Sony T900 or the new upcoming TX1 model??

Hi all,

I have been contemplating for a while now about getting the Sony Cybershot T900 as i am going on holiday end of September, but now have seen the new DCS-TX1 is due out sometime in September and am now in a quandrie wether to hold on and cut it fine with whatever the release date will be for the TX1 and me going on my holiday!

I have seen the Crave insight on the TX1's new features and wonder if the new additions of the panorama shooting mode, the EXMOR R C-MOS sensor, option to customize screen layout fot most used options and the ability to do party shot mode also make this worth choosing instead of the T900?

....despite the TX1 having 2M pixel less and a smaller screen by half an inch (3 inch) i am wondering what the performance difference will be between the two with their sensors for performing in low light.

Hoping someone who currently owns a T900 can give their personal opinion on it from experience and even maybe one of you kind cnet guys can shed light from experience with both of these cameras which one could be the one?

Hope someone can enlighten me on the two in comparison even though the TX1 is not officially out yet.

Thanks anyway for any responses in advance ; )

Wait for the TX1.
The one thing they've promoted about it, is the one thing I'm not happy about with the T900: the low light (un)sensitivity. Pictures get pretty darn grainy when not in full daylight, really, it gets painful from time to time.
Also, my theory is that 10 megapixels is better than my 12, since Sony probably aims for the pics to be the same size in megabytes (4,5 mb per photo on avarage in my case) which means my photo's suffer from a lot of compression.. well, vagueness. They look great as pics, but not as blow-ups, which kind of negates the whole 'high-res' idea.. I remember my old Canon EOS used to produce 6MP photo's at 3,5 megabytes.. imagine the sony making 200% sized pictures inside just 125% the file size..
Ah well, the things I'm super happy about make it worthwhile: great 720p recording with good sound, really fast operation and super-slim portability.. but the TX1 has those as well

VictorMilton says:
Wait for the TX1.
The one thing they've promoted about it, is the one thing I'm not happy about with the T900: the low light (un)sensitivity. Pictures get pretty darn grainy when not in full daylight, really, it gets painful from time to time.
Also, my theory is that 10 megapixels is better than my 12, since Sony probably aims for the pics to be the same size in megabytes (4,5 mb per photo on avarage in my case) which means my photo's suffer from a lot of compression.. well, vagueness. They look great as pics, but not as blow-ups, which kind of negates the whole 'high-res' idea.. I remember my old Canon EOS used to produce 6MP photo's at 3,5 megabytes.. imagine the sony making 200% sized pictures inside just 125% the file size..
Ah well, the things I'm super happy about make it worthwhile: great 720p recording with good sound, really fast operation and super-slim portability.. but the TX1 has those as well

Thanks Victoria for that usefull impression on the T900. I thought i had heard about the poor sensitivity issue a while back, but was not sure until you have confirmed it now, hopefully the exmor cmos sensor will improve this on the TX1.

I was so looking forward to the T900 as the 3.5 inch screen and the additiion of the rocker zoom incorporated with the shutter button really appealed to me to previous Cybershots and almost pulled the trigger on getting it as Play.com had it in Brown which as far as i was aware is not officially a UK colour release.

But my patience for once is holding off and i am going to go with the TX1 even though hopefully the only drawback will be it is essentially in a T77 body with just a different front slide lens cover, suppose this is a cost effective measure with all this new technology being dumped inside it. I will not complain though if it delivers on the sensitivity front as this will be one of the main reasons for getting the TX1 as i own the T7 model which was very poor for low light shooting without flash.

On the MP issue, i think Sony have now come out and said it is done with the MP race as it feels it has reached an acceptable quality level where it cannot really improve on (hence i think your theory is correct about the 10mp better than 12mp) as they now want to conentrate on better camera features, hence i suppose this technology jump of features being intorduced on the TX1.

I do not really do to much blowing up of pics really either, but i think the new features which apparantly work with the new sweep panorama mode and unprecedented burst mode on a compact will make the TX1 a hard choice not to choose it over the T900 which i think is penuatemately swinging it for me.

Do you think you will stay with your T900 or be tempted to get a TX1? : )

Thanks for the advice again Victoria ; )

Just an update for anyone who was interested in the TX1 camera as Cnet have still not bothered to review it despite it's sister version the WX1 getting a review, so for the few of you who do fleece these forums on here...

