Sony DSC-S70 Digital Camera

The Lens

One feature that Sony has certainly made a big deal about in the Cybershot cameras is the use of a Carl Zeiss lens. Carl Zeiss has been in the optics business for over 150 years and has a history of being a superior manufacturer. In fact, Carl Zeiss optics are found in some of the best cameras that money can buy. Therefore it is no surprise that Sony touts the S70's Carl Zeiss lens as a major feature, stamping the Carl Zeiss name on two locations on the lens.

In sheer size, the lens just looks impressive, suggesting that this digital camera is much more than just that. In fact, the move to higher quality optics seems to be a logical step in digital camera evolution, however few manufacturers are employing this method. Sure, an increased megapixel count does result in increased image quality, however this is only good to a limited extent. There is only so much quality that can come out of an image if it is poor coming in due to a lower quality lens.

The Carl Zeiss lens is a move in the right direction, as the lens paired up with Sony's .55", 3.3 megapixel CCD produces clean and crisp images. The glass on the lens less less like that of a typical digital camera and more like that of an SLR camera. The outer glass incorporates an anti-reflective coating which can be seen in the greenish tint that the lens gives off when viewed from an angle.

The S70 also incorporate a 3x optical zoom which forces the lens to stand away from the camera body. Although the optical zoom is of great quality as a result of the high quality optics involved, the optical zoom is extremely slow, requiring 3 seconds to go from full wide angle (34mm) to full telephoto (102mm). In addition, the lens takes a full 3.5 seconds to extend from the camera body upon power-on; a slow speed which is very frustrating to work with. In addition, it is necessary to endure this 3.5 second time delay when shifting the camera from record mode to play mode and vice versa.

The front of the S70's box as well as the left side of the camera boast a 6x zoom, accomplished digitally. As we mentioned in our Digital Camera Review Guide, digital zoom is far less desirable than optical zoom. In fact, many users just choose to disable the digital zoom abilities of the camera and rely solely on the optical zoom, as the image quality is not compromised in this method of zoom. Unlike the optical zoom, the S70's digital zoom is extremely fast, producing the 6x effective zoom from a 3x optical zoom in 1.5 seconds. The added graininess that comes with the S70's digital zoom (as well as all others) should be enough to keep the vast majority of people away.

The Carl Zeiss lens has f-stops from 2 to 8 when in wide angle mode and from 2.4 to 8 when in telephoto mode, with seven stops in-between in wide angle and six intermediate stops in telephoto mode. This is about on average with other digital cameras in this price range, but still far less than what is seen in SLR cameras. Shutter speeds from 8 seconds to 1/1000th of a second are also available.

Does Sony's use of high quality optics pay off? Subjectively it is hard to tell, but it appears so. In our Image Quality section we will investigate this further.