The T50 really impressed us, and it’s a camera that perfectly demonstrates the latest technology. Its strength lies in a considerable gain in speed and very efficient stabilization, which is much better than what has been found in ultra-thin compacts with internal zooms. In the end, while the T50 could be mistaken for the T30, which it replaces, performance has improved. In addition, there is a new tactile 3 inch screen where all settings can be changed with well organized menus. Nice!
Let’s first come back to stabilization. The T-50’s proved to be much more efficient than that of its little brother, the T30, as the
Barbie photo shows. This camera can now stand the comparison with thicker compacts like the
Canon Ixus 850 IS.
In tests with the T30, we were bothered by the fact that there was no gain in sharpness with the transition from 6 to 7 megapixels. This has now been corrected and
the T50’s images are more precise. Sharpness from Sony’s latest creation is now even better than with Canon 7 megapixel cameras like the
A710 IS or Ixus 850.
Better stabilization, gains in speed, but still problems in white balance
The speed of the T50 was also improved and it is more reactive in everything. It goes from 1.4 to 1 second in startup, and even gains in recording time and autofocus.
As for increases in noise, this has not been corrected. It’s satisfactory at 200 ISO and problematic beyond this, so much so that some detail is lost. However, this time better stabilization allows us to shoot indoors without a flash at 200 ISO instead of 400 ISO. For this reason photos are more precise and have less noise.
Despite all of this, there was a major problem in our opinion that deprived this camera of a five star rating, which we would have liked to have given. White balance is still subject to failure in certain situations. As long as you are outdoors everything is fine and you have nice images with true colors. However, indoors it becomes complicated depending on the type of lighting. For example, we found a dominance in yellow in our test scene and
one in red on our test portrait. Therefore, for stabilized compacts, our preference goes to the Canon Ixus 850.
