Sony Cyber-shot DSC-TX66 review: A point-and-shoot that packs in the features

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-TX66 subcompact ($350) is a small even for a subcompact: It's half an inch thick and roughly the same width and length of a credit card. But this tiny camera is packed with smart technology and innovative features. I checked out a press sample, and here's what I found.

Smart technology. As with most point-and-shoot digital cameras, the TX66 includes a traditional Program Auto (Mode P), which automatically adjusts aperture and shutter speed. But the TX66 has two additional auto modes. Intelligent Auto automatically determines the appropriate scene mode for specific shots. For example, when I opened my wallet and focused on a credit card, it selected the Macro or Close Focus setting. But when I focused on a face, it selected the Portrait scene mode, and in low light, Night Portrait. (Scene modes are auto modes used for specific shooting situations.)

The other auto mode, Superior Auto, fires off a burst of images and then creates a composite image by selecting the best portions of each photo. This can be effective with backlighted subjects; a person standing in front of a window on a bright sunny day, for example. In such situations, normal Auto modes either capture details of the subject indoors or the background outdoors, but not both. Because Superior Auto mode selects different sections and composites them together, you get the best of both worlds: details in both shadows and highlights, inside and outside.

Superior Auto mode (left image) does a better job at capturing and maintaining details in bright areas, such as the scene outside the window, than Program Auto mode (right image).

I found the Superior Auto mode didn't always work, though. Sometimes it seemed to snap only one photo, and the resulting photo looked identical to the same shot taken in Program Auto mode. But on the whole, all three auto modes worked well.

The camera comes equipped with a variety of other useful smart or automated features, including Smile Shutter, Panorama Sweep, and two self-portrait self-timing modes that begin to count down as soon as one or two subjects are recognized.

Again, in my tests, I found most of the automated features worked pretty well, although the self-portrait self-timing modes had a hard time recognizing two subjects in profile (for example, when the subjects were kissing) or if one face was in shadow and the other in bright light. In those cases, the self-timer never started.

A few quibbles over basic features. I was struck by the camera's compact size and elegantly minimalist design out of the box. You turn it on by sliding down a large plate to reveal the camera's lens and flash. The TX66 includes not only a 5x optical zoom lens, more than the usual 3x optical found on many subcompacts, but the zoom is wide angle, too, making it well-suited for group portraits and landscapes. And the lens is non-telescoping, so it doesn't protrude from the body.

A 3.3-inch touchscreen display takes up the whole back of the camera, so no physical controls are located there. But while there's no dedicated video button, there is a virtual Movie control that you can touch on the display.

In addition to three Auto modes, the TX66 includes a Panorama mode and a 3D Shooting mode, among others.

Overall, I was impressed with the TX66's stills and video in bright and low light. Its burst mode seemed decent, too: I was able to capture 10 shots, at its maximum resolution of 18 megapixels, before the camera had to stop shooting to catch its breath. And the sensitivity goes all the way up to ISO 12,800, which lets you take shots in very low light, but the images I shot at that setting displayed lots of grainy speckled dots.

As with most models in its class, the TX66's flash isn't very versatile. But it does include a slow-sync flash mode in some settings, which can be helpful when you're shooting flash shots using the low-light or night-time settings.

As you'd expect on such a small camera, there isn't a lot of room for controls, which can be annoying for those with large fingers. For example, the shutter button on top is long, thin, and responsive, but it was too close to the On/Off button for me. And the zoom control is one of the smallest I've seen. It worked, but wasn't always the most accurate or comfortable to use.

Some controls are too small: For example, the zoom button is tiny and hard to control.

One design feature I found unusual is that the TX66 stores photos on either microSD memory cards or Sony's Memory Stick Micros, which are both very tiny compared to SD or Memory Stick Duo cards. You may need to purchase a memory-card adapter to transfer your photos and video to a computer. You also need to make sure to insert the tiny memory cards correctly into the camera, or it won't recognize them, which happened to me several times.

However, these are quibbles. It's a fairly quick process to set up the camera and start shooting in one of the camera's three different auto modes, which is just one of the camera's many smart technologies.

Shooting in 3D is hit or miss. Like many Sony Cyber-shots, the TX66 can capture 3D still photos as well as 3D panoramas. In my experience, though, capturing shots in 3D was hit or miss at best. Some photos and panoramas had no 3D effect at all. Others seemed mixed: Some areas of the photo appeared with the 3D effect, but other sections looked flat. In addition, the camera has a special Sweep Multi Angle mode, which attempts to simulate a 3D effect on the camera's 2D display, but I didn't find that effective.

Bottom line: The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-TX66 worked quite well and was easy to use. I think it's one of the few cameras that makes an attempt at luring back the masses that have migrated to using their smart phones for photos and video. It may not be a wirelessly connected device, like a smart phone, but the TX66 offers an impressive assortment of features, a 5x zoom, and full HD resolution video (with the ability to zoom during video capture). It's also extremely light and portable.

—Terry Sullivan