Travel zoom cameras have quickly become one thing of a saviour of the photographic business. Their broad focal ranges nevertheless pocket-sized proportions distance and differentiate the compacts from the smartphone threat. With a solid-feeling metal build, stereo microphones, integral GPS, top-of-the-range G series lens, and serious black end, it definitely resembles a premium camera.
A high-ish worth tag of £349 within the UK and $398 within the US pitches the Sony HX20V against the class-leading Panasonic Lumix TZ30 - each cameras that includes a 20x optical zoom vary - moreover as high-powered bridge cameras like the 30x zoom Fuji HS30.
On the Sony Cyber-shot HX20V, the core focal vary is reminiscent of 25-500mm on a 35mm camera, and also the camera witnesses the debut of what Sony calls its Advanced Aspherical (AA) lens style, the aim of that is in fact to deliver an enormous zoom in a very fairly little body.
The camera's dimensions live 106.6 x 61.9 x 34.6mm, with a leather impact rubber grip and Optical SteadyShot stabilisation serving to to avoid blur when shooting handheld at most telephoto, and effectively therefore, because it happens. Value-added options like the auto stitching Sweep Panorama extend the scope for a way a lot of data may be squeezed into your frame.
The Sony Cyber-shot HX20V finds area for an equivalent eighteen.2 megapixel 1/2.3-type Exmor R CMOS sensor employed by the Sony HX200V, whereas avoiding its sibling's mini DSLR bulk and being cheaper with it. additionally onboard is its image enhancing Pixel Super Resolution technology, serving to to scale back if not wholly stop the blocky look of typical digital zooms.
In doing that the Sony HX20V appearance to deliver what several may take into account a awfully honest compromise of little size, nevertheless massive imaging performance. that is if potential purchasers will justify paying £150/$200 over less flashy however still absolutely featured travel zooms like the 18x zoom Samsung WB150F, additionally with GPS.
Lending the Sony Cyber-shot HX20V a additional rarefied air, however, are DSLR-style options like a software-boosted most sensitivity of ISO 12800 (against the Samsung's ISO 3200), high speed Bionz processor, and AF timings of zero.13 seconds in daylight. This latest high-powered Sony Cyber-shot definitely appearance the half and reads as capable on paper, however how will it prove in practice?
With the grip at the front providing space for your 2 middle fingers and an additional pad at the rear for the thumb, it's doable to shoot one-handed at most telephoto with the Sony Cyber-shot HX20V, leaving the forefinger liberated to squeeze down on the shutter unharness button or toggle the zoom lever that surrounds it. A body-only weight of 221g, while not the 320-shot rechargeable battery or alternative of SD or Memory Stick professional pair inserted at the bottom, more adds stability when held within the palm.
18 megapixel stills and Full HD 1920 x 1080 pixels video clips captured at 50fps are composed and reviewed via the 3-inch, 4:3 facet ratio LCD screen on the backplate, the 921k dot resolution guaranteeing that visibility is nice, each indoors and out.
Sony has, however, found space for a little shooting mode dial, ridged edging providing bigger purchase for the thumb. If we have a tendency to're nit-picking we may have done with the dial's action being slightly stiffer to avoid slipping accidentally onto an adjacent setting when fetching the camera out of a jacket or back pocket.
On the dial itself, we're given the standard complement of intelligent auto and artistic settings - ten in total. Here manual choices are divided between Program mode and Manual mode, the latter additionally together with the power to regulate aperture price and shutter speed.
The two absolutely auto modes are equally divided, to supply exposure-adjusting and sharpening Superior Auto, and subject-recognising Intelligent Auto. additionally gift and proper are separate scene, 3D and panorama shooting choices.
Video additionally gets a zealous setting on this high plate dial, as does, curiously, a shallow depth of field-aping Background Defocus mode, whereas a red video record button options high right of the backplate. This button is inset, thus needs a deliberate dig with a thumbnail to activate.
While separate playback, menu and delete buttons on the backplate keep operation easy and intuitive, readily falling underneath the thumb, the centrepiece here may be a jog dial-come-scroll wheel. With a thumb press to at least one of its edges this could be used for gingerly tabbing through settings, or it will be spun to progress quicker.
