Playtime for the paparazzi

For great close-up shots even when the subject is far away, there’s little better than Sony’s Cyber-shot Digital Camera DSC-HX300 with its 50x zoom or 1,200mm focal length in 35mm photography.

That focal length is perfect for capturing birds and animals that won’t allow you to approach them. You can use it to capture beautiful landscapes with the ultra-wide-angle lens at the focal length at 24x and zoom to get up-close to very far objects with the 50x zoom. The in-between focal length, about 100mm equivalent, allows you to capture beautiful portraits with a professionally blurred background.

The HX 300 is built around a 20.4 megapixel 1/2.3-inch Exmor CMOS sensor and the Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T lens with f/2.8 aperture at the widest angle to f/6.3 at the 1,200mm focal length.

With the f/2.8 aperture, Exmor R CMOS sensor and BIONZ image processor, the HX300 can deliver up to 10 frames per second continuous shooting. It supports Anti Motion Blur and Hand-held Twilight as well as 1080p movie modes.

HX300 has a 3-inch tiltable LCD, allowing you to take overhead shots or shoot subjects at a low angle. The electronic viewfinder is very useful when you’re using the telephoto lens in bright sunlight.

As most keen lensmen already know, your hands tend to shake when you take telephotography shots without securing the camera on a tripod, resulting in blurred pictures. The HX300 resolves this problem with Optical SteadyShot image stabilisation that reduces shake and blur by countering camera movements in both horizontal and vertical directions.

Active 3-Way stabilisation adds digital rolling control that counters clockwise and anti-clockwise rotation, resulting in more stable videos even at long focal lengths.

The HX300 has two auto exposure modes – Intelligent Auto and Superior Auto. During the test, I enjoyed shooting with the Superior Auto exposure mode because the camera automatically adjusted shooting parameters to suit various scenes and applied effects to enhance the image quality.

More experienced photographers will use Shutter Speed Priority, Aperture Priority, Program Auto and Manual Exposure modes. Or you can select the Scene Selection option that allows you to manually select one of 16 scene modes, among them Soft Snap, Soft Skin, Landscape, Night Portrait, Night Scene, Handheld Twilight, Gourmet, Beach, Pet mode, Anti-motion blur and Backlight Correction HDR.

During the test at The Nation’s newsroom, we found that HX300 captured beautiful portraits with a blurred background when shot with long focal-length lens. It also captured beautiful landscape photos with well-saturated colours.

The 1,200mm telephoto capability is fun and you use the 50x zoom lens as your electronic eye. For example, I couldn’t see even with my glasses who I was taking a photo of but my subject’s face was clearly revealed after I took his photo with the 1,200mm focal length,

Testing the zoom capability from the newsroom on the 31st floor, I was able to capture the passenger terminal at Suvarnabhumi Airport.

I also captured a boat on the lake inside the King Rama IX Park and the park’s pavilion was large enough in the frame to be clearly seen.

And when the sky was clear, I was able to take a shot of the Elephant Building on Ratchayothin Road from our 31st floor, though it was not as sharp and clean as most photos because the smog added a filter effect.

During the test, I could also take sharp and clean shots of birds perched on a power cable proving that the optical image stabilisation technology is really effective.

The camera could also take very nice close-up shots of the moon, showing the craters on the surface clearly.

I also enjoyed its Handheld Twilight mode. Using this mode, I managed to capture clean and sharp shots of night lights. The camera fired the shutter six times very fast and combined the data into one sharp and clean photo.

You can easily apply photo creativity effects to your shots when using the auto modes, adjusting the levels of brightness, warmth and vividness as well as selecting fun picture effects. 

The HX 300 performs well, taking about 2.1 seconds from start-up to be ready for the first shot and without any shutter lag. If you don’t use a shooting mode that requires after-shot processing time, the shot-to-shot time would be less than one second.

The camera also has fast auto focus. Even when set for the longest zoom, the focus was quick, allowing me to take nice shots of birds. And the battery life is excellent: about 300 shots per one full charge.

The Cyber-shot Digital Camera DSC-HX300 is in shops now and has a suggested retail price of Bt17,990.

 

      Key specs

_ Imaging Sensor: 1/2.3-inch Exmor R CMOS sensor with 20.4 MP resolution

_ Lens: Carl Zeiss Vario Sonnar T with 50x optical zoom 24-1200mm focal length (35mm equivalent) and f/2.8 – 6.3 aperture

_ ISO: Auto / 80 / 100 / 125 / 160 / 200 / 250 / 320 / 400 / 500 / 640 / 800 / 1000 / 1250 / 1600 / 2000 / 2500 / 3200 / 4000 / 5000 / 6400 / 8000 / 10000 / 12800

_ Shutter speeds: 30 – 1/4000

_ Metering Modes: Multi Pattern / Centre Weighted / Spot

_ LCD Type: 3.0-inch Xtra Fine LCD (921K dots) – tiltable

_ Viewfinder: 0.2-inch electronic 201,600 pixels

_ Max video resolution: 1,920x1,080/60p

_ Battery: Lithium Ion NP-BX1 3.6V 1,240 mAh

_ Dimensions (Approx.): W x  H x D: 129.6 x 93.2 x 103.2mm

_ Weight (Approx.): 650g