Zoom right in to nature

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX50V is a travel camera that allows you to shoot beautiful scenery, wildlife and other far-away objects at seemingly close range.

The HX50V, which has excellent image quality and good performance, is the lightest and smallest compact digital camera with 30x optical zoom. Its focal length starts with ultra-wide 24mm and it allows you to zoom up to 720mm in 35mm-photography equivalence.

Weighing just 272 grams, it could be your perfect travel companion. It’s 108.1 x 63.6 x 38.3mm, easily carried it in a trouser or shirt pocket.

With the 24mm focal length, you can enjoy shooting beautiful scenery. The 720mm focal length of 30x zoom lets you get stunning shots of birds or animals that are normally hard to get physically close to. And the camera has built-in GPS for tagging your photos for you to map your memories with applications that support the tagging.

The HX50V captures good-quality photos thanks to its 20.4-megapixel Exmor R CMOS sensor and high-quality Sony G lens. And it uses Optical SteadyShot image stabilisation to reduce shake and blur by countering camera movements in both horizontal and vertical directions. And when shooting videos, the camera uses Active 3-Way stabilisation to keeps things steadier with digital rolling control that offsets clockwise and counter-clockwise rotation. This results in smoother videos even while zoomed in close.

The camera is also fun for shooting sports as its high-speed shooting or burst mode can capture up to 10 frames per second at the full 20.4-megapixel resolution for ten shots at a time.

The camera also provides a multiple interface shoe for expanding its functions and capacity. For example, you can buy an external flash unit or an electronic viewfinder to use with it. The electronic viewfinder is a must if you want to do a lot of full zooming outdoors. The bright sunlight is likely to make it hard to zoom on your subject unless you use the highest level of brightness of its 3-inch Xtra Fine LCD. The LCD with 921K dots provides five levels of brightness control. At the highest level, the screen can consume battery power fast.

HX50V is easy to operate. You can use it with just one hand because it is light and it has a grip that fits the right thumb, middle finger and ring finger.

Apart from the mode dial, the camera also provides a separate dial to adjust exposure settings two stops lower or higher than normal.

Newcomers can have fun shooting right away with two auto exposure modes – Intelligent Auto and Superior Auto. Superior Auto is more complex as the camera will determine whether it needs to create a composite of burst images in case of high contrast or back-lit subjects to ensure good image quality and reduce blur and noise.

I mostly enjoyed testing the HX50V with the Superior Auto mode and found that it handled complex lighting well and yielded pleasing results. The camera properly selected scene modes for most shots during the test.

But experienced photographers may select the full manual control mode for more creative shots. Or you may choose modes that allow you to have more control than the full auto modes, such as Programme Exposure Mode, Shutter-priority Mode and Aperture-priority Mode.

You can also select one of 15 scene modes, which are High Sensitivity, Soft snap, Soft Skin, Landscape, Night Portrait, Night Scene, Handheld Twilight, Gourmet, Beach, Snow, Fireworks, Pet mode, Anti-motion blur, Backlight Correction HDR, and Advanced Sports Shooting.

I found that Gourmet mode let me take beautiful shots of dishes and I love the Handheld Twilight mode that fired a burst of six composite images and combined them into a sharp and beautiful photo, highlighting lights of the night.

During the test, I found that the camera captured macro shots under the two auto modes beautifully. For example, in one macro shot, the HX50V captured beautiful purple shades of a lotus against its green leaves while making a rain drops on the flower look sharp and clear.

During the test in my neighbourhood, I enjoyed shooting birds, getting close and clear shots without scaring them away.

I took the camera to Chatuchak and Rot Fai parks and found that its 24-mm lens took beautiful scenic photos. 

The green grass and leaves looked very green in nice contrast in the colours of the flowers and trees, for example.

The camera has good performance. It took less than two seconds to start up and get ready for the first shot. I didn’t feel shutter lag, while shot-to-shot varied depended on after-shot processing time of various shooting modes. In general, it took less than a second between shots.

The camera also has built-in Wi-Fi connection that allows you to transfer photos to a smart phone of iOS or Android platform and a computer after you have properly installed applications on the phone and computer.

The camera also shot good quality Full HD video (50p) and it has a good battery life, being rated with 400 shots with GPS turned off per one charge.

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX50V has a suggested retail price of Bt14,990.

 

 

Key specs

_ Effective Pixels (approx.): 20.4 megapixels

_ Image Sensor: 1/2.3 type (7.82mm) Exmor R CMOS sensor

_ Processor: BIONZ

_ Lens: Sony G, 24-720mm,  f/3.5 (W) - 6.3 (T), 11 elements in 10 groups (including 5 aspheric elements)

_ Optical Zoom: 30x 

_ ISO (still image): Auto/80/100/125/160/200/250/320/400/500/640/800/1000/1250/1600/2000/2500/3200

_ Display: 3.0-inch 4:3 / 921,600 dots / Xtra Fine / TFT LCD

_ Wi-Fi: Yes

_ Battery: NP-BX1 and USB Charge/USB Power Supply

_ Battery Life / still image shooting (approx.): 400 images / 200 minutes

Approx. dimensions 

_ (W x H x D): 108.1mm x 63.6mm x 38.3mm

_ Weight (body only, excluding media and battery): Approx. 246g 

_ Weight (including Battery and Memory Stick DUO): Approx. 272g