Accurate as a machinegun

Compact and lightweight, the Sony Cyber-shot WX30 is a contender for your next everyday camera. It sits snugly in your shirt pocket, ready to shoot, and captures excellent-quality photos for a compact.

At 92.2 x 51.9 x 19.1mm, the WX30 is smaller in the hand than a smart phone, though thicker, and weighs just 117 grams with battery and memory card. And it takes a mere 1.5 seconds to cock and fire off the first shot, so it's always ready for use.

The WX30 features 16.2 megapixel resolution and a 25mm wide-angle Carl Zeiss lens with 5x optical zoom, equivalent to 25-125mm in 35mm photography.

The interface is a 3-inch touch-screen with intuitive menus for controlling functions.

The lens is bright with an f/2.6 aperture at the tele-focal length, and I was particularly pleased with the Exmor R CMOS sensor, which allows WX30 to capture sharp and clean photos even in low-light conditions.

The camera can also record 1080i 50fps high-definition movies as well as lower-resolution video formats. Best of all, it comes with a micro HDMI port for playing recorded video directly on a large-screen LCD TV.

During our test, we found that the WX30 captured quality photos both indoor and outdoor. Studio portraits are a strong point of the camera, and female testers especially liked the Soft Skin shooting mode with its three levels - low, middle and high. The mode made the subject look younger by smoothing and lightening the skin.

Shooting with the WX30 is easy thanks to two auto modes - Intelligent Auto and Superior Auto.

In Intelligent Auto, the camera automatically selects the appropriate scene mode for the conditions, such as Portrait, Landscape, Macro and Low Light.

I love the Superior Auto mode, which allows the user to shoot still images in higher quality than the Intelligent Auto mode.

Switch to Superior Auto, and the camera automatically fires off a burst of images from which it creates a composite. This corrects the back lighting levels and reduces the noise by overlaying images, resulting in a higher-quality photo than shots captured in Intelligent Auto mode. As a result, the Superior Auto mode is very useful for capturing images with different light conditions, such as those back-lit with a dynamic range, and night scenes.

Apart from using the auto modes, you can manually select scenes using the Scene Selection function. Choose from Soft Skin, Soft Snap, Anti Motion Blur, and Hand-held Twilight as well as ISO (High Sensitivity).

I was especially impressed with results from the Hand-held Twilight mode. The camera accurately captured night scenes without the need for a tripod, firing a burst of several shots and overlaying them as a single shot.

I tested this mode by photographing Wat Ratchanadda at night. Although it was raining, and I had to shoot from inside my car, the photos came out sharp, beautifully capturing the temple's lighting.

Also fun to use are the seven picture effects - HDR Painting, Rich-tone Monochrome, Miniature, Toy Camera, Pop Color, Partial Color (red, green or blue), and Soft High Key.

HDR Painting, for example, lets you shoot multiple images with different exposures to create a single image that looks like an oil painting.

Meanwhile the Pop Color mode gives you artistic images that emphasise gaudy colour tones.

And with the Partial Color you can play around by capturing only green, red or blue while turning other colours monochrome.

My only real gripe with the WX30 was with the battery life, which can run out fast. Use it intensively every day and it will need nightly recharging. However, it can be charged via USB connection, so you can leave it plugged in when a PC or notebook computer is available.

The Sony Cyber-shot WX30 is in the shops for Bt8,990.

           Key specs

_ Image sensor: 16.2 megapixel

 Exmor R CMOS

_ Lens: Carl Zeiss 25-125mm

 (in 35mm equivalence) f/2.6-6.3

 aperture with 5x zoom

_ Display: 3-inch 921600 pixel LCD

_ Imaging Processor: BIONZ

_ Shutter Speed: 4 - 1/3200 secs

_ ISO Sensitivity: Auto/100/200/

 400/800/1600/3200

_ Video recording resolutions:

 1920x1080, 1440x1080, 1280x720

 and 640x480

_ Dimensions (WxHxD): 92.2X51.9X19.1mm

_ Weight (with Battery & Memory

 Stick): Approx. 117g