What are you doing about the rise of smartphone camera’s? – This is the first question asked to many camera manufacturers due to the massive rise of smartphone cameras. In New York City, at a Sony briefing recently , they began by talking about this rise of smartphone camera’s and also said that point-and-shoot camera’s are dying a breed.
Point and shoot cameras saw a sharp drop of 20% in their sales last year and this number is expected to increase in coming years. Although entry level shooters are declining , it doesn’t mean they are dying . Point-and-shoot camera’s being cheap still account for around 80% of their total camera sales. Sony also assumes that people replace their point and shoot cameras every two years which gives them a good reason to keep manufacturing them.Sony launching three new cybershot point-and-shoot cameras indicates that they are moving forward despite the falling statistics.
The new range of camera aims at the higher end of the market and is equipped with better video, more zoom, and higher megapixels . The new $199.99 Cyber-shot DSC-WX50 and $229.99 WX-70 each have 16-megapixel CMOS sensors. Sony also says, tough we all know the megapixels of a camera don’t make much difference, people still tend to buy a camera with a higher number of pixels. Both the models have 5x optical zoom starting at 25mm, shoot 1080i video at 60 frames per second, and offer a wide range of shooting filters and effects. The display screens are the only difference between the cameras it’s 3.0 inches and touch-enabled on the WX70, and 2.7 inches with no touch capabilities on the WX50.
The third new model, the DSC-TX200V, is however a more eye catching and interesting option. Its an all-glass camera with a Carl Zeiss 5x optical zoom lens,super slim,waterproof up to 16 feet and dustproof. It has an 18-megapixel CMOS sensor and a 3.30-inch OLED touchscreen, to top it all a much-improved focusing system that Sony says allows for 0.2-second focus even in low light. It ups its video recording to 1080p, and has the same filters and effects as the WX cameras. All of this for $499.99. The new camera’s will be out in the market this March.
