I've been waiting for over a year to find a decently priced digital camera that has the feel of an SLR. When I found this camera (at [money] at [a local store]) it fit my needs exactly. For the price, you cannot get a better approximation of a real camera.

I'm seeing complaints about the software and pc card adapter, but it works fine for me. The other complaints seem to be more about the camera's quality, which I'm finding is excellent if you learn something about how it takes pictures. Adjusting the white balance is critical for indoor and night time shots, but this isn't simple.

I didn't want a simple camera though. If I wanted point and shoot, there are plenty of other choices out there. For the price and the features, this camera is one of the best choices out there, and you can find some incredible deals now that it isn't being produced anymore.

In most reguards a great camera at a good price. But Sony sticking with it's proprietary, over priced and underperforming "memory stick" instead of the industry standard Compact Flash is VERY disappointing. This junk is slower, more expensive, comes in much smaller sizes, etc. It's also too bad they they do not use batteries you can use in a standard charger, or buy off the shelf. Meaning if you're on vacation and you find the perfect picture, you'd best have saved some of the juice in the propriatary batteries. Also a 5x zoom lens is not that impressive. Why not a 7x or better? Minolta's 5 megapixel Dimage 7 does. As do several others (some as high as 10x optical)

People have the wrong idea that just because a camera doesn't have 3+ megapixels, it means that it is no good. Unless you are a professional photographer, 1-2 megapixels is just fine. This camera is a great camera with great features that allow you to really fine-tune your pictures. The quality of a picture is not determined by the number of megapixels, but by the attention to details such as focus, lighting, sharpness, etc.

This camera is a great camera for people who are not professionals, but want to learn the art of photography. With so many options and manual functions, one can really learn how a camera works and what works best in different situations.

For a great digital SLR at such a great price, people should not be fretting over megapixels. This is a wonderful camera and a wonderful learning tool.

My wife purchased the Sony S50 model for my birthday. I took several pictures with it and saved them to my PC. I returned the S50 for a couple of reasons: - I had a lot of dificulty gettingt the USB software to work - I really wanted one of the SLR type digital cameras

I narrowed my selection to the Sony 770 and the Olympus E-10, and based on price I took a chance on the Sony model.

After working with it for a couple of weeks, I am very dissapointed and am sending it back.

On the positive side, and contrary to some of the other reviews, It was extremely easy to pop the PCMCIA card in and out of the camera and into my laptop. No drivers or software were needed. Getting pictures into and out of photoshop was drag and drop simple.

I found the camera very easy to use. The remote control was a great feature when working off a tripod. The feature set was good, and the flexibility was great.

Now the negative news and the reason why I am returning it.

The resolution of the pictures was not up to snuff with other cameras available. I took several shots in exact same lighting and subjects as the S50, and the S50 produced superior results in terms of sharpness of image and color rendition. The 770 produces muted, washed out colors, especially in low light. Trying to take pictures at night (capturing the neighborhood christmas displays)was a waste of time.

The Flash unit is sub par and not able to provide adequate light. In fact the camera took better pictures in natural light than when using the flash. Much better results were obtained using an external flash borrowed from my 35mm camera.

The resolution I guess is what you would expect from only 1.5Mpx, but there is no reason to settle for this unless you are stymied by price.

Finally, I found the battery life to be totally unacceptable when using the internal flash, and the LCD. Many of the advanced features are only available when using the LCD. The batery lasted only for 30 minutes and maybe 20 shots when using the flash and the LCD to preview results.

The concept of the camera was a nice try by Sony, perhaps they will up the ante by putting one of their more advanced CCDs into the next iteration.

In the meantime, I am going to have to splurge and try the Olympus E-10

I just received this camera today, and already I'm finding too many faults, the worst of which is that this is not a 3-mega-pixel camera - it's a 1.5.

That having been said, what attracted me to this model was it's manual control - very important for advanced users. My biggest complaint here is that the focus ring is hardly available. You can see in the photograph that the camera body actually cowls the body of the lens. What I didn't realize until I got my hands on it was that the cowl really gets in the way. You can't wrap your hand around it.

The optical viewfinder is small and dark, the flash tends to wash out the subject when set at the higher ISO, and the drivers for the flash card needed extraordinary user intervention to work (luckily, I'm an IT person).

Sounds like I hate it, right.

I guess if I were less interested in resolution and ease of manual control, I'd keep this camera. I have to say that the photographs I did take were of very high quality for a camera in this price range. It takes very sharp images, with great color. It's also really easy to use, and the automatic features were fairly flawless in their operation.

Now, I have to spend 2 1/2 times as much to get what I really wanted. Alas.

It is May 11, 2007 and Amazon is still trying to sell a 1.5 megapixel camera for $599!! I haven't checked, but maybe they have some beachfront property in Kansas to go with it . . .