Review on 📷 Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX300/BC 20.4 MP Digital Camera, 50x Optical Zoom, 3-Inch Xtra Fine LCD - Black by Glenna Naber

During my years as a serious amateur photographer I owned and used Nikon and Hasselblad film cameras and lenses extensively and when digital cameras came out I started with Nikon Coolpix 900 and 950, then SLR cameras. including a Canon EOS 10D and today I'm using a Canon 5D Mark II fitted with L lenses (Canon premium glass). The Sony HX300 is my first superzoom camera. After receiving the camera from Revain on March 14th, I spent several hours carefully reading and studying both the Sony PDF manual and the Sony HTML user manual. It was time well spent as the HX300 has many useful features that even my much more expensive Canon 5D Mark II doesn't have. During this research with both guides, I tried out each feature in the quiet of my living room to make sure I understood exactly how the feature works and what it does. It was only then that I decided to investigate the Sony HX300's performance in 'real world' conditions and compare it to the Canon 5D Mark II under controlled conditions. The two most important things about any camera are its image quality and its real-world performance. Image quality is of course a combination of many factors including the camera's ability to see detail, correctly expose scenes shot under different lighting conditions, color quality, lack of color and brightness noise, etc. Performance is a camera's speed of response. the camera is there and includes such points as how quickly the camera is ready to shoot after turning it on, the time lag between shots in still mode, the ability of the camera's autofocus to work quickly and accurately without "breaking", and of in the event of one Superzoom camera, of course, it is possible to increase the entire set of focal lengths smoothly and quickly. For a camera of its price and likely use, the Sony HX300 does a surprisingly good job of delivering high image quality and a very responsive camera. My first picture quality test was to just walk around my garden and surrounding area and take different pictures. Flowers just beginning to bloom as well as photographing birds flying from about 75 feet to our backyard feeder with the Sony HX300 at full zoom. In almost every situation, the HX300's autofocus was very fast and very accurate, and the mechanical zoom with the shutter lever was very sensitive and fairly quick. The resulting images had excellent detail with good highlight detail, perfect color rendition, very good exposure in the auto modes and in those cloudy but bright daylight conditions, with the camera running at low ISOs and very little noise. These images, straight from the camera with no post-processing, looked very good to excellent. With very little post-processing, mainly to sharpen images a bit, I was able to get great large prints (13" x 19") on my Epson 3800 Pro large format printer. Birdseed shots with the HX300's maximum optical zoom (1200mm) were handheld, sharp and showing good detail, although not at the level of the ISO 80 shots previously described. With one exception (see below) I had absolutely no problems with the manual control and autofocus of these shots with a maximum zoom of 1200mm. The only exception is when I'm framing a tree about 50 feet from the bird feeder. In this case, the HX300 always wanted to focus on the texture of the tree trunk behind the feeder. Feeder plastic without high contrast. I was able to completely solve the problem by switching the focus mode from Multi AF to Center AF and placing the center focus frame in the viewfinder on the edge of the bird feeder where there was enough contrast for the focus system to work properly. . This first collection of zoom shots taught an important lesson about superzoom lenses, including the Carl Zeiss lens on the HX300. Keep in mind that the HX300 lens has a maximum aperture of 6.3 at 1200mm, so the ISO will be set to higher values (400-800) to ensure a shutter speed fast enough to keep the camera at hold in hand at this zoom level. . Of course, the higher the ISO, the higher the visible chroma and luma noise in the captured image. I found that these 1200mm outdoor shots were taken on a cloudy but not cloudy day at ISO 800 and a shutter speed of 1/160-1/250s. Shots at maximum zoom were reasonably sharp, but post-processing managed to get rid of the noise, which of course is always a compromise between detail and noise reduction. However, these images produced fairly good prints and beautiful images up to 11 x 14 inches. I find that with experience I can shoot handheld at maximum zoom at shutter speeds even below 1/160th of a second and manually set the ISO to 200 and get an even better maximum. zoom shots. I think it will be difficult and possibly impossible to get good images at maximum magnification and excellent detail on very overcast and overcast days or other low light