Sony Cyber-shot DSC-F828

It's huge, scary and twisty, but it's nothing like a roller coaster...

Is it a digital camera or a portable rocket launcher? Yep, Sony's newbie shares the bizarre swivelling design of its predecessor, and it's a camera that looks just plain crazy till you use it.

What you do is hold onto that massive, fat Carl Zeiss zoom lens with your left hand and swivel the camera body to a comfortable viewing angle with your right. Trust us - after just a few minutes it all makes perfect sense. You don't have to worry about the durability of the swivelling joint either. It has a solid but smooth action, with a positive click-stop at the straight-ahead position. The point of a radical design such as this is that it makes it easy to shoot at waist level or from a position above your head. It works well too, despite the model's artillery-esque bulk.

Needless to say, you're never going to be able to slip this into your pocket. It's really been designed for out-and-out enthusiasts who don't mind a bit of size and weight, and who'd willingly put up with those things in exchange for the features this camera has to offer.

Star of the show is that big lens. It's good for everything from wide-angle shots in city streets to long-range wildlife or sports shots. It's also useful in low light, and the zoom inside has a manual twist action that's a million times better than the motor-driven zooms in most models - no guesswork about when it'll stop zooming here.

That's not the only thing we like about using this cam. The start-up time's barely one second - fast - so you're ready to shoot almost as soon as you've flicked the power switch on the top. The main LCD's very good too, and you have the option of switching to a regular optical viewfinder.

In terms of ergonomics, it's well above average. The chunky build gives you something to grab hold of, and the controls are big enough to avoid the fiddliness that mars many cameras.

And the images it produces? Well, the photo quality from the eight- megapixel sensor is very good indeed, though it does suffer just a fraction more from magenta fringing around highlights than its main rivals. It only affects a small percentage of shots, though, and it's the only fly in this particular camera's ointment. In all other respects, it's a stonker.