Photo samples: Sony Cyber-shot DSC-G1

At its best, the G1 can shoot some nicely sharp, detailed photos. This was taken with flash, which also tends to result in slightly sharper images. It delivered an excellent 8.8x11.7-inch (240dpi) print.

Sony's excellent SteadyShot optical image stabilizer made this shot possible; normally, at 1/8 sec my photos are a mushy mess. I printed it at 15.6x11.7--at 180dpi, a far lower resolution than I normally would--and though the expected crunchy digital look appeared, the print still looked quite sharp.

Forget color accuracy. The G1 pushes the color saturation of hues like greens, purples and pinks into the surreal zone.

As expected, the G1's relatively low-resolution 6-megapixel sensor delivers a far better noise profile than we see with the ultra high-resolution sensors in most snapshot cameras. Photos look decent as high as ISO 400, and don't begin to seriously lose detail cohesion until ISO 800. And as long as you keep the prints below 5x7, you can frequently get away with ISO 1000. (The ISO 200 crop looked indistinguishable from ISO 100.)