Its my birthday soon and I've declared to the wife I want a new camera. I've always tended to favour Canon but think I maybe changing camps. For practical reasons I can't really have a DSLR so I go for the high end compacts. My last camera was a Canon G10 but it was that little bit too bulky for daily use and when we go hill walking etc. Any looking around on the net I've come across the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX9V which seems to tick all the boxes for me. The reviewsseem good, the camera has got what I want. 24-384mm lens Fancy panaramic shot thing HD vid GPS for tagging shots and a few other things. My main worry is buying a camera from a firm that basically makes TV's and stereo's. Daft I know but has anyne any thoughts on this camera?
Sony make most of the sensors that go into compacts whatever brand it is, even Canon buy Sony sensors for some of their compacts. Also Sony are currently ahead of Canon in DSLR sensor technology their analogue digital conversion readout technology provides far superior dynamic range to the current range of Canon DSLR's, also Sony supply custom version of these sensors to Nikon for their top of the range DSLR's, so Sony are far far from being a low tek TV and stereo manufacturer they are indeed at the bleeding edge of current high end tek to be honest! To my mind though the most important thing in a compact after image quality is the user interface and the Canon compacts like their DSLR cousins have always scored for me in that respect. If I had the money I would be looking at the Canon S100 just now http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canons100/14, doesn't have the zoom range you are looking at but it does have full manual controls and RAW output, which matters for me and it's small, very small. Personally I would not go for the superzoom range offered by the Sony or this general class of camera, the technology does not really exist to do a really good 20 times zoom, I am also still of the view that less mega pixels is better when it comes to compacts, the less storage is required the faster the processing and transfer and in practical real world terms the extra MP's often turn to mush with this kind of camera. dpreview covered the Sony in a group test last year http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/q311travelzoomgrouptest the Canon and Nikon candidates came out higher than the Sony in that particular test. One thing though, the Panasonic Lumix range generally has the best lenses but the whole package is not always the best, well worth a look though. To sum it up I don't really know a lot about this particular Sony and from experimenting in shops I've not been convinced by the user interface of Sony camera's but there is no reason to suspect it would be a poor choice.
Cheers for the reply mate, didn't realise all that stuff about sony!! I know what you mean about this mad pixel race that seems to be happening with compact cameras now. I've always thought that about 8 - 10 is perfectly fine for most cameras but obviously the manufactuers think different. I looked at the Canon S100 though the zoom to be a bit short for my wants, I also considered the Powershot S220 / 230 but read a few reviews that P.Q suffers abit and apparent very poor battery life. I have heard about the lumix range having great lenses though the PQ seems to suffer in the DPreview. Their main gripe about the sony seems to be start up and review times. Personally I don't think that is too much of a problem for me. I think for me after reading those reviews its between the canon 230 and the sony to be honest. I think I'm leaning towards the sony to be honest as I like the sound of this sweep panaramic shot it has. A bit more research I think. I just wish some one would knock out a compact with a x16 zoom starting at 24mm, record HD video, panaramic shots and about 10 meg.
I hope you don't mind me saying this but the experience I have had with compacts is that they seem to produce "snaps" that don't jump off the page. I would never go back to a compact now, I suppose I have become more critical with all the photos I have taken. To me, the benefits of a DSLR far outweigh the negatives of larger camera sizes. I used to travel to a lot of countries like you Stu and wouldn't be without my SLR in those days. Just a thought or two.........
I know what you mean about PQ of DSLR over compacts and its something that does niggle me quite alot. The trouble is the amount of travelling I do, back in my merchant navy days with 5-7 month trips etc it wasn't really a problem taking my old 35mm SLR and lenes as you always tended to take quite alot of gear away with you. These days though I'm on 4 week trips and tend to use hand luggage only, travel fast and light so a DSLR is sort of out of the question really due to luggage limitations. The other thing as well is if I ever do print any snaps out they are very likely to be standard size with the odd one maybe A4 size so I'm hoping the PQ of a compact will be sufficent.
Right, narrowed it down between the Canon DSc230 and the sony HX9V. I just wish I could mix these cameras together and get the best of both! Got this from ephotzine who rate the sony higher but DPreview have the canon higher!!! Canon Powershot SX230 HS Pros: GPS built in - one of the smallest Full HD video with stereo sound and optical zoom Compact with an excellent 14x optical zoom lens Good image quality - excellent colour Built in optical image stabilisation Low noise upto ISO1600 Images look great on the high quality screen Canon Powershot SX230 HS Cons: Some soft corners in images Slight vignetting at full optical zoom Some purple fringing in extreme conditions Sony Cybershot HX9v Pros: GPS provides useful information - quick lock Full HD video with stereo sound and optical zoom Excellent 16x optical zoom lens Good image quality - excellent colour Built in optical image stabilisation Excellent low noise upto ISO1600 Images look great on the high quality screen Clever high resolution panoramic mode Sony Cybershot HX9v Cons: Limited availability initially Some purple fringing in extreme conditions
I don't know if you are thinking about doing HD Videos, but FWIW, my Canon 7D will need an additional microphone if I was to do a lot. I presume the Canon compact will be similar?
