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"An excellent super zoom camera."
4.5 starson by shagnat`Pros: Tremendous zoom length. Very nice weight. Feel is darn near perfect. Video as good as any available. Tons of features beyond what I'll ever need yet easy to operate.
Cons: No hot shoe, no external mic, unable to zoom in or out in video.
Summary: This a fantastic super zoom camera. If feels perfectly balanced in my hand. Not huge, nor too small to fit in the hand very nicely. The zoom feature is just outstanding. I've yet to need all the zoom length of this camera.
Photo quality is probably 7/10. Not as good as a $5,000 outfit, but, not expected to be. But could be a little sharper IMO. Of course this camera is not meant to compete with most DSLRs, and certainly not agains the mega dollar DSLR rigs. However, for a P&S camera, it's unbeatable IMO.
Of all the features it has, one would be challenged to use even half of them, however, it is quite easy to use in "P" mode, even in "apature" and "shutter" priority modes, it's simple enough if you know just the basics of photography.
If you want a P&S camera, I'd highly recommend this over the Canon equivalent. It's only competition IMO is the Panasonic FZ200, however the Panasonic is ~$150 higher than the Sony.
There are a few very good features on the Panasonic FZ200 that I wish were on the Sony, however, I can live without this as this is a hobby camera, not a professional DSLR.
- 3 replies to this review
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The only feature that I miss having on the Sony HX-200V is the ability to trim recorded videos within the camera; only because it's been made available even on some earlier cameras I've had.
It's handy being able to do it on camera so you don't have to wait until you download it to a PC to do the editing out of extraneous video such as when you don't stop the video after recording something, and it includes a long sequence of the floor because it continued recording. Because this camera has the ability to record stills while the video recording is ongoing, the shutter button does not stop the video as you instinctively try to do, and it'll just continue recording video of your feet.. -
What the reviewer is trying to say is that it can't zoom in while playing back the video, not that you can't zoom in while recording the video. There are very few cameras, if any, that can zoom in on a portion of the screen during playback, so that shouldn't really be considered any kind of a con.
There are some cameras that don't allow zooming in during recording which was a design decision due to the noise of the zoom mechanism that would be otherwise obtrusive. This camera does allow for zooming during recording however, because its zoom is very quiet. -
How are you unable to zoom in or out of the video? Go to youtube and see the many tests... Maybe you're doing something wrong?
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