During the 2009 Sony CES Keynote, Sir Howard Stringer unveiled the slim and stylish 10.1 megapixel DSC-G3 Cyber-shot digital camera. With built-in Wi-Fi and an intuitive Easy Upload Home Page make it a snap to upload your photos and videos to popular sharing sites directly from your camera, and even send email notifications to friends and family. Packed with impressive features, this camera comes equipped with Digital Portable Photo Album, Optical SteadyShot™ image stabilization and Intelligent Scene Recognition. Plus, with 4GB of internal memory, you can save hundreds of images and view them on the dazzling 3.5″ touch screen LCD.
A powerful 10.1 megapixel 1/2.3” Super HAD™ CCD image sensor helps you capture gorgeous images with superb contrast and clarity down to the finest detail. Featuring 921K pixels, the ultra-bright, high-contrast LCD screen with a wide viewing angle is among the highest resolution screens available on a compact digital camera, and displays your images with astonishing visual clarity.
The newly developed Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens enables close-up shooting up to just under ½” (1cm) from the subject (in Magnifying Glass Mode), complimenting the 4X optical zoom. Measuring just over 5/8” (16.4mm), the DSC-G3 is slim enough to slip into a pocket, so you can take it with you wherever you go.
The DSC-G3 is exclusively available in black from SonyStyle for $499, a price that Stan and myself balked at but I’m sure it will gradually come down if this device proves to be successful. The camera was easy to operate and I liked the UI, but Stan didn’t think that the UI was an improvement over the DSC-G1. Wifi was decent, but the connection at the show was weak so I couldn’t really tell if it was gimmicky or not. It kept disconnecting at CES, but I have full faith in Sony that this device will be flawless with Wifi.
Built-in Wi-Fi 802.11b/g connectivity1 lets you connect your Cyber-shot DSC-G3 camera to your home network and just about any accessible wireless hotspot and upload photos and videos directly from the camera. In addition, the DSC-G3 comes with complimentary access to AT&T hotspot locations including Starbucks. Complimentary access is offered until January 31, 2012.
The in-camera Easy Upload Home Page lets you upload photos and videos directly from your DSC-G3 to popular sharing sites without the need for a computer. After the initial set-up, the DSC-G3 remembers your user settings and provides easy and convenient uploading to your favorite sharing sites, including YouTube, Picasa Web Albums, Shutterfly and Daily Motion. The camera allows you to browse and view your pictures posted on popular sharing sites directly from the camera, as well as send e-mail notifications to friends and family with links they can follow to view your uploaded images.
Other features:
- Face Detection technology detects up to eight individual faces and controls flash, focus, exposure, and white balance to deliver accurate, natural skin tones with reduced red-eye for beautiful images of family and friends.
- The popular Smile Shutter™ technology automatically detects and captures smiling faces. Simply choose the Smiley Face feature and the camera will capture a smile the moment it happens. You can also select subject priority (Adult or Child Priority or touch subject on screen) and indicate the degree of Smile Detection Sensitivity to high (small smile), medium (laugh) or low (grin).
- In addition to High Sensitivity Mode (ISO), you can select up to eight ISO settings (Auto, 80, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200) when shooting in Program Auto Mode to adjust sensitivity to your shooting conditions.
Intelligent Scene Recognition - Intelligent Scene Recognition (iSCN) Mode automatically detects eight different types of scenes and selects the appropriate camera settings: Backlight, Backlight Portrait, Twilight, Twilight Portrait, Twilight using a Tripod, Portrait, Landscape and Macro. iSCN has 2 modes: Advanced and Auto. In Auto Mode, the camera takes a single shot using the optimal settings. In Advance Mode, the camera takes a picture with the current settings and only if necessary takes a second picture with optimized setting.
- The new Anti-blink function works to help counter blinking and squinting. When the camera is set to Portrait Mode, the Anti-blink function captures two images, recording only the photo with less squinting. If a blink is detected in other shooting modes, a warning will be displayed after you take the shot.
- Choose from fourteen convenient photo modes to quickly adjust for specific shooting conditions. Photo modes include Auto, Program Auto, Easy Shooting, High Sensitivity, Landscape, Soft Snap, Twilight Portrait, Twilight, and scene selections such as Beach, Snow, Fireworks, Underwater, High Speed Shutter and new Gourmet Mode. Gourmet Mode lets you capture mouth-watering culinary creations with all the color and clarity of images you see in gourmet magazines.
- Capture VGA (640 x 480) audio/video clips at a high frame rate (up to 30 frames per second9). The maximum length of time you can shoot continuously is approximately 10 minutes.
- You can fire up to 100 shots at approximately .62 second intervals (at any resolution; VGA to high resolution mode).
Here are some images of the DSC-G3 we took at CES 2009:
