Share Your Images

Share your memories on the go with the slim and stylish 10.1 megapixel DSC-G3 Cyber-shot® digital camera. 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 4GB3 of internal memory, you can save hundreds of images and view them on the dazzling 3.5" (measured diagonally) touch screen LCD.

Product Features

• 10.1 Megapixel Super HAD™ CCD Image Sensor
• 3.5" Xtra Fine™ LCD Touch-Screen Displays
• Carl Zeiss® Vario-Tessar® 4x Optical Zoom Lens
• BIONZ™ imaging processor
• Slim design
• Colors available
• Face Detection technology
• Smile Shutter™ technology
• Double Anti-blur Solution
• Optical SteadyShot™ image stabilization
• High Sensitivity ISO 3200
• Intelligent Scene Recognition
• Dynamic Range Optimizer Standard and Plus
• Anti-blink Function
• Red-eye Correction
• Convenient photo modes
• MPEG Movie VX Fine Mode
• Semi-manual focus
• 9-Point Auto Focus
• Burst Mode
• Function Guide
• Easy Shooting Mode
• 16:9 High Resolution Mode
• 4GB internal memory
• Memory Stick Duo™ Media Convenience
• Stamina® Battery Power
• Wi-Fi connectivity
• Easy Upload Home Page
• Capture and share
• Portable Photo Album
• Easy Image Management
• HDTV Compatibility
• PhotoTV HD
• Wide Zoom display
• PHOTOMUSIC feature
• In-Camera Retouching Tools
• Creative Painting Tools
• Multi-Resizing function
• Password Lock
• Sharemark and Picture Motion Browser (PMB) Portable
• Picture Motion Browser (PMB) ver. 3.2

Freedom to Share When You Want, Where You Want

The G3 camera can wirelessly connect to any public Wi-Fi hotspot, allowing you to connect from just about anywhere at any time. Connect to the internet from home, hotels, airport, restaurants or any public hotspot. Uploading your images and videos is easy–just a few simple steps and friends and family can enjoy your memories.

Product Specs

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-G3’s Review

pcmag.com

05/11/09

Like other Sony touch-screen cameras, the 10.1-megapixel Sony Cyber-shot DSC-G3 looks gorgeous, takes beautiful photos, and features an intuitive interface. What’s more, tightly integrated Wi-Fi and a built-in Web browser let you upload pictures and video directly to photo-sharing services. There’s even support for the up-and-coming DLNA protocol, whereby the camera can act as a networked media server that streams photos to other DLNA-enabled devices. Unfortunately, slow data-transfer times and poor battery life detract from the total package. Also, at $499.99 (direct), the DSC-G3 is one of the most expensive point-and-shoot cameras you can buy.

The DSC-G3, which measures about 4 by 2.3 by 0.5 inches (HWD) and weighs 6.7 ounces, has a build unlike that of any other Sony pocket camera. Its sleek style is similar to that of the Cyber-shot DSC-T500 and T700, with a body of black brushed aluminum and a 3.5-inch widescreen touch-screen LCD on the back. But where the T500 and T700 require you to slide a small panel over the front of the camera to reveal the lens, the G3’s entire body slides open to provide access to the lens and the zoom controls. The only other physical controls on the camera are the large shutter release button and small Power, Playback, and WLAN buttons, the last to activate the wireless features.

When the camera is powered on, the lens never extends outside of the G3’s chassis, but it still manages a 4X optical zoom, with a focal range of 6.18mm to 24.7mm (35mm equivalent: 35mm to 140mm), with corresponding maximum f-stops at f/3.5 and f/10.

The 3.5-inch LCD screen contains 921,000 pixels. In playback mode photos look extremely sharp, as do text and icons in the menus for the wireless features. Oddly, the menus for the other functions look identical to what I’ve seen on the lower-resolution screens of the T500 or even the 230K-pixel T70. In those cases, the text and menus don’t take advantage of the screen’s higher resolution and look pixelated. At least the touch screen is very responsive when you’re using camera functions.

This camera’s big sell is its robust wireless capability. We really liked last year’s Wi-Fi–capable Nikon Coolpix S610c, but the G3 adds more functionality. It lets you easily upload video to YouTube and still images to photo Web sites such as Shutterfly, Picasa, and Photobucket at their full resolution (the S610c downsized images before sending them), then send notification e-mails (with URLs) to friends and family. You can also jump onto any Wi-Fi network, even ones that require you to accept agreement terms through a Web browser (since the G3 has one), which the S610c couldn’t handle.

But even under optimal wireless conditions, the camera’s photo-uploading speeds are terribly slow. And the on-screen keyboard (for entering log-in information and URLs) and Web browser buttons are very small and don’t always respond to your first touch. While testing, I uploaded photos over my home wireless network (802.11g Wi-Fi plugged into a cable modem averaging about 10 megabits per second downstream and 500 kilobits per second up). It took me 55 seconds to upload a 3.4MB photo to Picasa Web Albums on my PC and 2 minutes 30 seconds with the G3. Just getting to the upload screen takes 21 seconds. If you’re used to using your computer to upload photos to online sharing sites, you probably won’t have the patience to do it on the G3.

The G3 supports the DLNA networking protocol, which lets other DLNA devices on the same network view pictures on the camera. (Apple OS X and Windows Vista don’t offer any DLNA support that works with the G3, although Windows 7 should include it.) Via DLNA, it was easy to view photos using a Sony PlayStation 3. Filenames popped up right away, but thumbnails took a while to load, and displaying pictures full-screen on an HDTV was painfully slow. Popping the camera’s memory stick into the PlayStation’s memory card reader was much faster. (Check out our hands-on demonstration of DLNA and some of the G3’s other features.)

A swift shooter, the G3 can turn on and snap off its first shot in a quick 3.39 seconds, and after that, you need to wait an average of only 1.91 seconds between shots. And for a point-and-shoot camera, shutter lag is minimal. In the Shooting-Digital.com shutter lag test, the G3 averaged just 0.39 second between shutter press and image capture. These times make the G3 a good choice for capturing fast action, such as sports photos. Both the Canon PowerShot SD960 IS and the Samsung NV24HD are solid performers when it comes to minimizing shutter lag at 0.45 and 0.63 second, respectively. But they’re not as fast as the G3. If you need something even quicker, the Casio Exilim EX-FC100 can pop off 30 lower-resolution images in a single second.

I use the Imatest suite to measure image quality objectively, and the test suite indicated that the G3 averaged 2,236 lines per picture height at the center of the image, which dropped to an average of 1,825 toward the outer areas—this means very sharp photos. (To compare, the 12MP Canon PowerShot SD960 IS manages a higher 2,447 lines in the center but drops to an unacceptable 1,078 on one side and a dismal 374 on the other.) At the lens’s widest angle and middle position, there were moderate amounts of color fringing, but at the telephoto position the levels doubled (enough to be easily visible). Noticeable barrel distortion was present at the lens’s widest angle, as was pincushion distortion at its telephoto position. Color temperature was slightly cool.

On my test shots outside the lab, noise wasn’t terribly distracting until ISO 400 (and even then, levels weren’t any higher than on competing cameras). Images showed color fringing, but I really had to zoom in to detect it. Barrel distortion was noticeable at times, especially in shots of buildings. (See the slideshow for an example.) The Smile Shutter mode, in which the camera uses face detection technology to focus and snaps a photo only when subjects are smiling, is a fun idea, and it worked pretty well on my tests. On the whole, images were sharp and colorful.

Video captured with the G3 looks and sounds terrific, but you can shoot only in standard definition. If you want to shoot HD video, Sony’s $269 DSC-T90 it is a better bet and costs a lot less than the G3, but you won’t get built-in Wi-Fi. (Check out “HD Video on Any Budget” for additional HD-video–capable camera choices.) Don’t bother uploading videos to YouTube unless they run less than 90 seconds; a 1-minute video takes up about 75MB of space, and YouTube uploads are limited to 100MB. With the G3, you get 4GB of built-in memory, and the camera supports Memory Stick media up to 16GB.

Battery life on the G3, as with all of Sony’s touch-screen models, is miserable. Most compact cameras I’ve tested can last an entire week of heavy use on one charge, but Sony cameras have required several charges during that time. And given its Wi-Fi features, the G3 sucks power even more quickly than Sony’s touch-screen T500 and T700. With heavy use during testing, I had to charge the camera multiple times in a single day.

Although the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-G3 does take excellent pictures, its slow upload times probably won’t satisfy a serious craving for bleeding-edge tech. And then there’s the price. For the G3’s $500, you could buy the very talented $270 Canon PowerShot SD780 IS and pick up an Eye-Fi card with built-in Wi-Fi ($50 to $100 depending on model) and still have plenty of cash to spare.