Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T70 review

Performance
Smaller lenses, like the non-protruding kind typical in faceplate-activated cameras, can tend to barrel distortion. Happily, we didn't see any evidence of this with our test shots. The automatic white balance is another strong point, coping with different conditions inside and outdoors.

The maximum ISO speed, ISO 3,200 (right) is unusable when compared to ISO 800 (left), ironically because of the impressionist noise reduction rather than the noise itself

The lack of an actual portrait mode -- you're stuck with smile shutter -- is a bit annoying, but the automatic mode provides decent portraits with smooth, warm flesh tones. Changing the colour mode to saturated rather than normal can be extreme for portraits, but if used in conjunction with some tinkering with the flash intensity yielded some nice results.

Shutter lag is non-existent. In our tests we beat the stopwatch every time. The T70's continuous mode was willing to continue for around 1 minute 45 seconds, at 1.5 frames initially but under protest for most of the way. Although this isn't anything to write home about, the single shot mode impresses by being nearly as fast as burst mode, the lack of shutter lag meaning the T70 will snap as fast as you can hit the shutter button.

The most commonly-voiced concern with touchscreens is that they leach battery power. We didn't find that the case here, managing to fill a 1GB Memory Stick Pro Duo twice over before the battery died.

Image quality
Speckly image noise is an issue, as always on compacts. However, it's only at the ISO 800 setting that noise itself is the problem. Above that, the camera's noise reduction software throws the baby out with the bathwater, eliminating noise by blurring all detail. Still, the lower ISO speeds are crisp and detailed. In low light, the adjustable flash intensity proved invaluable to produce some decent shots.

Conclusion
The touchscreen is probably the make or break feature of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T70. If you don't get on with the touchscreen but still value refined styling, the Canon Digital IXUS 860 IS has a similar-sized screen but is fairly more expensive.

More vanilla looks but marginally superior images are available at a similar price in the Fujifilm FinePix F50fd. Nonetheless we enjoyed the touchscreen experience and were pleased with the pictures we got from this classy compact.

Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Shannon Doubleday