Sony's Cyber-shot T500 10 megapixel compact shoots HD videos

It's no D90, but Sony has a new compact stillcam for your snapping pleasure, the Cyber-shot T500, and it's touting an HD movie mode just like any good bandwagon hopper should. The 10.1 megapixel camera offers up a 5x optical zoom, 3.5-inch LCD and Optical SteadyShot, but most of the attention is likely to be lavished on the 1280 x 720 30 fps h.264 movie mode. You can grab 720p stills while you shoot, and you can expect to store about an hour of video on your 4GB Memory Stick... you do have a 4GB Memory Stick, right? The T500 hits this October, no word just yet on price. Oh, and she comes in colors.

[Khattab @ Aug 28th 2008 9:01AM]

Exactly the compact cam I've been waiting for.

The 4 GB MS Stick is included, Paul.

[Neeko @ Aug 28th 2008 9:07AM]

please make this some what inexpensive SONY.. Im either gonna buy this or a canon SD.. But being able to shoot somewhat HD video is a huge perk.

[SOOPERGOOMAN @ Aug 28th 2008 9:20AM]

Hmmm the words "Inexpensive" and "Sony" for some reason do not fit in the same sentence. Anyone else agree?

One hour on a 4 gig, OUCH! time to get me one of those 16 giggers....

[Jason @ Aug 28th 2008 11:39AM]

You misspelled 'sonny'.

[Macro @ Aug 28th 2008 3:09PM]

Ha i priced a 16 yesterday at microcenter it was 300 dollars!! come on sony get real!

[Zinger314 @ Aug 28th 2008 9:14AM]

Price will be 599 US dollars.

[Khattab @ Aug 28th 2008 9:16AM]

New Infos:

- Optical Image Stabilizer
- 379 Euros in Germany

[Sonny @ Aug 28th 2008 9:24AM]

Awesome

[Kris @ Aug 28th 2008 9:28AM]

Goodness. That's pretty

[cmaikai @ Aug 28th 2008 9:30AM]

Didn't Sony just release the T700?
So confusing.

[O2 @ Aug 28th 2008 12:13PM]

Yep, they did. Seems like T-500 is a little more expensive, 5x opt. zoom, does HD and some other things. Who is going to buy that T-700 now? I think this is a numbering mistake on Sony's part. Should be fix in T-800!!!!

[BigIUFan @ Aug 28th 2008 9:38AM]

The clips are limited to 10 minutes!

[Cybergypsy @ Aug 28th 2008 9:37AM]

No More Sony for me!

[From My Cube @ Aug 28th 2008 9:39AM]

im still waiting for a camera that auto detects that your taking pictures of yourself in the mirror and turns the flash off

[xValentine @ Aug 28th 2008 10:52AM]

Well there are cameras out there that can be manually turned of the flash. I think it only takes 1-2 button presses or 1sec to turn the knob.

But the one I'm waiting for is a camera that will be invisible when you take yourself a picture in the mirror.

[Shawn @ Aug 28th 2008 2:06PM]

Are you sure a 10 MP camera is the best choice for taking pics of yourself in the mirror for your Myspace or Facebook page? Then your zits would really stand out for all those girls you're sending random invites to!

[Ran @ Aug 28th 2008 9:59AM]

I would sooooo get this camera if it had manual white balance, but Sony STILLLL refuses to include it with the T series. Shame.

[seamonkey420 @ Aug 28th 2008 10:53AM]

FINALLY!!

i was in atlanta's sony style store and the rep there was like "get an HD video recorder if you want hd video"

finally, i can upgrade my camera now!!! yay!!!

still can make use of my 4gb ms pro cards too!

[Max @ Aug 28th 2008 11:33AM]

I'm confused. Are some of the comments here positive? I'm ... not sure ... I've ever seen that.

[peestandingup @ Aug 28th 2008 11:21AM]

Nice, but a little late & underpowered, IMO.

