Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX100V review

Sony Cyber-shot HX100V review

The Sony Cyber-shot HX100V is a 16.2 Megapixel super-zoom camera with a 30x stabilized lens and a flip-up 3 inch LCD screen. Released concurrently with the Cyber-shot HX9V pocket super-zoom in February 2011, the HX100V shares the same Exmor-R back-illuminated CMOS sensor in a larger SLR-styled body with a much longer zoom range.

With a sensor in common, the HX100V shares many of the HX9V's features, including 1080p50/60 HD video, 10fps burst shooting, 3D and sweep panorama modes, along with a built-in GPS receiver. The Cyber-shot HX100V also includes the composite Hand-held Twilight and Anti Motion Blur modes in addition to new Backlight Correction HDR and Background Defocus modes.

The Cyber-shot HX100V is Sony's first DSLR-styled super-zoom model since the Cyber-shot HX1 back in 2009. Since then Canon and Panasonic have established a strong position in this market with the PowerShot SX30 IS, and the Lumix FZ100 and FZ45 / 40 (not to mention the latest FZ47 / FZ48). Does the Cyber-shot HX100V have what it takes to re-establish Sony in the Super-zoom market, or has two years out of the game given the competition too much of a lead for Sony to regain? Let's find out in our full review of the Sony Cyber-shot HX100V.

Sony Cyber-shot HX100V Design and controls


The Cyber-shot HX100V looks good and feels comfortable to hold. With what's become classic super-zoom styling it closely resembles a mini DSLR. At 122x87x93mm and weighing 577g including card and battery, it's a little smaller and lighter than the Canon PowerShot SX30 IS. To provide a little more context, that's around fifty grams lighter and broadly the same dimensions as Sony's SLT-A35. These super-zooms are designed to go on a strap around your neck or in a bag, so if you're looking for something more pocketable check out our Sony Cyber-shot HX9V review.

The HX100V's plastic body has a matt speckled finish which looks good and provides a tactile grip. There's room for three fingers on the grip with your right index finger resting comfortably on the shutter release and your left hand supporting the camera, SLR-style, beneath the lens. In the end, it's a personal choice, but I really liked the way the HX100V felt and handled.

Behind the shutter release is a custom button to which you can assign various functions and another for changing the focus mode. Behind those on the right side of the top panel are the mode dial, on/off button and an override button for manually switching between the electronic viewfinder and LCD screen. Ordinarily the HX100V uses a sensor to switch to the EVF when you put your eye to it. The EVF is bright, but visibly pixellated and I preferred to use the 3 inch screen, but it is a useful alternative for sunny conditions and has the added advantage of dioptre adjustment for those who wear glasses.

The 3 inch LCD screen is articulated and can be folded out and up or down for waist or overhead viewing, though unlike the PowerShot SX30 IS it can't be folded in to protect itself or face the front. The 920k pixel screen is detailed, bright and reasonably contrasty but looks less vibrant and punchy than the smaller 2.7 inch screen on the PowerShot SX30 IS. Using the four-way controller you can select one of three information overlays including a live histogram view.

The Cyber-shot HX100V has a built-in flash that pops up when required i.e if the flash is forced on or set to auto mode and the light conditions require it. It also has Slow Synchro and rear curtain modes. The flash has a quoted auto ISO range of 12.7 metres, which sounds impressive, but more useful is the Guide number - 18 Metres at 3200 ISO which equates to 3 metres at 100 ISO. In practice the Cyber-shot HX100V provided bright even illumination and recycled between shots in a couple of seconds.






Sony Cyber-shot HX100V lens and stabilisation


The Cyber-shot HX100V's Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar 30x zoom lens has a range of 27-810mm (equivalent) with a maximum aperture of f2.8-5.6. That's such an impressive range that it seems bad-form to criticise, but the truth is that, even with a massive zoom range, the maximum wide angle view is an important factor. It's worth noting its rivals from Canon and Panasonic zoom out a little wider to deliver greater coverage, while the Canon also actually out-reaches it a little at the telephoto end too, with 840mm vs 810mm. That said, there's very little in terms of subject matter that the Cyber-shot HX100V can't cover.

Sony Cyber-shot HX100V coverage wide

Sony Cyber-shot HX100V coverage tele

The Cyber-shot HX100V has Optical SteadyShot lens-shift image stabilization which is activated by default, can't be turned off and has no optional settings other than for movie shooting (see the movie section below). In place of our usual before and after shots then, the below crops are from shots taken at the same time with the lens at its maximum zoom extension of 810mm equivalent. The crop on the left was taken in Manual exposure mode at 1/20 of a second and the one on the right in Anti Motion Blur mode.

