An excellent camera

I am a casual photographer who loves good optics. This is one of the reasons why I was never impressed by zoom lenses and always shot with fixed focal length lenses before the V3. In any case, I love the Sony Cybershot DSC-V3, which is a an excellent compact and light weight replacement of an SLR. It has a very good lens, much better than any other point and shoot camera lens that I have tried to date. And the V3 has a much better lens than the Canon G6, although the G6 lens has a wider focusing range and supposedly a lower aperture of 2.0, which I was not able to confirm on any of the test pictures I saw. The autofocus of the V3 is relatively fast and responsive. It is far from the lightning fast autofocus of the Nikon F5, but do not forget that the V3 is a point and shoot camera and the F5 is a top of the line professional equipment. The color rendition of the V3 is surprisingly accurate, saturated and sharp and matches closely the color rendition of professional Zeiss lenses. Moreover, the V3 does not have default software color correction, which allows higher fidelity pictures.

You have to learn the tricks of the V3 camera nonetheless. Shoot at low aperture and the highest speed possible, even if it means choosing shutter or aperture priority modes. Also, you can use an external flash, I am using the Nikon Speedlight SB-22, which requires much manual adjustment. The Sony external flash is fully integrated and controlled by the camera CPU. The external flash, and particularly the bounce capability allows for much better portraits than the built-in flash. They are softer, the light is more evenly distributed, not a white spot on the closest object, and one can see clearly the surroundings, not only their contouring silhouettes. Moreover, red-eye is completely eliminated for bounce and considerably reduced for direct frontal exposure with the external flash.

Overall, the V3 is an excellent choice for portraits, probably unmatched as a combination of color rendition, lens quality and focusing speed. I am pleased with nature shots as well, although if I had the budget and the willingness to carry heavy equipment I will probably opt out for a Leica M6/7 or a Contax with a good Zeiss lens.

Alas, I strongly recommend it for those who take photography as an art, rather than a mechanical click at a view. It does have all the manual controls to allow the versatility an artist needs. Of course, with the caveat that the artist knows what they are doing.