Review: Sony HX1

This is a great 2nd camera and light enough to never hesitate to have it with me. I can easily carry this skiing - the low light & 20x zoom will complement my DSLR.
This is Sony's new cybershot camera that comes close to being a DSLR. I've been using this now for a coupla weeks:

Highs:

low light capture is excellent - much better than my Sony A-100 DSLR - the camera takes 6 quick images then aveages them to come up with a very sharp image

video - very good - especially ability to zoom while shooting. definitely need a tripod, but results are being accepted at several microstock sites

20X optical zoom - excelent results

controls are reasonable, and there is specific on-viewer help for each setting

small, comapct & less than a pound!

long battery life & quick recharge

Not so good:

sweep panorama gives sharp panoramas automatically, but only option is 4000x1000, AND you can't zoom; so it's more of a clever trick at the moment - my favored way of taking panoramas is merging 4 or 5 vetical images to get a better aspect than the extreme letterbox


panorama example

my preferred panorama shots




Examples:

panorama stiched in PS from 4 vertical images
zoom and action capture
low light capture, handheld

For me, this is a great 2nd camera and light enough to never hesitate to have it with me. I can easily carry this skiing - the low light & 20x zoom will complement my DSLR. I have a slight hand tremor, and the image stabilization is a great help.

Too bad sony can't get it together to use the same memory cards and batteries in all their cameras!