Sony Cyber-shot HX100V, Optical SteadySho

Sony Cyber-shot HX100V, Anti Motion Blur

Sony Cyber-shot HX100V shooting modes


A glance at the mode dial provides a quick overview of the Cyber-shot HX100V's available shooting modes. Starting with the PASM Program, semi-auto and manual modes followed by a Memory recall mode for one of three custom setups. Then there's the iSweep panorama position. In addition to the Standard and Wide panorama modes available on earlier Sony compacts, HX100V has a new HR mode which produces truly stunning high resolution panoramas measuring 10480 x 4096 pixels - see a sample of the standard 4912x1920 mode below.


Skipping past the Movie mode position for now, next up is the 3D position which provides, appropriately enough, three options; 3D still image and 3D Sweep Panorama produce 3D images that can be viewed on a 3D TV, Sweep Multi Angle produces a 3D image that you can view by tilting the camera screen. Though surprisingly effective, I doubt most people will use the last one more than once or twice as the novelty of viewing a 3D image on a 3 inch screen quickly fades.

The Cyber-shot HX100V has 16 scene modes, the most notable of which are the composite options that shoot a burst of images and combine them to produce a better result than would be possible with a single exposure. Hand-held Twilight and Anti Motion Blur will be familiar to owners of recent Sony compacts with the Exmor-R CMOS sensor that makes these modes possible. Backlight Correction HDR shoots three frames to capture detail in the shadow, mid-tone and highlight areas of a scene with a wide tonal range and Background defocus uses two exposures to simulate shallow depth of field.

You can of course use the HX100V in fully automatic mode, and there are in fact two automatic point-and shoot options. Intelligent Auto employs scene recognition to identify the subject and set an appropriate scene mode. The HX100V can tell if the camera is on a tripod allowing longer exposure times or if there's motion in the frame in which case it will increase the ISO sensitivity and use a faster shutter speed to arrest the movement. In Advanced mode scene recognition takes two shots using different setting so you can choose the best result. For Backlit portraits for example, one shot is made using the flash and a second with the brightness and contrast of the face and background adjusted.

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX100V iSweep HR panorama

A new position on the mode dial, Superior Auto, combines scene recognition and multi-shot compositing to produce a superior result. Superior Auto is designed to get better results in low-light conditions and effectively automatically activates Hand-held Twilight, Anti Motion Blur or Backlight Correction HDR modes. Each of those modes can of course be selected manually with the mode dial in the SCN position, but incorporating them into a new auto position on the mode dial makes them more accessible to novices who might not otherwise bother with them.

Sony Cyber-shot HX100V movie modes


The Cyber-shot HX100V's best quality video mode is 1080p at either 50 or 60 fps depending on region. This is encoded in AVCHD format at one of two rates: 28 and 24 Mbps. There are also two interlaced (60/50i) AVCHD options encoded at 17 and 9Mbps. Switch to MPEG4 encoding and you have the option of 1080p at 12Mbps, 720p at 6Mbps or VGA (640 x 480) at 3Mbps. Continuous shooting in any mode is limited to 29 minutes and, at the highest quality 1080p setting you'll fit around 35 minutes of footage on an 8GB card.

The Cyber-shot HX100V's Optical SteadyShot stabilisation works very well for movie recording and there's an 'extra strength' Active SteadyShot setting which damps damps down camera movement even more. The zoom motor has a single speed setting when recording movies and is virtually silent. The HX100V has a dedicated movie record button and pressing the shutter release while recording captures 16:9 still images at 2304 x 1296 pixels in all but the highest quality video mode. It will also capture still shots using smile shutter during movie recording which is a nice touch.

Sony Cyber-shot HX100V handling


My biggest handling gripe with the Cyber-shot HX100V is the lens cap: it attaches to the non-extending outer barrel and pops off every time you press the on button without removing it first which, if you're me, is every time you press the on button. On one occasion the cap got wedged in one side of the lens, preventing it from extending but fortunately no permanent damage was done. The HX100V also lacks a hotshoe which may or may not be important to you, but if it is both the PowerShot SX30 IS and Finepix HS20 EXR have one.

