Sony recalls Cybershot DSC-T5 - a still image camera that does amazing video

That this particular camera is being recalled is a major coincidence for me since, just this past weekend, my brother-in-law Erik was in town and he was using the smaller-than-a-shirt-pocket DSC-T5 to shoot video as well as still images. Just before he left, he asked if I could help him unload the memory cards onto some other media (I used DVDs) and I used the opportunity to begin the testing for two products: Digital Foci's Picture Porter Elite and Digital Foci's PhotoSafe. These are two very cool hard drive-based products that can be used to get the pictures and video off your removable media (Compact Flash, SD, MMC, etc.) without needing a PC. They have their own slots. I'm not done testing them yet, but on first blush, they're like a must have for anybody taking lots of pictures and constantly maxing out their memory cards.

Anyway, in the course of unloading Erik's memory sticks into the Porter Elite and then transferring them from there to a PC (for DVD burning), ZDNet associate producer Matt Conner (who handles a lot of ZDNet's video) and I were looking at the videos that Erik made and were shocked by their excellent quality. Matt, who normally works with professional video gear was so impressed that he was looking into buying one for himself. The only downside (aside from how quickly videos can eat up memory) is that the camera is so small that it's hard to hold still. But even so, the picture quality in terms of automatically handling color and white balance impressed us. It had me wondering if the same exact video technology was in all of Sony's Cybershot's (let me know if you know).

So, now comes news of the recall which is too bad. According to the AP piece, "the problem only affects cameras with numbers between 3500001 and 3574100. U.S. customers can go to Sony's support Web site at http://esupport.sony.com for more information or call Sony support at 877-573-7669."