Sony debuts touch-screen cameras

Culver City (CA) - Sony has launched a new line of Cyber-shot digital cameras, including two that incorporate a new touch-screen interface.

Sony has used touch screen controls in previous models mainly for menu navigation, but the DSC-T200 and DSC-T70 go a step further.

Users can tap a spot on the viewfinder with their finger and the shot will automatically focus on that point. Also, somewhat in the vein of the iPhone, users can touch a picture in playback mode to zoom in and move the image around on the screen.

Another interesting new feature for Cyber-shot cameras is called "smile shutter". According to Sony, when the shutter button is lightly pushed down, it will start to detect when people in the shot are smiling. Then, after the picture is taken, it will keep all the pre-capture frames where it detected a smile.

The T70 is an 8.1 megapixel camera with 3x optical zoom and the T200 carries eight megapixels and a 5x optical zoom.

Available now, the T70 and T200 are priced at around $330 and $400 respectively.