The camera takes about two and a half seconds to ready itself which is sluggish, but makes up for it with very swift autofocus that's almost instantaneous in good light. The HX100V has face detection AF and in the absence of faces defaults to a nine-area AF system. Alternatively there's Centre AF and Flexible spot AF with fifteen areas to choose from. The focus mode is chosen using a dedicated button on the hand grip behind the shutter release which means if the current mode isn't doing the job you can quickly change it without having to hunt through menu. Or, you can switch to manual using the sliding switch on the lens mount and use the focussing ring on the lens. This is the HX100V's secret weapon, it's something none of the competition has and I very quickly grew to love it.

Although the focus ring works very well to manually focus in conjunction with the focus button which provides a magnified view of the subject, it's when the focus is set to one of the auto modes that it comes into its own, switching its function to a manual zoom ring. Control isn't direct, but when you twist the ring the zoom motor activates, smoothly zooming in or out while you continue to turn. And while we're on the subject of physical controls another one that makes the HX100V much easier to handle, particularly for manual exposure modes is the thumbwheel.

It will come as no surprise then that a physical button – the nine o'clock position on the control pad - is used to select bracketing and continuous shooting modes. The HX100V has two burst shooing modes; 10fps and 2fps. In testing both shot their 10-frame burst in precisely the specified times: 5 seconds and 1 second respectively.

The HX100V has a 16.2 megapixel CMOS sensor which produces images with a maximum size of 4608 x 3456 pixels at a single jpeg compression setting that results in files between 3 and 5MB in size. It has an sensitivity range of 100-3200 ISO and a shutter speed range of 30 - 1/4000.

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Sony NEX-5N review

Sony Alpha NEX-5N review

The Sony Alpha NEX-5N is one of three new NEX models announced by Sony in August 2011. The NEX mirrorless ILC range is built around a large 'APS-C' sensor (the same in many DSLRs) which allowed the original NEX-3 and NEX-5 establish a reputation for quality and superb low noise performance.

The NEX-5N builds on that reputation with a new 16.1 Megapixel CMOS sensor providing a number of enhancements including 10 frames per second continuous shooting and a sensitivity range that goes all the way up to ISO 25600. It supports 1080p60 video with fully manual exposure control and focus can be set with your finger on the 3 inch LCD display - the 5N is the first NEX model with a touch-screen.

Like earlier NEX models the NEX-5N has an accessory port for the supplied screw-on flash accessory, but unlike earlier models it's also compatible with the new optional FDA-EV1S OLED viewfinder. Fit the new LA-EA2 adaptor and you can also take advantage of any full-sized Alpha A-mount lenses with the addition of phase-detect auto focus.

All of this will undoubtedly make the NEX-5N a much more attractive proposition to photo enthusiasts than the earlier NEX-3 and NEX-5, but it retains the ease-of-use features - Intelligent Auto exposure mode, Photo Creativity, Picture effects, Smile shutter and Sweep panorama - that made those earlier models a compelling choice for compact upgraders. Find out if this is the ILC for you in my full review!


Sony Alpha NEX-5N Design and controls


At first glance, there's little to tell the Sony NEX-5N from it's predecessor, the NEX-5: measuring 111 x 59 x 38mm it has exactly the same dimensions and weighs a little less at 269g with the battery. The top panel is slightly angled and the playback and movie record buttons are positioned on the back half of it. The on/off switch, now with a silver surround, is positioned on the top and the shutter release is on the sloping front section of the generous hand grip. It doesn't feel radically different to the NEX-5, which is to say, solid and comfortable.

On the back there's the same uncluttered control layout with a four-way control wheel with a central button flanked top and bottom by two further buttons. One of these activates the menu system, the other is programmable but in the default setting accesses the help system. The NEX-5N has two other programmable buttons - the centre and right buttons on the four-way controller. The other three are disp, to toggle the various display overlays, self-timer and drive modes, and exposure compensation.

To the right of the control wheel, most of the rear panel is occupied by the 3 inch 921k pixel touch-screen. The screen has a 16:9 aspect ratio which is ideal for shooting HD movies though less so for 4:3 stills which have a black bar to the right overlayed with touch icons and labels for the physical buttons. The screen flips up 90 degrees so you can easily compose at low angles and also flips down by about 45 degrees so you can get a decent view at high angles.

The big news about the screen of course is that it's touch sensitive. Sony has taken quite a subtle approach to touch functions, one that focuses on augmentation rather than replacement of physical controls. So you can use the touch-screen to navigate menus, control playback functions and for some focusing activities. I'll talk more about that later.

In day-to-day use the the screen is very practical and I found the ability to flip it made it much easier to shoot from all angles not to mention helping keep it out of the sun. The view is bright and contrasty from most angles as well as straight-on, if a little on the cool side. If you prefer to use an eye-level viewfinder the NEX-5N is compatible with Sony's new FDA-EV1S electronic viewfinder (EVF). This is a great new accessory, although puts the 5N in line with the Olympus E-P3 and Panasonic GX1.