Ranged around this are show, flash, self timer and continuous shooting settings, whereas when in Intelligent Auto mode a press of its bottom edge can access the Photo Creativity choices.
This enables brightness and saturation to be tweaked within the camera pre-capture using an on-screen slider, whereas some digital filters - together with a pop art and toy camera vogue result - can even be applied. Missing here may be a miniature mode possibility, however in reality filters are solely seemingly to be applied moderately, if at all.
Give the highest plate power button of the Sony Cyber-shot HX20V a press and among 2 seconds the lens barrel has extended from flush with the body to its most wide-angle setting, soundtracked by the excitement of lens mechanics. The show settings here are fascinating, in that with subsequent presses of the rear dial the user will decision up a live histogram displaying brightness levels across the image or an on-screen spirit level, thereby enabling straight horizons even when shooting handheld.
Hold a finger down on the zoom lever and therefore the camera zips through its focal vary from extreme wide angle to most telephoto in all of 3 seconds, though once more there is that low waspish buzz.
To atone for this, the zoom is way slower - and an honest deal quieter - when used once the movie record button has been pressed, taking seven to eight seconds to travel a similar distance. this is not altogether a foul factor, as transitions are abundant smoother on the ensuing footage.
Half squeeze the shutter unleash button in stills mode and there is the briefest of changes before the shot snaps into focus and a cluster of AF points seem highlighted on screen.
Squeeze the button absolutely and therefore the shutter fires nigh instantly, the captured full resolution frame remaining on screen for a second or 2, whereas it's being written to card.
In terms of image quality, this being a Sony camera and with default settings in place, colors very pop when downloaded to your desktop pc, with vibrant reds and plush greens being notably placing. Shots straight from the camera show an honest quantity of distinction and deep blacks too, subtly adding depth and dimension to its frames.
In terms of low light-weight performance, you'll likely need to stay to ISO 3200 and below, or at ISO 1600 if you would like to avoid having any grain in the least. Shots taken at ISO 6400 and ISO 12800 have a man-made look - the results of software trickery to spice up the sensor performance whereas limiting noise. At most setting there's a watercolour search for certain, however it's miles from a deal breaker.
Pocket ultra-zoom cameras mix point-and-shoot simplicity with a giant zoom to assist frame shots additional creatively, and are a worthwhile upgrade to a smartphone's camera that cannot zoom the least bit. The HX20V is that the pricier of 2 such models in Sony current vary (HX10V review coming back soon). Its specification are uncannily the same as rival models, like the Canon PowerShot SX260 HS, Fujifilm Finepix F770EXR and Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ30: 20x zoom lens, 3in screen, 10fps continuous shooting, manual exposure management, 1080p videos and GPS for geo-tagging photos. It's pricier than its rivals, though, that price from £248 to £289 as of nowadays.
One justification is that the HX20V's ability to capture 1080p videos and 13-megapixel photos at an equivalent time (lower than the total 18-megapixel resolution as a result of these photos have an equivalent 16:9 facet ratio as videos). we predict it is a tremendously helpful feature. There are such a large amount of times once we needed we'd captured a photograph instead of a video, or vice versa; this camera removes any such worries. It does not need a special mode to be selected beforehand. As long as videos are recorded at 25fps instead of the highest 50fps frame rate, the shutter button keeps on operating. Olympus offers an equivalent feature on the Olympus SZ-31MR however is restricted to twenty four photos per video clip. The HX20V will take photos each number of seconds for the period of its 30-minute video clips.
It helps that this camera excels for video capture. the image was clean and detailed, displaying remarkably very little noise in low lightweight. Autofocus was swish and responsive, and also the optical stabilisation did an amazing job in telephoto shots, delivering swish pans whereas eliminating wobbles. Our solely grumble is that manual settings are ignored for videos, even right down to the white balance setting. which will place inventive videographers off, except for everybody else, there is very little purpose in shopping for an infatuated camcorder.
It's a rewarding camera to require photos with, too. Performance is quick, with only one second between shots in traditional use. Continuous shooting is at either 10fps or 2fps, though just for ten frames per burst. there is a mode dial on high, a wheel on the rear for adjusting settings and a Custom button that may be set to exposure compensation, ISO speed, white balance, metering or smile detect. We'd have liked fast access to quite only one of those functions, though. Accessing the others involves delving into the menu, that presents photographic functions in one long list that is straightforward to urge lost in.
