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Oct. 13, 2008

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Digital Camera Home > Digital Camera Reviews > Sony Digital Cameras > Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P9

"Picky Details" for the Sony DSC-P9 digital camera
(Timing, Power, and Storage Info)

Timing
I measure both cycle times and shutter delay times for cameras I test, using a special test system I built for the purpose. Here are the numbers I collected for the Sony DSC-P9:

Sony DSC-P9 Timings

Operation Time (secs) Notes

Power On -> First shot 3.1
About average for telescoping lens camera.

Shutdown 2.3
About average for telescoping lens camera.

Play to Record, first shot 0.78
Time until first shot is captured. Pretty fast.

Record to play 1.4-4.9
Time to display a large/fine file after capture. About average. (First number is for when camera has already finished saving the image to the memory card. Second number is for immediate switch to playback mode after capture.)

Shutter lag, full autofocus 0.78-1.05 About average. (Average is 0.8-1.0)

Shutter lag, manual focus
0.48
About average. (Average is ~0.5)

Shutter lag, prefocus 0.21
Time to capture, after half-pressing shutter button. Somewhat faster than average. (Average is ~0.3)

Cycle Time, max/min resolution 2.03/1.97 Quite fast. First number is for large/fine files, second is for small/normal ones. There's either no buffer memory, or it has a capacity of more than 13 shots: There was no slowdown up to 13 shots.

Overall, the P9 is a pretty fast camera, about average in startup and shutdown times, but very quick between shots. Shutter delay is about average.While I didn't try to exercise it beyond a 13-shot series, it appears that there's either no buffer memory, or the buffer holds more than 13 large/fine shots. Whatever the case, up to at least the 13 shot limit I tested, there was no slowdown in the very fast 1.7 second shot to shot cycle time. Quite impressive.

File Download
Like other recent Sony digicams, the P9 is also very fast when it comes to downloading images from it to a host computer. I clocked it at 659 KBytes/second on my aging Pentium II workhorse, making it one of the very fastest cameras on the market in terms of file transfer.

Power
Like most other Sony digicams, the P9 uses an InfoLITHIUM battery. The camera reports time remaining, so the numbers below for capture and playback modes with the LCD enabled are based on the camera's own estimates. (Which I've generally found to be quite accurate.) The figure for capture mode with the LCD turned off is based on power measurements made via the external power jack.

Operating Mode Est. Minutes
(Sony NP-FC10 battery pack)

Capture Mode, w/LCD 69

Capture Mode, no LCD 120

Image Playback 130

Overall, this is pretty good performance for a subcompact camera, although record time with the LCD enabled is still pretty short. As always though, I strongly recommend purchasing a second battery.

Storage Capacity
The DSC-P9 stores its photos on a Sony Memory Stick. A 16MB stick is shipped with it. The chart below shows the number of images at each size/quality that can be stored on a 16MB stick.

Image Capacity vs Resolution/Quality 8 MB Memory Card		Fine	Normal
Full Resolution 2272 x 1704	Images (Avg size)	8 2.0 MB	15 1.1 MB
Full Resolution 2272 x 1704	Approx. Compression	6:1	11:1
High Resolution 1600 x 1200	Images (Avg size)	16 970 KB	30 525 KB
High Resolution 1600 x 1200	Approx. Compression	6:1	11:1
Medium Resolution 1280 x 960	Images (Avg size)	25 640 KB	46 344 KB
Medium Resolution 1280 x 960	Approx. Compression	6:1	11:1
Low Resolution 640 x 480	Images (Avg size)	97 164 KB	244 66 KB
Low Resolution 640 x 480	Approx. Compression	6:1	14:1

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