Sony CyberShot DSC-G3 : The First Camera offers Wi-Fi access

Do You really want to surf the Web on my camera?. CyberShot DSC-G3 digital camera choice. Why ?

Sony CyberShot DSC-G3 offers Wi-Fi access

Wireless shooters have been around since Kodak's EasyShare-One debuted in 2005 (and won a PopSci Best of What's New award). Subsequently Canon, Nikon and Panasonic have offered Wi-Fi models. And Eye-Fi adds wireless to any camera with an SD card slot. But none of these setups provides a browser that lets you log into any commercial Wi-Fi hotspots . They stick you with just one photo-sharing site though Nikon bundles built-in access to the Wayport network and Panasonic includes T-Mobile. CyberShot DSC-G3 offers Wi-Fi access (802.11b/g) can wirelessly connect to any public hotspot, including hotels, restaurants, coffee shops and airports. Like a computer, the camera can connect to free or fee-based hotspots, as well as to secure and unsecured access points. The Sony DSC-G3 includes Wi-Fi access at thousands of AT&T hotspots across the United States, including participating coffee shops, selected book stores and major quick-serve restaurant locations, as well as hundreds of upscale hotels and airports.

Sony G3 includes a built in Web browser and Easy Upload Feature
After connecting to the Internet via wireless access points (802.11b/g), the camera automatically navigates to the Sony Easy Upload Home Page, which includes direct links to photo sharing sites like Shutterfly and Picasa Web Albums; video sharing sites like YouTube and Dailymotion; and a photo and video sharing site, such as Photobucket. Also, the DSC-G3 camera allows you to access other sharing sites for uploading photos and videos through its Web browser.

Sony CyberShot G3 Smart Camera
The 10-megapixel camera is about three-fourths of an inch thin and includes a 4X optical zoom Carl Zeiss® Vario-Tessar lens. Although compact enough to fit in the camera’s slim dimention, this lens provides excellent sharpness and color accuracy. The Intelligent Scene Recognition™ feature automatically identifies a total of eight types of scenes — backlight, backlight portrait, twilight, twilight portrait, twilight using a tripod, portrait, landscape and macro — and automatically optimizes camera settings for each challenging shooting situation, taking an additional shot in low and bright light scenarios.

Sony CyberShot DSC-G3 Photo Library
The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-G3 camera model is also a “photo album in your pocket” and has 4GB of internal memory that can store nearly 1,000 full-resolution or 40,000 VGA-quality photos. The 3.5-inch (measured diagonally) wide touch panel Xtra Fine LCD screen is perfect for photo-like viewing with high contrast and wide-angle viewing. This Xtra Fine LCD screen delivers high resolution images (921,600 dots) that is approximately four times higher than conventional LCDs.

Sony CyberShot G3 supports DLNA
The camera supports DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) guidelines. By connecting to such DLNA-compatible devices as Sony BRAVIA® televisions via access points, photos in the camera can be played back with high-definition quality. In addition to BRAVIA TVs, the camera can connect to other DLNA-compatible devices, such as Sony VAIO® PCs

Sony Cyber-shot G3 Price & Availability
The Sony G3 camera is now available in black for about $500. As soon as a full production sample will be available you can expect a full Sony CyberShot G3 review from us, including our usual test photos.

Several Considerations
According to tests conducted with the Cybershot DSC-G3 by Captain Sean from www.popsci.com , there are several considerations before you buy it.

• The camera's processor isn't powerful enough to handle the operation -- running both the Web and photo browsers at once. However, you can tag up to six of those pictures at a time with a "sharemark." Then when you fire up the Web browser, you can choose right from the sharemark list (though you have to select each one individually to build up your queue).
• Uploads are terribly slow, but reliable. The camera didn't drop any single- or multiple-photo uploads.
• Since you have a Web browser, you can also view photos you have already uploaded to a Web site. But you can't download them to the camera. That's unfortunate, since its 4GB of built-in memory provides plenty of storage for archiving pictures -- indeed, that's its purpose for photos you shoot directly with the camera. And you can't play videos from the Web.
• You can also try to browse any other Web pages -- though it's an off-label use that Sony doesn't guarantee to work. I was able to do a Google search, for example. But I got only a partial rendering of PopSci's homepage (which took about five minutes to load at all), and I got an error message when trying to view my Yahoo mail inbox.
• You probably don't want to spend a whole lot of time Web surfing, anyway, as it scarfs up the battery. A freshly charged cell drained down in about two hours -- which is not so long considering how sluggish the browsing and upload operations are.