The NEX-5N is supplied with a small add-on flash unit which, rather awkwardly, screws into the accessory port on the top panel directly above the lens mount. The supplied unit has a guide number of 10 at 200 ISO which gives it a maximum range of 2.85 metres with the 18-55mm kit lens at its wide angle setting and maximum aperture. Sony produces a more powerful external flash for NEX models with a guide number of 20, however, you can use any external flash in the standard hotshoes of the Olympus E-P3 and Panasonic GX1, whereas the Sony port is proprietary and can only take one accessory, so you can't use the flash and optional viewfinder, or shotgun mic at the same time. The flash flips up to activate and has Auto, Fill, Slow-Sync, Rear-Sync and Off modes, the last being a little superfluous as all you need do is flip it back down. As you can see if you take a look at the interior flash shot on the gallery page, the voluminous dimensions of the 18-55mm kit lens plus the lens hood can cause a shadow.

The NEX-5N has mini HDMI and USB ports under hinged plastic flaps on the left side of the camera body. The battery/card compartment is in the grip section, accessed from a door on the base which remains accessible when the camera is mounted on a tripod. The supplied info Lithium battery provides enough power for a very respectable 410 shots and the remaining battery power is shown as a percentage on the screen.

Sony NEX-5N lens and stabilisation


The NEX-5N is available as a body only, or with the 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 kit zoom. There are two additional options which add either the 16mm f2.8 pancake prime or the 55-210mm f4.5-6.3 zoom. You can also use A mount lenses with the LA-EA1 and LA-EA2 adaptors, the latter effectively turning the NEX-5N into an SLT camera with 15-point phase detect AF. When comparing ILC body sizes, it's important to take the lenses into account. The NEX-5N body may be smaller than most rivals, but thanks to its larger sensor, the native E-mount lenses are correspondingly broader, and so far Sony has resisted producing a collapsing kit zoom.

SONY Alpha NEX-5N Ceverage Wide

SONY Alpha NEX-5N Coverage Tele

I tested the NEX-5N with the 18-55mm zoom which, with the APS-C crop factor of 1.5 has an effective focal length range of 27 - 82mm. Though Optical Steady Shot (OSS) stabilisation is built into the lens and not the body you can turn it on and off from the NEX-5N's setup menu, though, disappointingly, you can't assign it to a custom menu. To test the stabilisation performance of the 18-55 kit zoom with the NEX-5N I zoomed it to its maximum 55mm (83mm equivalent) telephoto position and took a series of hand-held shots at a range of shutter speeds with OSS enabled and turned off.

SONY Alpha NEX-5N 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 OSS Off/On

With the NEX-5N to shutter priority mode I took a series of exposures at progressively slower shutter speeds with OSS turned off and on. As you can see from the crops above, OSS can produce blur-free shots down to 1/5th of a second, the equivalent of four stops better than conventional wisdom dictates is advisable without stabilisation.

Sony Alpha NEX-5N shooting modes


In Intelligent Auto mode the NEX-5N uses compact-style scene recognition for enhanced exposure and Autofocus. It of course features PASM exposure modes and it also includes the recently enhanced high resolution Sweep panorama modes that feature on Sony's compact models. There are a number of composite modes that take several shots and combine them to produce a single composite image; Anti-motion Blur appears on the shooting mode dial (a virtual dial which you can rotate with the control wheel or using your finger on the touch screen) and Handheld Twilight mode appears on the scene mode menu. Then, tucked away on the Brightness/colour menu along with the Dynamic Range Optimiser settings is Auto HDR mode which takes three bracketed exposures and combines them into a single HDR image.

SONY Alpha NEX-5N Program Auto

SONY Alpha NEX-5N Auto HDR

The NEX-5N does a pretty good job of implementing features that make the most of its technology whether you're shooting in Intelligent Auto or the PASM modes. Photo Creativity is the term Sony uses to describe a set of results-based controls that are activated by pressing the centre button on the control wheel in Intelligent Auto mode. They include Background defocus, Brightness, Colour (white balance) and Vividness. In each case the respective control is set using the wheel (or screen) to adjust a radial slider between the two extremes which are represented by icons - orange and blue squares for colour, a rainbow and grey square for vividness and so on.

