-TX55 has something Sony is calling “By Pixel Super Resolution” technology which adds an extra 5X digital zoom to the camera’s sliding 5X optical zoom mechanism, without losing quality at the camera’s max resolution of 16.2 million pixels. I’ve no idea how it really works, or if it’s just marketing talk covering up the same old thing.
‘Round back it sports a large 3.3-inch touchscreen OLED display, which is also great for reviewing pics or videos since the DSC-TX55 shoots full HD video as well. And, it can even grab 12MP photos while you’re recording in HD. Available this September, the camera will come with a ~$350 price tag which also gets you electronic image stabilization, 0.1 second autofocus times, a new in-camera ‘Picture Effect’ mode, panoramic photos which can be easily captured by just sweeping your camera from side to side and even single lens 3D.
[ PR – Sony’s Newest Cyber-shot Camera Expands Range Of Creative Options ] VIA [ Tech Digest ]
“Single-lens 3-D”. What an absolute crock. So they’re at least admitting that you have to cha-cha to get the two pictures? As you could with any camera ever made?
Then we have the recent slew of “3-D” cameras and phones that have lenses about a centimeter apart. WTF, people? Human eyes are, on average, two and a half inches apart (64 mm). That’s how far apart the centers of the lenses need to be for correct (human-scaled) 3-D. Period.
Real 3-D provides a fun experience and an opportunity to sell products. Why does it have to be ruined with fraud? It’s sad.