How to delete all images on your Sony Cybershot
Once in a while I’ll post a simple how-to post. Not terribly entertaining, but seems to fill a void out there for anyone searching for days to do the same thing. Hopefully a few fellow frustrated Cybershot users will stumble upon this post some day…
So, 5 years ago I bought my first digital camera–a Canon Digital Elph. It was great and sturdy and still works amazingly well. Alas, it never took indoor low-light shots very well and so this xmas I decided to upgrade to a new camera.
I got suckered into buying a Sony Cybershot. The guy behind the counter really liked it and managed to show off enough doo-dads to convince me. It’s an OK camera. I guess. I thought the interface was decent, and the screen is definitely bigger, and, to be fair, it does take better low-light pictures. But, it’s plastic, and still not all that much better than the ol’ Canon. I’ve since seen the new Canons and I (and apparently a majority of Flickr users agree) now only suggest Canons to anyone that asks. Digital camera? Canon. Laptop? Apple. Fridge? Anything but a Frigidaire.
But now I’m rambling on. Back to the topic at hand: How in the *$&#(@ do you delete ALL the photos off the camera? Is it in the manual? Not that I can find. Intuitive? Not at all. Use iPhoto? Nope. Cybershots apparently don’t listen to iPhoto to well. So, after some googling and experimenting, I FINALLY figured it out:
- Turn on camera
- Press the PLAYBACK button (button with triangle above screen on back)
- Look at the top of the camera and slide the ZOOM control to ‘-’
- The playback screen now shows multiple slides per screen.
- Press delete button (the one on the bottom of the back of the camera)
- Press theUP button twice to select ‘delete all’
- Press the CENTER button in the middle of the arrow buttons to delete.
- All gone!
Easy! Well, easy once you figure out that you need to use a combination of 4 different buttons on 2 different parts of the camera.
I miss my Canon.
49 Comments
Thx of this article. You’re right, I needed to know how to do this today and there you were! Thank you.
Thanks a lot. I was loosing my head bcoz of this. And ofcourse the operations guide was not helpful at all…Like u said easy once you figured it out…..
hey, i have a sony cybershot but its a a year old and i dont know how to delete all on it either. but it doesnt have the features that yours does. is there anyway you can help me?
Thank you soooo much!! I’ve been going crazy and knew that it was impossible that there would not be a delete all! Thank you thank you thank you!!!!
Rats- I thought you might have the answer to the hard question. How the heck do you delete cybershot photos that have already been loaded into your computer?
The update ‘Ver. 1.0′ which another helpful web-place suggested would solve this problem, took 4 hours to download and screwed things up even worse and ate a bunch of unintended photos!
The camera has good features and bad, but with the software as weak as it is I would never buy this camera again. 3″ screen or not (DSC-H5).
Anyone know the answer to ‘how to delete from cybershot in the computer?’
You CAN delete from Sony DSC-5 as stated above. BUT, instead of the instructions above, do this:
1. Go to the display view (playback)
2. Click on the “W” (for wide view) and you will get thumbnails of all you photos.
3. Click on the button for Trash/Delete
4. Select All In This Folder by using your up/down arrows.
5. Click on the small center buttons.
6. Move to the arrow to OK. Center button again
7. Voila! All gone!
Thanks so much for this post. I have puzzled over this delete problem since getting the camera last Christmas. The manual is useless. Does anyone know if there’s another user manual available for purchase that actually tell you how to do things?
Thank you ~ thank you! I was going nuts trying to figure out how to delete them all. It was a pain in the butt having to delete 1 at a time. Again ~ Thank you!
You saved my day! Thank you! Thank you! I’m certain that I had found this information with the booklets that came with the camera and had used this technique many times but had forgotten it. I spent hours this morning tryng to find it again both in the books and on the Sony website.
Wow, and I thought it was just a horrible missing feature. After almost 2 years, I finally can delete all my photos. Thanks.
Thank you! I was getting really fustrated. Taking 300 photos & manually erasing each one individually.
Thank you!
Holy crap! I’ve had this camera for four years and didn’t know how to do that.
Thanks!
Thank you! I lost my manual before ever reading it, and I thought I must be missing some very easy way to delete all photos at once. So glad to see that I was not the only one unable to figure this out intuitively!!!
I’m glad you figured it out, the information is not in the manual and Sony’s website doesn’t give a “search” option. I cannot understand how they left out something so basic and necessary. The prints I’m getting are a good quality, but overall, I am not impressed with this camera. The big screen is nice, but vulnerable to breakage, mine cracked shortly after I got it and I’m not sure how it happened. Luckily, I bought the extended warranty that included accidental coverage. Whew!