Purple fringing can be corrected in post, i.e. post processing on the computer, so not really an issue for most camera's these days although it is nice when the lens is so good that it does not happen in the first place When they say low noise up to ISO xxxx what they really mean is it's pretty crap above 800 but you could just about live with it , at 1600 and 3200 you are getting desperate and you will never print that Apart from that I would seriously recommend trying out the menu system and controls on each camera in a shop somewhere, Canon is good at user interfaces, Sony......... maybe; not tried a compact from them for a while but found them hard to adjust to in the past. This really is one time when try before you buy is extremely important. Regards Video and sound most of these wee cams do a decent job, I agree with Mike that a compact is just not in the same league as a DSLR but then again it does not have to be, they get used at different times. This is particularly true in the Phils, I tend to use the compact if we are out at the shops or out and about at night and I'm not comfortable with the location, the DSLR comes out during the daytime and of course the compact is always handy for a short video of the kids, I don't expect or need stunning movie level quality for that purpose or sound, these things are already better than most purpose built video cams from the last decade. GPS quick lock would be nice but I am getting nervous about GPS since it started to become apparent that it provides a great means to be inadvertently tracked, I would like it for my own archival purposes but I don't like the fact it makes life hard in terms of remembering to strip the GPS data from the files before I upload them anywhere.
Some very good points. I've liked the idea of this gps tagging thing as I think it would come in handy for remembering what I've taken a pic of when we've been out walking and I eventually get round to filing the pics. To be honest I'd not really considered the whole possible tracking issue but I may have to have a think about that. Regards the video aspect, like you say its only going to be for short vids as I've owned video cameras before and their lucky if they ever see the light of day to be honest. And you've hit the nail on the head about where and when you feel comfortable carrying a DSLR as opposed a compact. I mean I'm 6 4" and 15 stone, I stand out in most places without a nice big expensive DSLR hanging round my neck!! Plus I always feel I look like a tourist if I have a proper camera when out and about, an irrational feeling I know as most of the time I am a tourist but one that I'm uncomfortable with. Well I think as you say it really is a try before you buy. Hopefully they sell both of these in Frankfurt airport so I can have a look on my way home. Thank you both for your ideas and inputs, its been a great help. i'll let you know what I end up with
The tracking issue is especially bad for parents and was recently raised on the Beeb, you take pics of your kids post them online and even the jpegs have embedded gps data, so in effect you are advertising the exact location of your kids to every psycho paedophile on the internet. Jpeg EXIF data is often preserved by web sites, particularly specialist photography sites where the information is important to other photographers. Even with other basic snaps I really don't want it to be much more accurate than Manila, Makati or Glasgow, I am really happy though to have the technological access to exact GPS data as I am a stickler for that kind of detail I have geotagged some photos but I would love the geotagging to be precise to within a metre or two such as will be available when Europe's Galileo GPS constellation finally becomes active, but even then I will be wiping the data from many many files before I ever upload them. Luckily DSLR's generally do not have this capability.
I've been through Frankfurt at least once as memory serves , decent airport, fairly sure they will have a lot of kit to compare, good luck Stu!
That is a bit of a worry actually. Is it easy enough to remove this embadded gps data from the picture files before adding them to say google maps / earth? It sounds a good idea to maybe chose the accuracy of the data. Like you say have the choice of saying london or manila etc to getting it to within a couple of meters. The GPS we have on board (3 separate) allows us to keep a 80000 ton vessel stationary in a 10cm diameter footprint. Be god to have that accuracy if required!
I think lightroom removes it if I specify the option when exporting images, but it would depend on the software you were using, in theory it is fairly straightforward to remove it but it's something else to remember when you are offloading your photos. And of course you don't want to remove the info from your own original copies but only from the copies you make to export elsewhere. Flickr has a setting to allow the publication of geotag data or not which is quite good.
This was my job before on vessels, Stu. I operated the DGPS (Differential GPS) and other nav systems in a previous life.
I was interested in what Stu said about that Mike, how to they get that level of accuracy are they using inertial navigation systems in combination with the GPS? I'm guessing that the DGPS is averaging the errors between multiple receivers but maybe getting some help from local inertial sensors as well?
Mike probably knows more about this than me (I'm an operator not maintainer!) Basically its standard GPS, which is pretty accurate these days to be honest due to a reduction in the T (time) code error. But with DGPS we take various corrections both land and satellte (SAT B, Immarsat, HF etc), then due to white mans magic differences in signal are worked out and an accurate position fix is given. Where you a surveyor then Mike?
I was trained as an electronics technician with the MOD, Stu. I worked as a surveyor also, but only within the limitations of using electronic equipment to lay anchors and position vessels, etc.. I could never go back to the basics of surveying if the equipment broke down because I did not train as a surveyor. DGPS in my days Jim became very accurate because the x,y & z co-ordinates from satellites were received by two different places; the place the vessel was in as well as from a fixed reference location on shore. On-board software then adjusted the offshore position from the corrections received from the reference station. Accuracy in the 90's was in the order of 10m without corrections and 2-3m with corrections. These days corrections can be received in many ways. There are more than one reference station also, Jim. This obviously helps with any redundancy.
Very interesting Mike so there is one or more long baseline onshore reference plus the direct readings on the ship, I understand the theory behind GPS but was aware that the American military could control the accuracy of the time signal broadcast by their satellites, I wasn't aware that techniques existed to get better than 1 metre xyz accuracy though, very impressive, thanks for the info
