Sony wants more and more people to adopt the High Definition lifestyle (presumably so that they can sell even more of their lovely BRAVIA line of HDTVs, but that’s another story for a different day), and their latest offering would be the Sony Cybershot DSC-T500 digital camera that does more than capture lovely looking still images - it is also able to record video in both wide and full-screen mode at 720p at 30 frames per second. In addition, this 10 megapixel shooter allows one to zoom in while recording, and is equally at home for high sensitivity shooting for natural or low light conditions.

The Sony DSC-T500 will rely on a Memory Stick media card to store all your photos and videos recorded, where a 16GB capacity Memory Stick is able to hold hours of digital memories. I don’t really like the cap Sony imposed on the DSC-T500 though, allowing each video clip to be up to 10 minutes’ in length only, which means you’ve got to learn how to space out your video recordings accordingly. Well, at least that’s what the press release led me to believe. One good point of the DSC-T500 is its ability to capture still images despite being in video recording mode, ensuring you won’t miss out on even a single moment while fiddling with mode switching.

Other features found on the DSC-T500 include a widescreen format (16:9) 3.5″ TFT touch sensitive LCD display, a Carl Zeiss 5x optical zoom lens with a wide field of view, optical SteadyShot image stabilization and high sensitivity settings of up to ISO3200 to capture even the fast moving objects without suffering from the dreaded blurry shot effect. You will need an HDMI cable which is sold separately to view your images and videos on a HDTV, so do make some leeway in your budget for that. The Sony DSC-T500 will ship sometime later next month for approximately $400.

Press Release