S ony Gulf FZE, the regional headquarters of Sony Corporation in the Middle East and Africa, recently introduced a new Cybershot digital still camera called the DSC-P1. It has a compact and contemporary design and boasts of a 3.34-million-pixel CCD and a pop-up 3x optical zoom lens. Cybershot digital cameras store images and movie clips in a chewing gum-sized removable storage medium called the memory stick.

The DSC-P1 features an ultra-compact design with a net weight of 210g, a size of 214cc, a built-in 1.5-inch LCD monitor and optical viewfinder that allows the user more flexibility in taking images or shooting videos. The new product also provides various imaging capabilities that can only be found in 35mm cameras such as a programmable AE mode, fully adjustable shutter speed and aperture priority. Users can also shoot images of up to 2,048 X 1,536 pixels in JPEG format as well as professional-quality TIFF format images.

This camera incorporates Sony's state-of the-art digital image enhancing technologies such as 4x picture resolution A/D conversion and Super Resolution Converter, giving superb picture quality. These features allow the user to print photo-quality images on A4 size paper using conventional PC printers.

The MPEG MOVIE function allows sound and images to be compressed into MPEG1 format, so users can choose Video mail mode (suitable for e-mail attachments), Presentation mode (for PC presentations) and HQ mode (for full display on a TV screen). In addition, the Clip Motion function makes it possible to create GIF-format animation files appropriate for e-mail attachments and web page contents.