Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX9V (Black)

Pros: + Video is amazing, with many options
+ Great auto focus, fantastic in low light
+ 16x zoom is fast and very good
+ GPS is a nice feature
+ Very crisp images with vibrant color
+ Extremely fast auto focus
+ Superior display screen with 1 million pixels

Cons: - No RAW mode shooting
- No external battery charger
- Limited Mac software support

Summary: I got the HX9v as soon as it came out this spring. It's pretty much the perfect, top-notch pocket point-and-shoot. In fact, I carry it with me in my right-hand pocket at literally all times. I have taken several thousand photos with it so far, and several hours of video. I am very happy with my purchase.

The video is amazing, with many options, zooming while shooting, stereo sound, great auto focus, fantastic in low light. Keep in mind that for the highest quality setting, 1080p/60 fps AVCHD, if you want to view it on a Mac, you'll need to have the latest version of iMovie '11, running on at least the latest version of Snow Leopard (OS 10.6.8). Of course, you can now upload these .MTS files directly to the various on-line sites such as Facebook, YouTube, and Google+/Picasa, and you can view them on your HDTV through the mini-HDMI out (which is great). But for saving and viewing on the Mac, the AVCHD modes introduce a couple of extra steps and are not simple drag-drop-and-play. If you don't have a Mac running the above specs, there are still some good workaround options out there.

After a lot of searching I found "ClipWrap" to be the best option for dealing with these files. But overall, I can't say enough about just how fantastic the video on this camera is. I've been hundreds of feet away at a concert in the dark, and taken footage that makes it look like I'm sitting right in front of the performer in a well-lit space. With nice-quality stereo sound. And all of this often on "only" the best 1080 MOV setting, not even dialing it up to the top-notch AVCHD. It's amazing, really.

The 16x zoom is fast and very good. Things get a little noisy when you crop and zoom in on a shot that you took at maximum zoom (basically blowing up a shot to the center 1/9th of the frame after shooting at max zoom). But that's to be expected. 16x is fantastic and I use this feature every single day for nature shots - particularly birds.

There's also a very nice feature one turn of the dial from auto mode that mimics the shallow depth-of-field in DSLRs. It takes two shots, blurs one, and then stitches the two together so that the subject is crystal-clear but the background is nicely blurred. I have gotten some very nice shots of flowers and animals close up with this, though the subject does have to be pretty still for it to work right.

Speaking of flowers, the macro capabilities of the auto modes on this camera are FANTASTIC. Reason in itself to buy the camera. I can be on a walk, with my very big dog pulling in one hand. I'll see a very pretty flower and tell him to "wait" and "sit", while using my other hand to slide the camera out of my pocket and turn it on. I just hold the camera up close, click, slide it back into my pocket, and we're off again. Whole process takes maybe 2 seconds (unless I choose to take a couple of angles, etc.). This has been the case for nearly every one of my "local flowers", "Yosemite wildflowers", and "super macro" shots in my Flickr account taken with this camera (basically everything shot in the past few months). My Flickr handle is RobertCross1 if you'd like to check out any of my shots to see for yourself.

I generally don't use the in-camera panorama features. While they are certainly very good for what they are, you can get much better panoramic shots by shooting consecutive, overlapping stills and stitching them together in a software application like Photoshop Elements.

I also don't use the in-camera HDR feature. It just isn't very well implemented and produces pretty strange looking shots, even for HDR. If you want HDR photos, you can exposure bracket with three shots in very quick succession (as this thing shoots at 10fps, a tripod is not even generally needed for this, as long as you have a fairly still hand), at -1, 0, and +1. Not quite the range you'll get from a DSLR, but I've gotten some nice results putting them together in Photomatix.

As for the battery charging in the camera situation, you can easily buy an external charger and a second and/or third battery. Then charging the battery in the camera becomes a nice second option. The one I got was an external charger and TWO extra batteries for a total of $11.16, and free shipping at Amazon Prime. They're third-party, but work great. In fact, they're better than the battery that came with the camera, as they actually show the time remaining next to the icon on the screen. They say "Fits Son. NP-BG1" on them.

The GPS is a nice feature. When shooting at home and around town, I keep it turned off, to save battery power. But it's good for road trips and hiking especially, when you're often shooting from a place along a trail that might not be marked on a map or easy to see in satellite view. It does take a bit for the GPS to reconnect every time you turn the camera back on, so not great for quick pull-it-out-of-your-pocket-and-shoot situations. But a nice thing to have.

As with any point-and-shoot, there's a tendency in the auto modes to overexpose a bit in bright daylight settings. Just be aware of this and make good use of the various manual settings "P" and the three "M" modes on the dial. Also, the "custom" button on the top can be set for various things, but I've got it by default on exposure compensation. So, if shooting in auto, I can make a couple of quick clicks to darken the scene until the sky goes from white to blue. The changed setting resets when you turn the camera off, but it is really good for quick changes on the fly. In manual shooting mode, however, the changes you make stay that way when you turn the camera off and on, which is great when you're out shooting a bunch of shots in similar light conditions.

As for color, it's generally great, but the reds do tend to get overblown a bit. Watch for that. If shooting something predominantly red, you may want to shift to the R "Real Color" setting. The default is standard, but there are "Vivid", "Real", "Sepia", "BW", etc. settings as well.

My wife's camera, the Panasonic Lumix ZS3, which I was using before I got my Sony, is a wonderful point-and-shoot, and it may have a bit of a better lens, as it doesn't have the reds issue, and never introduced geometrical distortion around the edges of the shot. The HX9v does do this a bit, but this is pretty standard for point-and-shoots, and is easily fixed in software in the very few instances where it becomes noticeable.

But we're talking real fine-tuning stuff here. In every other way, the HX9v blows away the Panasonic ZS3 (and ZS7 and ZS10, for that matter). I'd say that the daytime image qualilty still is top-notch, and low-light shooting is on a completely different level. I never, ever use the flash. The two auto modes are both fantastic. For most of my daytime shooting, I actually tend to stick with the regular auto (as opposed to the Superior Auto+) setting, as it is much, much faster. This is because it doesn't use the various multi-shot-and-stitch-together-in-the-camera features that are only in Auto+. In fact, in daylight settings, I don't want the chance of Auto+ selecting the HDR function and giving me a weird-looking shot. And regular auto also gives you the option for continuous shooting with two clicks of the wheel, which is unavailable in Auto+. It can do 10fps or 2fps at full size, which is AMAZING for a point-and-shoot. But unlike a DSLR, the buffer is small, so after 10 shots, it has to process and save to the card. I have a class 10 superfast card in it which speeds this up, but 10 still seems to be the limit of continuous shots per click-and-hold. So I usually have it set at 2fps, which can give me up to 5 seconds of dog running or bird flight motion shots.

Overall, a truly remarkable camera that was one of the best technology purchases I have ever made. I would highly recommend it.

P.S. If you will buy this camera I suggest you have to check for best price before you decide at --> www.amazon.com/exec/******/****/B004HYFX0C/cnet-offer-20

Updated on Sep 27, 2011

Edit Broken Link:

I suggest you have to compare prices before you decide at: http://beam.to/DSC-HX9V