Canon's compact TX1 has been doing this all for well over a year now. Not at 10 MP mind you, but at 7 MP & 1280x720@30fps. And the Canon uses SD (which is MUCH preferred overall) & has 10x optical zoom.

[O2 @ Aug 28th 2008 12:09PM]

Yep, they did. Seems like T-500 is a little more expensive, 5x opt. zoom, does HD and some other things. Who is going to buy that T-700 now? I think this is a numbering mistake on Sony's part. Should be fix in T-800!!!!

[Skyride @ Aug 28th 2008 12:11PM]

Well this will suck.... Big time.

Its like with stills images. A 15 gigapixel photo will look crap if its taken on a crap CCD or CMOS and with a crap lenses. Same applies with video cams, except your talking about massively bigger file sizes and lower res's.

Go figure how you fit 1 hour of HD on 4GB when uncompressed DV SD video (which you use if you are doing it right) is 13GB per hour?

[solmar @ Aug 28th 2008 12:49PM]

Assumptions like these are only partly valid. For the first assumption, you're assuming that the components are crap. Maybe they're not, maybe they are, but they have progressed quite a bit. The one aspect where it would be valid if you have two sensors of equal size from the same gen, with the same lens and other things the same, but one with much higher megapixels. That would be useless. But anyways, companies release digicams with the (correct) assumption that most consumers will buy the one with the bigger megapixel spec. It can't be helped, because consumers are like this.

For the second assumption, DV video is actually compressed, you know. It's just not compressed *that* much. If you had a raw stream, it would a lot bigger. For tape-based high-def, which uses the same tapes, but records at 1440x1080 vs the old DV 7xx by 5xx (depends, pal/ntsc), the HDV format is used, which has, amazingly, the same bitrate, yet still gives awesome footage. Jpegs can also compress a picture by a factor of 10 and yet get a result that is pretty much the same as the original (really, who uses uncompressed BMPs on a regular basis?). This Sony uses h.264, which makes a lot more sense than the motion jpeg used in the Nikon D90, but the quality will depend on how good the chip can compress real-time, and unless they've made some major advances, I doubt it will be very good. A dedicated hidef camcorder will still be better (any dedicated equipment will always be better than a multifunction device), but it will also be more bulk to carry.

And for those complaining of the 10 minute video recording time for 720p (that's 1280x720 30fps), think of the 10 *second* maximum recording time for standard 640x480 30fps movies on many modern Olympus digicams. 10 minutes is actually plenty for most things, unless you're into taking tripod-mounted static movies. For that, get a camcorder.

[tekdroid @ Aug 29th 2008 8:53AM]

"...the HDV format is used, which has, amazingly, the same bitrate, yet still gives awesome footage"
------------
sure, if you can live with MPEG2 and sacrificed audio quality....

[Scott Hardy @ Aug 28th 2008 1:47PM]

Ouch, $500? Seems a little steep, even for a Sony. I need a cam to take pictures of my soon to arrive baby, but this is a little high. I already have a high def video camera, but a sweet high def point and shoot would be great!

I'll have to wait for it to show up on Woot (sniffle.)

Thanks,
Scott
http://www.topclassactions.com

[Operation Northwood @ Aug 28th 2008 3:57PM]

Give me some HD video samples, if it beat my Panasonic TZ5, deal because it takes away too mch memory space

[Clark @ Aug 28th 2008 4:35PM]

I've never heard of the T700. Don't you mean T70?

Also, I think this T700 will be priced at $399, which is right in line with Sony's T-series pricing on the high end.

[Clark @ Aug 28th 2008 4:59PM]

Sorry, I meant to say, I think this T500 will be $399.

[O2 @ Aug 28th 2008 6:19PM]

Here is the info on T-700.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/sony-cyber-shot-cameras-get-smarter/story.aspx?guid=%7B828117CA-C086-44C3-B072-325FD7D97D05%7D&dist=hppr