Available in a choice of eye-catching piano black, silver and red finishes, the chic T500 is packed with Sony technology to help everyone take better-looking pictures.

Alongside sparkling 10.1 effective megapixel still image quality, it’s the first Cyber-shot™ that captures crisp, clear HD movie clips with stereo sound. New HD movie mode allows continuous shooting time of up to 10 minutes per clip. Movie files are recorded in ‘PC-friendly’ MPEG4 AVC/H.264 format. This offers great HD picture quality while keeping files down to a minimum size for convenient saving, sharing and viewing via the web or email.

Not sure whether that special moment deserves a photo or a video clip? It’s easy to switch instantly between still and movie modes at the touch of a comfortably placed button on top of the camera. You can even grab crisp still images (1280×720 pixels) without interrupting video shooting.

The superb Carl Zeiss lens features a new ring-type Zoom button, allowing easy adjustment throughout the 5x range while you’re shooting movies.

Detail-packed stills and video clips can be viewed on the extra-large wide 3.5-inch touchscreen LCD. As well as giving a beautiful view of your images, the touchscreen also makes operation of camera functions beautifully simple. Touching anywhere on the screen while you’re composing a shot locks focus on that part of the scene.

Touching a face turns on Face Detection, ensuring that people’s faces in the scene are in sharp focus and with perfect exposure for fewer spoiled shots. Up to eight faces can be tracked at a time, making the T500 ideal for capturing large groups of friends and family.

Shooting handheld without flash can mean blurred pictures, especially when light levels are low or with telephoto shots. Optical SteadyShot is teamed with an improved High Sensitivity mode to allow faster shutter speeds. This ‘Dual Anti-blur’ solution is complemented by Clear RAW Noise Reduction for clean, natural images, even in low-light conditions like parties or twilight.

After you’ve finished shooting, HD Slide Shows add an extra dimension of enjoyment to your collection of photos and videos. Pick from a choice of musical accompaniments, or import your favourite music track from a connected PC.

If you want an even bigger picture, still images and HD movie clips can be experienced with extra impact on your HD Ready television. Connected via HDMI™ to your Sony HD TV, BRAVIA™ Sync allows on-screen control of Cyber-shot™ playback functions using the TV’s remote control.

Supplied Picture Motion Browser software makes it easy to browse and manage pictures and HD movie files on your PC, upload your favourite moments to image sharing sites – or email them to friends and family.

The Cyber-shot™ T500 will be available from October 2008.