The mode dial includes manual exposure however not aperture- or shutter-priority modes. A sweep panorama mode captures and stitches because the camera is slowly turned. a brand new high-resolution possibility captures panoramas with the camera in portrait orientation for a taller read, and generates huge 43-megapixel (10,480x4,096) pictures. The draw back is that the camera should be moved moderately quickly to capture the panorama before the buffer memory is full, thus there was alittle quantity of motion blur except in terribly bright conditions.
The camera's file management leaves plenty to be desired. like all the opposite Sony cameras we have seen recently, the HX20V does not appear to love being given a blank SDHC card, and took twelve seconds writing folders to the cardboard before any photos may well be taken. Photos and videos are stored in separate locations on the cardboard – an inevitable symptom of using the AVCHD format, that uses a convoluted file structure – however the camera uses a 3rd folder for its MP4 video recording. a minimum of Sony not expects the user to change manually between completely different folders when enjoying back photos and videos on the camera.
It additionally gathers all of them in one virtual folder when connected to a pc via USB. The USB socket's location on the bottom of the camera is not ideal, though, because it meant we tend to had to rest the camera on its screen or its lens. additional worryingly, we tend to couldn’t retrieve photos saved to the interior memory using the USB cable. The camera offered us a link to register on-line and an installer for its PlayMemories Home software, however when putting in this we tend to still could not access the interior memory. we tend to eventually solved the matter by switching from MTP to Mass Storage mode within the camera's setup menu.
Inspecting photos on a pc revealed a fancy set of strengths and weaknesses. Wide-angle shots exhibited sharp focus and were packed with detail, because of the 18-megapixel resolution, however noise reduction glossed over delicate textures like grass and hair. It struggled to disguise noise in skin textures – arguably the foremost necessary a part of a photograph. we tend to additionally found that out-of-focus areas in an exceedingly scene tended to seem quite scruffy, suggesting that the noise-reduction processing did not savvy to alter blurry pictures. the actual fact that this scruffy look was common across the complete image in telephoto shots suggests slightly soft focus in these shots. regardless of the underlying reason, the HX20V was a bit disappointing for telephoto shots.
These problems with noise did not bode well for image quality in low light-weight, however actually the HX20V coped surprisingly well. By ISO 800, the turbulent noise artefacts were solely a bit worse, and there was still an inexpensive quantity of detail in dense textures. It could not match the Canon SX260 HS in low light-weight however it wasn't too way behind, and it narrowly surpassed the Panasonic TZ30. Its ability to capture, align and mix six frames to scale back noise levels in low light-weight gave it an extra boost.
This camera could be a difficult one to weigh up. we will not fault it for options, and its high-resolution panorama mode and skill to capture photos and videos simultaneously are 2 of the simplest options we have seen for a protracted time. It's quick and fairly easy to use, and that we might bring ourselves to measure with its awkward file management. It's an impressive video camera, however photo quality is that the sticking purpose. Photos are consistently respectable, however never very far better. it is also quite expensive at current costs. If you are tempted, we'd advocate holding out for our review of the HX10V, that is extremely similar aside from a 16x zoom and a way lower cost.
Specification
Dimensions 2.5 x 4.25 x 1.4 inches
Weight 9 oz
Type Superzoom
Megapixels 18 MP
Sensor Type CMOS
Sensor Size 6.2 x 4.6 (1/2.3") mm
Media Format Memory Stick Duo, Secure Digital, Secure Digital High Capacity,
Memory Stick Pro Duo, Secure Digital Extended Capacity
Battery Type Supported Lithium Ion
Maximum ISO 12800
35-mm Equivalent (Wide) 25 mm
35-mm Equivalent (Telephoto) 500 mm
Optical Zoom 20 x
Image Stabilization Optical
Touch Screen No
LCD size 3 inches
LCD dots 921000
LCD Aspect Ratio 4:3
Viewfinder Type None
Video Resolution 1080i, 1080p
Interface Ports micro USB, mini HDMI
GPS Yes
Waterproof Depth (Mfr. Rated) 0 feet
Boot time 1.5 seconds
Recycle time 0.15 seconds
Shutter Lag 0 seconds
Lines Per Picture Height 2362
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