Sony expands its Cyber-Shot range of digital cameras with the thinnest model yet

Sony on Thursday announced two new models added to its line of Cyber-Shot digital point-and-shoot cameras. The DSC-T700 and DSC-T77 are expected to be released in September for about $400 and $300, respectively.

The DSC-T77 is Sony's thinnest model. It measures less than 5/8th of an inch thick but features a 3-inch, 16 x 9 touch panel LCD display. The new camera sports intelligent scene recognition technology, ''Smile Shutter'' and face detection technologies with adult and child priority, and ISO support up to 3200.

In anti-blink mode, the camera snaps two photos of a subject, scans them for closed eyes and only stores the one with eyes open. The Smile Shutter technology, which was introduced 2007, automatically snaps a photo once the subject cracks a grin. A new gourmet shooting mode has been designed specifically to snap food. All in all, it has eleven built-in scene modes and in-camera image management facilities.

The DSC-T700 has all the features of the T77 and adds 4GB of built-in memory, suitable for nearly 1,000 full-resolution photos; a 3.5-inch wide touch panel LCD display with 210 pixel-per-inch (PPI) resolution with high contrast and wide-angle viewing. It measures slightly more than 5/8th of an inch thick to accommodate the extra features.

To encourage users to put their T700 to work as a portable photo frame, the camera will ship with software that will easily sync, transfer, and organize pictures from your computer - even those not taken on the T700. The application will also automatically resize images for storage and viewing on the camera's LCD.

Both cameras come with 10-megapixels resolutions and tout 4x optical zooms and ''Optical SteadyShot'' image stabilization. They'll come in five different colours - black, silver, green, pink, and brown.