Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-V3 7.2 MP Digital Camera - Black

A superbly built, rugged metal bodied camera with a virtually professional range of features, including manual focus and exposure, full infra red night viewing and picture taking, and loads of useful over-rides for full user control. It will even take a separate flash on the fully functional hotshoe.

With 7 million pixels, a very reasonable zeiss zoom lens, decent battery life and a real leather every ready case it can be your constant companion and still make prints up to A4 without breaking into a sweat!

And at about £175 - £225 on eBay a real steal, cause new ones a few months ago would have come in nearer £500!

If size/cost is an issue, the very good Sony DSC V1 is also available but with 5 million pixels, but otherwise a virtually identical if smaller build for £85 - £120 - again an absolute bargain for the discerning photographer that likes to take control over the camera now and again.

This is my third DSC and my third Sony. It is fair to say that, without question, this Sony DSC-V3 is the best thing that I have bought this century. I have an MVC-CD400 and an MVC-CD500 too. They are both excellent, quality cameras. I bought them so as I could, with enough CD’s, take pictures and video all the way around the country or Europe without having to download or delete images. They were great for that but this thing is in a different league.
It has a higher resolution, HUGE storage capacity and is much smaller & lighter. This camera will take a Compact Flash card (Type 1) and a Memory stick (Including Memory Stick Pro & Duo). Both at the same time! At the moment, I have 8GB of each in giving me a total of 16GB of memory. As most of my photography is done in front of live bands, it is great to be able to store photos to one medium or over an hour of high quality video to the other. Or both. The battery lasts forever and they’re small enough to carry spares in your pocket. The screen is lovely and big. The Carl Zeiss lens is flawless. Nightshot & Nightframing mean that you can take pictures in low light or no light. It has a built-in flash, microphone and speaker. The laser focusing is the best out there. Other features include: Support for conversion lenses and a Hot Shoe connector for the use of external flashes. It supports; RAW, TIFF & USB 2.0 formats. Excellent video quality, full manual controls and a very sturdy metal body make this my camera of choice, and one that I would recommend to anyone.
This camera came to me together with the following accessaries:
Sony HVL-X32 Flash Unit plus flash bracket and remote connector for off camera flash.
3x Sony NP-FR1 info-Lithium batteries that show the percentage of battery power left.
2Gb & 1GB Compact Flash Cards.
Sony 4GB memory Stick Pro Duo & 2GB Sandisk Memory Stick Ultra Pro Duo.
Sony Cybershot V3 Case.
Sony VCL-DEH17VA 1.7 Tele Lens.
Sony VAD-VHA Adapter.
Sony filter adapter with 58mm UV Filter.
And the original 512mb memory card.
I purchased all of the above for a mere £160.00 which is, to me, a total bargain. Especially so as I would have bought all of the accessories anyway. At the time of writing (Nov 08), the flash is on sale at £129.99 and the tele lens at £115.00.
So, a great camera, a great bargain and believe me it takes great pictures. Sony has come up trumps again!
Thanks for reading to the end and I hope that this review has been of some use to you. Take it easy, KAPOWWW

Excellent camera - have had it for almost a year now. Good if you're learning to play with manual controls but still have the option of auto when you're feeling lazy or not sure how to best take pictures in certain lighting. Price is definitely good value for what you get. (~£100 when I bought it second-hand on eBay last year.)

The DSC-V3 is an enthusiasts camera.
It has an excellent Carl Zeiss lens.
Weakest point is perhaps the barrel distortion at the wide end of the zoom range. Visible on buildings.

It has dual memory card slots, CF & memory stick. Useful.
The handling is better than the smaller DSC-V1.
The grip makes it an easier camera to use.

Noise reduction on longer exposures is excellent.
Camera has Infra Red modes that can even be used on movies.

The user interface is clear & follows the pattern set by the newer cameras in the W series. e.g. W7.

I bought another one as I have just had the first stolen from my car.

Highly recommended !

This is a fantastic camera. It is very easy to use but produces amazing results.
There are no aspects of the camera I dislike. I decided to buy it because I had one previously but it suffered an accident during some buidling work and the screen was cracked. I searched and tried many different camera in my search for a replacement but none could compared to this one. I had to search the internet to get one and it was definately work the wait.