Thanks alot! I never knew how to do that and ive had my camera for a very long time.
Thank you so much, I just spent about an hour downloading the manual, and “how to delete” folders was not even on there…..Seriously, thank you so much!
FINALLY! I knew there had to be a way to delete all photos, but Sony wasn’t sharing the secret.
Thanks!
thanx…i just bought a cybershot and thought my old camera had a “delete all” why doesn’t this Sony camera? the manual said nothing of this…good thing google picked you up and I got all the info I needed…thanks to you! tremendous help…did it step by step and it works!!!THANKS so much.
I’ve got 3 friends and myself with a cybershot and couldn’t figure this out……Thanks for posting I’ll pass it on!
Thanks Before I found this article I deleted 123 pictures off of the camera. Thanks again and keep up the good work.
Thanks..that was very helpful…knew there must be some way to do it.
Freaking A man - I LOVE my credit card sized Cybershot, and after a year of new baby pictures resulting in millions of one by one deletions, I finally found the time to google the question & your answer was the first to appear. Thank you Mr. Genius Picture Deleter Man! You’ve just made my life a little easier
Thanks so much for this info! I have struggled with this problem since receiving the camera a year ago!
Thanks soooooooo much! I just new that there had to be a way to do it instead of the one by one time consuming way. The manual is useless, but I do like the camera. It is my first digital and I am still learning.
I just wanted to thank you for figuring out what I absolutely could not!
Thank you. Thank you. THANK YOU!
I’m so happy to have found your site. It’s comforting to know that I’m not the only one who could not figure out how to delete all pictures at once. I’ve had my camera over a year.
I’m another cybershot owner who has been going bonkers trying to find out how to delete all pictures.
MANY THANKS
Thank you so much!!! I would never have figured that out — what a timesaver.
I also couldn’t figure out how to delete all pictures and they were accumulating! Thanks for the info!
Thanks! I love my Cybershot, but deleting all the pictures in the folder was completely counter-intuitive. Thank you so much!!
Thanks. The camera’s great (much faster and smaller than our canon) but I guess they thought by making it hard to delete all they’d sell more of their special memory cards.
Thank you for posting this, I used to spend 15 minutes deleting them individually…
THANK YOU!
I, too, really like my cy berShot camera … except for this problem.
Thanks for solving it!
Has anyone suggested to SONY that they amend their in struction manuals?
To delete a Sony generated folder on your computer of the pictures, “Cut” the folder and then “Paste” it in the Recycle Bin, then “Empty” the Recycle bin. Thanks for the Delete all on the camera info!
thanks.. you tell me in 30 secs what i have been trying to figure out for a eeek. the book is useless. dont think much of the picture quality either. my kodak 5mp is far better
Brilliant..I’ve been carrying around over 500 old pics and now theyre gone at last..!!
PHEW! A million thanks! Been trying to work this out for a year now, I couldn’t even find an answer on the internet until your page appeared.
Thanks so much.
thank you, thank you, thank you!
Thank you. I’ve been trying to figure this out for months!
OMG!!!!! Thank you soooooooo much!!!! I’d never had figured that out myself!!!! Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank Thank you !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
A very BIG thank-you. I still had almost all of my pictures since I bought the camera except those that I deleted one by one and that takes way too long. Sony should have been smarter than leave that detail out of the “usless” handbook.
Brilliant post - thank goodness for useful blogs!!
Finally!! Thanks for this. I’ve been trying to figure out for ages how to delete all pic’s on this camera. It’s so wonderful to read the 0/0 on the screen.
Hi - can you help me - my screen is dead, so I have to “guess” where my selections are.
I want to delete pictures, but I can’t see what I am selecting! If anyone can help me by telling me which buttons to press to delete (even one at a time!), I would be so grateful!
Helen:
Is your screen ‘dead’ or just turned off? If it’s truly dead, I’d have to say it’s probably time to get another camera (and not a cybershot this time!)
I can’t believe how popular this post has been. I think I’m glad I no longer own that Cybershot. ;o)
at last!
Thanks pal.
Thank you so much for telling me how to delete all on Sony Cybershot. I lost instructions and for past year have been doing it 1 by 1 for what seems to take hours - and many batteries.
Thank you so much, and thank you for doing your homework……it helped me tremendously….otherwise I would have probably been up all night trying to delete all my pictures one by one. You really were a lifesaver!!!!! Thank you!!!!