By Lori Grunin
05/05/2009
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/digitalcameras/0,39005881,44595565p,00.htm

Camera manufacturers seem to have chosen megazooms as their latest battlefield. Thankfully, the fight isn't just about who's got the biggest lens. In this case, the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX1 incorporates several technologies from the Alpha dSLRs. In theory, the combination should deliver better photo quality than we're used to seeing in this class. In practice, it doesn't. Fast performance, solid video, and some truly interesting features make it worth considering, but the specter of middling photo quality will haunt your decision like the ghost of vacation pictures past.

Design

The HX1 is relatively compact for a megazoom, tipping the scales at 435g and with physical dimensions of 115 x 83 x 92mm. This makes for a big grip that is comfortable to hold.

The body is somewhat cluttered with buttons. On the top left you've a button that toggles between the small electronic viewfinder and the tilting but low-resolution 3-inch LCD. Behind the pop-up flash sits the stereo microphone. Next to that is the power button with a review and custom button that you can set one of three shortcuts: White balance, metering or Smile Shutter.

At the front top of the grip is the shutter with zoom switch. The zoom feels pretty typical for this class; it operates smoothly, but because it's stepped, you can never be quite sure where it stops. In the middle lie the focus selection and drive mode buttons.

Features

You can adjust aperture, shutter speed, exposure compensation and ISO sensitivity via a jog dial that falls under your right thumb. We like this implementation and it's a blessing because the standard four-way navigation switch plus enter button are irritating to use. It's too flat with no travel, so we felt like we had to press harder but couldn't. In addition to traversing the menus, this switch toggles macro mode, flash options, self-timer and display options.

Within the top-level menus you can set image size, white balance, metering, bracket size (in third, two-third or full-stop increments) and type (exposure, white balance or color), face detection, flash intensity and red-eye reduction, Dynamic Range Optimization amount, noise reduction amount, color effects, contrast, sharpness and Steady Shot image stabilization mode.

The HX1 has a 1/2.4-inch, 10-megapixel Exmor CMOS sensor (for 9-megapixel images). The 20x optically stabilized zoom lens is widest at 28mm and it extends up to 560mm. The glass is based on the company's higher-quality G series optics.


The mode dial offers all the typical shooting modes--manual and semi-manual (P/A/S/M), intelligent auto, Easy, Anti Motion Blur (raises ISO sensitivity and shutter speed), programmed scene, and movie--plus two novelties: Sweep Panorama and Hand-held Twilight. In Sweep Panorama mode, you pan the camera horizontally or vertically while it continuously snaps enough shots to build a 4,912 x 1,080-pixel (standard) or 7,152 x 1,080-pixel (wide) panorama. The images are automatically stitched together when you lift your finger from the shutter. It's fun and amazing to play with. The results are decent--if you don't look too closely. The 1,080-pixel limitation makes the images too low-resolution to resolve any real detail, and the exposure is fixed at the beginning which can result in blown-out highlights with bad fringing. Any subject in motion that we snapped produced a variety of odd effects. There is no in-camera manual stitching alternative if you'd like a better-quality panorama shot.

However, the Hand-held Twilight mode for low-light but flash-free shooting fares a lot better. The camera bursts several shots at a high ISO sensitivity, then combines them to produce a brighter, sharper photo with lower than normal noise. We were initially skeptical, but it worked surprisingly well and is a compelling feature for photographic night owls.

Performance

The HX1 unequivocally leads its class for performance. It powers on and shoots in a surprisingly zippy 2 seconds, and typically focuses and shoots in 0.4 second. It's a hair slower than the PowerShot SX1 at focusing and shooting in low-contrast conditions, but delivers in a still respectable 0.7 second. At 1.4 seconds for two sequential shots--1.7 seconds with flash--it's pretty fast.

Of course, there's the 10-shot ultra-high-speed burst mode which we clocked at 10.6 frames per second. You can also choose to scale that back to 5fps and 2fps, or drop the resolution and get faster shooting. However, keep in mind that after that speedy 10-shot burst you have to wait another 16 seconds for the camera to write the photos to the card. That's with the fastest media you can currently buy--a SanDisk Extreme III MemoryStick Pro-HG Duo 30MB/sec version. Combined with the lack of a regular slow-but-steady burst that can shoot a larger number of frames, the HX1 becomes far less useful for continuous shooting than it really should be. Too bad, because the AF is quite fast and seems to keep up with the burst.

Given the demands placed on the camera--large LCD, high-speed burst, HD video--the battery seems to last a relatively long time.

Image and Video Quality

Photo quality is the weakest aspect of the HX1. Megazooms typically don't deliver the best-looking shots, and the HX1 fares a bit worse than many of its competitors in this respect. This is mostly from what looks like poor image processing rather than any real issue with the lens or sensor.


It's capable of producing relatively sharp photos, and the lens displays little distortion or fringing artifacts. The colors look good--appropriately saturated and relatively accurate--and it delivers correct, even exposures. But most non-macro shots are a bit soft and have that smeary look associated with aggressive noise suppression at the default noise reduction setting and even at low ISO sensitivities. As a result, shots that look nice on the camera's LCD disappoint when viewed or printed at full size.

If you're more interested in video, the camera's 1080p movie capture looks a bit better, though, it records only 1,440 x 1,080 pixels at 30 fps, rather than 1,920 x 1,080 pixels. The video suffers from the same general softness as the stills, but the movies it produced (H.264-compressed MPEG-4 files) have solid exposure and focus. Like most models, the camera could really use a wind filter. But the most annoying thing about its video support is the bundled dongle--one of those addon connectors that you're bound to lose within weeks of unpacking the camera--you need to use to make an HDMI connection to an HDTV.

At US$500, the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX1 competes directly with the Canon PowerShot SX10 IS which isn't as fast and lacks HD video and low-light shooting features of the HX1. That said, the Canon shoots better daylight photos. Then there's the Casio Exilim EX-FH20, which matches the Sony in the novelty features department but also has photo quality issues. While it's always a good rule to figure out what you're most likely to be shooting before choosing a digital camera, it's never been more important than with the HX1.