Sony

Sony has one of the largest stands at PMA 2005, and one of the most extensive range of new product announcements. Pride of place goes to the Cyber-shot H1, a direct competitor for the likes of Panasonic's FZ20, offering 5.1 megapixels, 12x optically-stabilized zoom and a very nice 2.5 inch LCD screen. We spent a few hours yesterday shooting with a pre-production H1, and were very impressed with the handling, build quality and speed of operation, though obviously the question of image quality is one we'll have a wait a little longer to answer. It's interesting to note that this is the first high-end Sony camera in a long time not to sport a Carl Zeiss lens (apparently this is because Zeiss aren't happy with the moving lens elements needed for optical image stablization), but we'd be surprised if Sony can't produce a decent optic under its own name. Price on the H1, at just a shade shy of $500, is very competitive.

Elsewhere Sony's new entry-level Cyber-shot range makes its public debut at PMA, with the S40, S60 and S90, W5 and W7 taking their places in the ever-growing compact and sub-compact lineup.

In the accessories area of the booth Sony is showing a few nice new products including a concept Photo Storage Viewer (think Epson P-2000 but smaller and cuter). The $199 Photo Vault portable CD-R burner is a nicely designed and very compact battery or mains powered unit that allows users to burn images directly from Memory Stick (or from virtually any digital camera via USB) onto a mini CD-R. Other new products include 1GB and 2GB Memory Stick Pro Duo and a 4GB Memory Stick Pro cards (claimed to offer transfer speeds of up to 80Mbps), the Cyber-Shot Station CSS-PHB (allows viewing images on a television and comes with a neat little remote control) and a couple of ultra-compact dye-sub photo printers, the DPP-FP30 and DPP-FP50, which offer 6x4 inch borderless printing without the need for a PC.