Review: Sony Ericsson C905a
Camera
Sony Ericsson has endowed the C905a with a powerful 8 megapixel camera and tons of new camera software to power it. The camera takes about 3 seconds to load no matter which avenue you take to start it up.
The basic viewfinder has a few indicators to let you know what the settings are, and the d-pad has controls that light up only when the camera is on. This lets you make quick adjustments to some of the C905a's settings on the fly without digging into menu after menu. These include the flash, brightness, macro mode, and the timer.
The options menu offers a huge selection of controls over the camera. Running across the bottom of the screen you'll see eight icons. As you tab sideways over each icon, the options for each icon pop up over it. Users can select five different shooting modes (normal, smart contrast, BestPic, Panorama, and Frames); landscape or portrait orientation; VGA, 3, 5, or 8MP quality; four focusing modes (auto, face detection, macro infinite); as well as change the metering, set the white balance, effects and picture quality.
Suffice to say, there are plenty of tools for the photographer to use here to get the best performance out of their camera.
As for actually taking pictures, the C905a focuses quickly, fires the shutter nice and fast, and even saves the full-sized 8 megapixel shots in about 1 second. In my unscientific testing, I determined that you can take a picture once every 5 seconds or so. That's not bad.
The video recording software works identically to the still image software.
Gallery
The gallery app is found as part of the camera's options menu, or through the Media folder, but the fastest way to open it is to simply press the button on the side of the phone. Using the D-pad, you can scroll through your library sideways. There is a nice animation that sweeps pictures off the screen and brings up the next one.
The gallery app works really fast. There is no delay or waiting while you move the selector around and choose photos. When viewing the pictures, the D-pad takes on new functions. Pressing up on the D-pad will automatically initiate a new message, or ask if you want to add the picture to an online album or send it via Bluetooth. Pressing down on the D-pad lets you add and remove stars to photos, marking them as your Favorites.
Using the PhotoDJ tool, there are a wide range of on-camera editing features, such as rotating, changing the color balance, setting the brightness/contrast, the light balance and a tool that will automatically adjust all the levels at once.
The combination of the powerful tools to adjust the images both before and after you capture them make the C905a a solid imaging device.
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Sony Ericsson C905