I purchased one back in September just before i went to Vegas/Grand Canyon and then Florida to replace my T7 cybershot as the Panorama feature with the low light shooting abiilities with compliments of the Exmor R chip really does work.

Even though i could of got the WX1 which has a better lens that lets in even more light for even better picture results with a wider angle lens i decided i wanted all the features in a more compact camera without a lens physically coming in/out of the body.

As i only had a week from recieving this camera to the taking breathtaking shoots of Vegas and the Canyon it took some experimenting with the Panorama to get the best from when to know which type of panning to which type of shot you are going to do as you can pan the camera in portrait and landscape and both give different results to the perception of the same shot.
It was amazing to take the shot and within 3 secs it had stitched all the frames together to make one panorama.

Taking night time shots with this camera is awesome and amazing that it is hard to believe it can take the shots it does handheld without use of a tripod. I took a shot of search lights in the clouds at Epcot Florida which to the naked eye you could just make them out and when i looked at the pciture i just took it came out more illuminated than even my human eye could make out and looked very effective and it was like that from shot to shot in the dark - impressive.

Here is the irony of this camera though, and it achilles heel, is the day time shots are a bit average for a new compact hd camera of this calbre and some time i had mixed result from daytime shots and had to work at getting some of the shots to come out how i wanted them to and found some pics just a bit soft, more so around the corners. Even though you could take 16:9 shots to fit your widescreen tv it only took these in 7MP's even though they looked fine they struggled a little more on the night shots with noise, so stuck with 10MP for most shots unless i saw that a shot would look good in both formats i ended up taing both flicking the setting over - tedius, they should have like the bracket shooting where it can take two pics, one in 7MP 16:9 & one in 10MP.

On the whole the IA setting which does everything in deciding the best setting when a shot is taken works and always focused on the right areas with the face detection working spot on and the auto smile shot mode worked most of the time also.

Just had a problem with the camera in bright sunlight over exposing on shots with the sky in the background even with the sun of to the side or behind me that my T7 would of taken no problem, so needed some adjustment to get the balance of foregorund and backgorund exposure correct.

Multi burst shooting was quite good also and came in handy, just took a little longer for it to process 12 frames, so you had to wait around 10 seconds for it to save to mem card.

The touch screen most of the time is responsive, but does take some getting use to the interface despite been able to modify and customize your main display screen to have the (theoritcal) buttons that you use most without having to go into menu settings to change them, but after a while it becomes like any other Sony user interface and logistacally all makes sense and does make life easier for quick shooting.

720HD video is also very good and is not a million miles away from their dedicated £400 HD camcorder.

Start up time to shooting is also very fast and the slider cover is now designed better than previous cybershots that is easy to actually slide with one hand quickly for that all important spur of the moment shot.

Only negs would be the zoom steps are not smooth and a bit jerky to the point you accidently over zoom and have to come back a bit which is not helped by the not very thought out positioning of the tiny zoom rocker on the corner which is also near the easy to turn off by accident power button! Why Sony decided to have this ground breaking feature model in a rehashed T77 shell and not has it's own desinged body and of had a zoom rocker/power button like the T900 model?

Also the slightly let down of the daytime shots which are not quite as crisp and clear as the Panasonic TZ7 mars this beuatifull compact camera but in all i was glad i purchased this camera still as this compact has ground breaking features on it and just hope that Sony can master sharpening up the picture on the next model and make a complete new shell for it which would then make it a winner in every department.

So hope this has helped for anyone contemplates getting a TX1..
oh, out of ten as Cnet like to rate something, i would give it a confident if not perfect 8/10.
I know Cnet would not give that high a score, but i have at least road tested it for over four weeks now across Vegas/Grand Canyon and Florida and back in UK to make that informed mark out of 10.

; )

hey guys, i was wondering while everyone is voting for the tx1 over the t900. did anyone know that the t900 has stereo sound quality ???. while the tx1 only has mono , when using in video hd. quite a drop in downgrade if you ask me! . i've been looking at the t900 for a few week, and just thought i would checkout the tx1 to see what it has to offer over the t900. it seems they both have the plus and minus points. why sony had to drop the stereo i dont know!!!