conditions. The HX300 requires ISOs over 800 for max zoom images in these conditions and the result will be more noise in the image than I find acceptable. The goal of my next photo expedition with the Sony HX300 was to compare image quality under controlled conditions. (Camera on a tripod with a synchronized shutter release to avoid vibration reducing image detail) HX300 with my Canon 5D Mark II and a Canon L 24-70 zoom lens and a Canon 100-400 L. I took it to a nearby park Lake with uninterrupted views of the wooden bridge and homes across the lake for 1.5 miles. The many trees surrounding the lake added detail. It was a sunny, bright day with no clouds in the sky. I took a number of shots with the Sony HX300 in IQ mode and Scene Selection Landscape mode, with focal lengths ranging from 24mm (maximum wide angle) to 1200mm (maximum optical zoom). I matched the shooting conditions and scene using my Canon 5D Mark II on a tripod with two L lenses up to a maximum 400mm Canon L zoom lens. When I got home and compared the images, I was really amazed how well the Sony HX300 performs . Until I reached 100% image size (when I look at the pixels!) it was very difficult for me to see any difference in detail or overall quality between the two cameras. I found this very surprising as the Sony system is $500 and the Canon 5D Mark II with L lenses is in the $3500-$4500 range! At 100% image size I could definitely see the difference in image quality and he always preferred the Canon 5D Mark II which unsurprisingly showed more detail and less noise than the HX300, especially when comparing 400mm shots taken with two cameras were recorded. That being said, the difference is best described as noticeable, but not as big as I might expect. I showed these comparison images to a couple of photographer friends and they all expressed surprise at how well the Sony HX300's image quality compares to Canon's much more expensive units. At the lake I also had the opportunity to try out the Sony in some real 'action' situations. A blue heron flew by and landed about 150 meters from me. I was able to take some amazing shots at the full 1200mm optical zoom (ISO 125) which I printed out at 16x20. I had the opportunity to attempt 10 continuous shots of a group of ducks in flight. I found it took a little extra practice to master the art of zooming, tracking and engaging the shutter for these types of images, but the camera tracked and focused on this tricky scene quite well. On another occasion a bird was circling high above the water and I was able to zoom in to 1200mm and get a nice detailed shot. On the lake I had the opportunity to try out the HX300's video mode. I found it perfectly tracked focus on my subjects, allowed me to zoom in smoothly while making a movie, captured audio well and performed in every way in video mode as I would want great 1080i AVCHD movies to be can. last comments. The build quality of the Sony HX300 is pretty good. Yes, it's composite (plastic), but it feels solid, has a nicely textured grip that's comfortable to hold the camera with, and is surprisingly light compared to my Canon 5D Mark II. I used a super-fast 32GB San Disk SDHC card and had no problem snapping quick frames in almost any mode, and even the 10-frame burst described earlier wrote to the card in about 5-7 seconds, which is quite seems acceptable to me. The HX300 isn't a perfect camera (and I haven't found a perfect camera yet!), and here are a few things I'd like to change. Switching between the electronic viewfinder and the LCD monitor requires the push of a button. Older HX200s had a sensor that would automatically connect to the electronic viewfinder when an eye was detected. Too bad Sony didn't remove this feature. The button that activates the viewfinder is flush with the camera body and fairly small, making it difficult to find by touch. The same goes for the focus button, although the latter is only needed when changing focus modes. Of course, I'd like to see a larger aperture than 6.3 at full optical zoom, but that would probably require a much larger lens, with all the weight and cost involved. Bottom Line: If you're looking for a superzoom camera on the market and find that you might not find 1200mm zoom images with acceptable levels of detail and sharpness in low light, then I recommend the Sony HX300. If you're printing huge images (larger than 16x20), this camera probably isn't for you. If you're looking for a camera that's great for vacation photos, family photos, bird photos, wildlife photos and more, and are willing to spend some time learning how to use the camera properly, then the HX300 could be a perfect choice. Camera for you. TomNote Added: I've now posted the images mentioned above in the Sony HX300 review, including comparison images with the Canon 5D Mark II, to the Sony Cybershot forum dPreview.com. Images were posted at 1/2 the size of the original image, as required by the forum. You can view the message at [.].