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The Sony Xperia J comes equipped with a rear facing 5MP camera and single LED flash, plus a VGA snapper round the front.
While this is acceptable for the price bracket the Xperia J falls into, better can be had for your money in the form of the 8MP-toting Orange San Diego – something you'll need to consider if image quality is a big factor for you.
As we mentioned in the interface section, the camera app takes it sweet time opening, with us having to wait several seconds before the Xperia J was ready to start taking pictures – no instant shots available here.
The camera app itself is a well designed, simple affair, with large menu keys making it easy to hit the options you want – far better than the offering on the San Diego and BlackBerry Curve 9320.
There's a limited range of options, including a panorama setting and five scene modes, while the flash can be toggled and a digital zoom is on board to get you closer to the action.
The zoom is controlled by the volume rocker key on the side of the Xperia J, but image quality is dramatically decreased the further you go in, so use it sparingly.
Auto-focus is in play on the Sony Xperia J, but at times it can take a second or two to sort itself out, which can be frustrating if you're trying to capture something quickly.
Tap to focus is also available, but this is disabled if you opt turn on the "touch screen to capture" function, if you don't fancy using the on-screen shutter key.
If you want to fine tune the settings a little more you can mess around with the exposure, white balance and metering levels, while geo-tagging will also pin the location of your photo to the image file.
Thanks to the auto-focus, the Xperia J does take a second or two to snap the image and return back to the shooting mode once you've hit the shutter key, which makes capturing shots in quick session almost impossible.
Image quality is acceptable at best, with the Sony Xperia J struggling to cope with multiple light sources and areas of light and shadow in the same image.
A lot of our shots looked grainy, and while we weren't expecting sparkling quality from the Xperia J, it has to be said we were disappointed with the results.
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