If you are just an amateur photographer that is either finally switching from analog to digital or just want a decent camera to take on family vacations or school projects, this is a great camera. It is small, lightweight, and does just about anything you could possibly need it to do. It won't take pictures of hummingbirds feeding across a forest bed, but it will take a decent photo of the grand canyon. The quality of the 3x optical zoom is really good, but the picture is sacrificed slightly as you try to artifically enhance it with the digital zoom. The battery life is good enough to take on extended trips from your hotel or on a hike without having to carry around a charger or spare batteries. If you plan on taking lots of high quality large photos, you will need to get a larger memory stick (64 MB will work, 128 MB even better), but the memory stick it comes with will be enough to photograph your child's birthday party as long as you download the photos onto your computer afterwards. At 4.1 MegaPixels, this camera will pick up individual hairs on a persons head and it will even be able to clearly define a flea in the hair. There are 5 MegaPixel cameras out there, but at the consumer level there is really no point in spending the money on one (5 MP won't come in handy unless you are student taking pictures through a microscope or a telescope) All around, while Sony's camera lenses may not compare with Canon or Olympus, Sony makes up for it with their superior knowledge of how to make a great consumer digital device and turn it into a decent digital camera. It is a great value for the price.

This camera does what smaller cameras cannot. It takes great pictures indoors and in poor light. It does so because it has a large lens and a powerful flash. Smaller cameras, having smaller flashes and lenses, can work well outdoors but can't compete with this one indoors or in low light.

The problems with this camera are:
1) It's too big to fit conveniently in your pocket.
2) There's an annoying delay of up to 1 second between when to press the shutter release and when the picture is taken.
3) It takes several seconds to turn on.

These three issues can cause you to miss a lot of pictures. So I keep this camera at home for family shots, where its strengths are important. If I'm going out during the day, when lens size and flash aren't important, I bring a smaller camera.

(...).

Here's my review. The image quality is excellent. There is very good color balance. I also like the excellent battery life (This is true for Sony products). It's easy to transfer images to the PC using USB. It has a very good lense (Carl Zeiss). The menu is user friendly.

The slight drawback is speed of operation. This may be true for most digital cameras. It's difficult to take good action shots as there is a time lag between shots (when compared to an analog SLR).

Bottom line is...Very good value for your money in the 4 MP range.

I love this camera. I had it for over a year. And I am never with out it. Even my 6 year old can use it. It's the best camera I have had and durable beyond my comphernsion...

I just purchased this camera for my parents--they're currently using a 2.0 MPixel camera and it's just time for them to "move up." I've owned six digital cameras (dating back to 1999) and I can say that this camera is as good as any I've owned. Image quality is excellent, battery life is adequate (I imagine that it could be improved by using an external flash). Newer 4 MPixel cameras may be a bit faster and cheaper, but many don't have much in the way of optics. Highly recommended.

This is an excellent automatic camera. My husband bought it for me 2 years ago & I've been very happy with it. My only complaint is that the manual focus is pretty useless because using the display is an unreliable source & the viewfinder doesn't work for focus. I haven't had much of a need to use the manual focus however as almost every image turns out crystal clear!

If you're in the market for a digital camera, there has never been a better time to buy. The high tech electronics marketplace is absolutely glutted with digital cameras; nifty features and consumer options are way up, and prices are way down. Currently available digital camera models cover the resolution range from less than one megapixel to almost eight megapixels. An average user really only needs 4mp as this is great quality for enlargements up to 11 X 14. Many newer cameras on the market are overrun with too bells and whistles that make it difficult to find a camera that takes truly great pictures consistently. The DSC-S85 does just that, great pictures consistently and with no problems. I have had my camera for 2 years and never had any issues with blurring or poorly lit photos. The settings are straight forward and the camera is easy to use.
The DSC S85 has a Carl Zeiss Vario Sonnar 3X zoom lens, an accurate auto focus system, an optical view finder, and a 1.8-inch LCD display, all in a compact package that looks and performs like an upscale 35mm point and shoot. The 4.1 megapixel CCD provides superb images (2272x1704 pixels) that actually get pretty close to the resolution of a scanned 35mm negative (3000x2000 pixels) giving digital photographers excellent image quality.

I got this camera as a gift 4 years ago and it's seen a lot of use since then. This was a great first time camera. I took wonderful pictures with its automatic settings and even better ones once I learned how to adjust them to the scene.
Currently I'm upgrading. While I love this camera, there are much better prospects on the market now.
This camera has downsides that come with age:
-Size & weight are too much. It easily gets in my way.
-Turn on time and delay between pictures have both made me miss many spur of the moment shots
-Battery is big and obsolete. My biggest problem right now is I can't find the charger and if this camera only used AAs it wouldn't be such a big deal. When I can charge the batteries, they don't last very long. I always need to carry two fully charged ones if I'm going to be out for a day.

Still, this camera taught me a lot about digital photography with just playing around with it. I don't think I'd have picked anything else that was out there 4 years ago.

This was my first digital camera, I've had it since 2001 and have taken over 3,000 pictures with it. The image quality is excellent, My biggest complaint is that the auto focus is sometimes erratic. I've had pictures sometimes end up out of focus for no reason, and it's not always obvious looking at the display. Battery life is good. Camera has a good selection of manual features, Auto white balance setting consistantly gives great results, Build quality is excellent, The shutter lag is slow compaired to newer cameras. A very good camera at it's time, Image quality is as good as most newer P&S cameras.