2009 was a great year for the announcement of new digital cameras. One that stands out as Best of Show in the Compact category is the Sony Cyber Shot DSC- W290. This snappy digital camera was announced early in 2009 yet is one of the best for the year. With a price tag suitable to most shopping budgets this 12 megapixel, 5x zoom digital has many advanced automatic shooting options all with a 3 inch LCD within the smart looking exterior.

Available in silver, black, blue, and bronze, this Sony Cyber Shot keeps the fine lines of Sony's W-series. It is a fun very cute slim styled digital with the ability to be pocketable even though it does have a little more weight than you might expect.

To me the big advantage of having so many megapixels is that Sony has included a feature called smart zoom. This allows you to increase the amount of zoom available as long as you are prepared to sacrifice some of the megapixels you shoot at. In the past I have even found that shooting at lower megapixels can increase the quality of the images you shoot. Other advantages include taking up less space on a memory card and faster times to upload your photos to a computer. If you activate smart zoom you can increase zoom up to 25x. This may be overkill as at that setting you can only capture pictures for playback on a computer or television screen, but there are plenty of steps in the middle where you can find the right balance between print size and zoom.

You see your Blackberry's storage, Cyber-shots memory stick, or any other memory card for that matter is very similar to a computer's hard drive. And very much like a computer's hard drives these storage devices do not immediately erase deleted files; instead what they do when a file gets deleted is list its space as available re-usable space. Now until that space is overwritten by new data, in your case new photos etc... Your old photos are still there and can easily be retrieved with the right tools.

The pictures are all clear and the zoom lets you crop and print out even the smallest details. Perhaps the best feature of this model though is the Smile shutter technology. I use it to capture my baby nephew's smile. We all know how difficult it is to take a picture of babies while they are smiling. With this camera, all I needed to do was to point it to my baby nephew and the camera will wait for his smile. It's a very intelligent camera. I'm really impressed. Sony Cybershot DSCW 120/P 7.2MP Digital Camera is the only thing that I need for beautiful pictures that store a lifetime of memory.

Considering the price range, the quality of the images taken on the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W290 are pretty good. Nevertheless, when compared to the images taken on Canon compact cameras, there is something lacking in the quality of the images taken on this Sony model. In terms of performance, it is one of the best in its class, with a quick shot-to-shot and start-up time. The quality of the videos taken were very good, but unfortunately, you can't use the zoom feature while recording videos. It has the usual features found on Sony compact digital cameras such as the Smile Shutter Technology, intelligent auto mode, 13 photo modes to choose from and many other features. For a camera of this price range.

The DSC H2 comes in silver with a 6 megapixel imager and a two inch LCD. This model incorporates Sony's SupersteadyShot optical image stabilization that is very helpful in reducing image blur caused by hand movement. It also offers a high-light sensitivity setting of up to ISO 1000 which is very ideal for capturing moving objects and people with less blur and graininess. The shutter lag at both wide angle and telephoto zoom settings is very good in addition to the prefocus time (half-pressing and holding down the Sony DSC-H2 shutter button before exposure) which is very fast.

The design of the Sony Cybershot DSC-S950 10MP digital camera plays of some geometric shapes. The camera is an almost perfect rectangle with slightly rounded corners. The perfectly round frames around the lens are silver in color, creating a nice contrast against the matte black background. The flash consist of a slim and discreet rectangle shape next to the logo. Weighing at just 1.2 pounds and 0.9-inch in thickness, you can easily carry it with you wherever you go.

Compared with many entry level digital cameras the Cybershot DSC S950 is fairly compact. It will fit into a pocket, but it might be a bit of a squeeze. There is not much to report when it comes to the design of the camera. It has that typical rectangular look that most digital cameras have. To add a touch of variety Sony offer three different coloured versions. These are in black, silver and pink.