The glossy T90 is the latest in a line of fashion conscious Sony Cyber-shot touch screen compacts - coming after the T77 and T500. Like both earlier models it features a sliding faceplate that covers and protects the lens when not in use, and also acts as another means of activating the camera when it is slid open.
The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T90 is a slim and stylish ultra-compact digital camera featuring a metal body, sliding front plate and folded optics. Measuring 13.9mm thick, highlights of the T90 include a 12.1 megapixel sensor, 35-140mm equivalent 4x zoom lens, large 3.0-inch touch-sensitive rear screen, Super SteadyShot optical image stabilisation, face and smile detection technology, ISO 3200 and intelligent scene recognition. The Sony T90 also boasts 1280x720 pixel 720p HD movie recording with stereo sound and HDMI output. Available in silver, black, pink, blue and brown.
The T90 is based around a 1/2.3" SuperHAD CCD image sensor with 12.1 megapixel resolution coupled to a Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar branded 4x optical zoom lens. It offers equivalent focal lengths that range from a 35mm wide angle to a 140mm telephoto, while the maximum aperture varies from f/3.5 to f/4.6 across the zoom range. Macro focusing is possible down to a minimum of one centimeter in what Sony dubs "magnifying glass" mode.. The T90 forgoes any optical viewfinder in favor of a 3.0" touch-panel wide-aspect LCD display with 230,000 dot resolution.
The Sony Cybershot T90 offers ISO sensitivity ranging from 80 to 3,200 equivalent, and includes both true mechanical image stabilization, as well as Digital Image Stabilization which functions by raising the camera's sensitivity (and along with it, the noise levels) so as to achieve a higher shutter speed and reduce motion blurring. The Sony T90 also offers face detection capable of differentiating between children and adults, recognizing and prioritizing one specific individual's face whenever they're present in a scene, and detecting when your subject blinks during an exposure. The T90 takes into account the locations of detected faces when calculating autoexposure and autofocus variables. There's even a dedicated "Smile Shutter" button which triggers the T90 to capture a photo upon detecting that the subject is smiling. This camera also features in-camera retouching capabilities, with soft focus, fish eye effect, cross filter, partial color, retro, radiation, red-eye correction, trimming, unsharp masking and smile effects on offer.
Other features include eleven scene modes plus an Intelligent Scene Recognition mode which automatically chooses between a subset of these modes, plus 720p MPEG-4 high-definition video, a Dynamic Range Optimizer function, and both USB / video output connections. The T90's svelte body is available in a range of colors including pink, brown, blue and black
Conclusion
Well, if you're OK with the idea of a touch screen - kind of intrinsic to this model - on the upside the T90 remains one of the more attractive credit card sized cameras out there. Use of said LCD fairly quickly becomes second nature with a bit of practice, and since basically everything about it is point and shoot in nature, as long as the user has a good eye, it's easy to take a decent photo.
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