Sony Alpha NEX-5N  HDR Painting High  

Picture effect modes are an additional option on the Photo Creativity screen with the same modes as the NEX-C3 - Pop-Color, Retro Photo, Posterization, Toy Camera, High-Key and several partial colour modes which desaturate the image leaving only a single colour. But there's a very important difference which is that the NEX-5N offers Picture effects in the PASM modes as well. But in PASM modes not only are there more of them, many have options allowing more creative choice.

First, lets look at the new additions. There are four: Soft Focus, HDR painting, Rich Tone Mono and Miniature. HDR painting has three settings: Low, Mid and High and produces an HDR composite from three shots taken in quick succession. It differs from Auto HDR in that the results are aggressively tone mapped to produce an HDR painting effect that will be familiar to users of Photomatix and similar applications. You can see an example opposite.

It's not new, but Sony's implementation of the faux tilt-shift miniature mode has a clever twist. You can set the focus zone to a horizontal or vertical band in the middle or at the frame edges, but the really clever part is the Auto mode which uses the autofocus areas to decide which parts of the image to blur. With the exception of Soft Focus, HDR Painting, Rich-tone Mono and miniature, picture effects can also be used during video recording. Few will mourn the lack of the first three, but not being able to use the miniature mode for movies is a real shame, as well as a disadvantage compared with the latest Olympus and Panasonic models.

Sony Alpha NEX-5N movie modes


With a best quality video mode of 1080p50/60 (depending on region) the NEX-5N is a big step up from earlier NEX models and twice the progressive frame rate available on any DSLR. The NEX-5N goes further in other ways, like full exposure control - you can shoot video in any of the PASM modes altering exposure during recording if necessary and use some of the Picture Effects (but again not Miniature).

1080p50/60 HD footage is encoded using AVCHD version 2 at 28Mbps with two 25/30p and two 25/30i recording options at 24Mbps and 17Mbps respectively. Switch to MP4 recording and you have 1440x1080 at 24/25 fps and 30fps VGA (640 x 480).

Sony hasn't published any information on maximum continuous recording times for the NEX-5N, but I inserted a new Lexar Professional 16GB 133x SDHC card with a class 10 speed rating, set 1080p50 mode and pressed the record button. The NEX-5N stopped recording after 29 minutes and 10 seconds though this was most likely due to a restriction imposed on European models to comply with tax regulations.

The large zoom ring on the 18-55mm kit lens makes it possible to zoom reasonably smoothly during video recording and the stereo mics work as well as any inbuilt mics with the added benefit of a digital wind noise filter. There's no standard microphone input but you can connect the optional accessory ECM-SST1 microphone.

Sony NEX-5N handling


With minimal physical controls and touch screen the NEX-5N will undoubtedly appeal to anyone moving up from a compact, but anyone used to handling a DSLR might need a bit more of a settling-in period. Sony has done an excellent job of integrating the touch screen, in most circumstances you can use it as an alternative to the control wheel and, though it lacks a touch shutter, the touch focus feature, particularly for movies, makes a big difference. And if the touch screen doesn't appeal, you can turn it off and get by perfectly well without it.

The NEX-5N provides plenty of opportunities for customisation. The central button of the control wheel can be assigned to a custom menu to which you can add your choice of functions from a list that includes Drive mode, AF/MF, AF mode, AF area, ISO, White balance, Metering mode and Picture Effects. The disadvantage of assigning the centre button to the Custom menu is that it no longer fulfils its default function of selecting the shooting mode. To do that you'd subsequently need to select the shooting mode menu via the main menu. Alternatively you can assign the shooting mode to one of the other soft keys or customisable control wheel buttons, but then, of course, you'll have to sacrifice whatever custom function you might have otherwise wanted to use it for - it's a bit like custom button musical chairs. The other drawback is that in non-PASM modes the shooting mode menu reverts to the centre button.

The menu structure can at times be a bit daunting. The NEX-5N has nothing like the Live Control and Super Control panels on the Olympus PENs and, even when you know where they are, getting to menu options can take a fair bit of clicking and scrolling. That makes the Custom button setup something you can't afford to ignore, it really pays to make the effort to customise the controls and work at familiarising yourself with the location of the more frequently used settings.

The NEX-5N is ready to shoot in about a second and a half after you switch it on. In good light the contrast detect AF works very well and it has face detect AF as well as the face recognition features common on Sony compacts. In poor light the area AF is less sure of itself, bit with the touch screen providing Flexible Spot and Object Tracking there are plenty of alternatives.

The NEX-5N has three continuous shoting modes; Bracket Continuous shoots three bracketed exposures, Continuous shoots at approximately 4fps with focus and metering for each frame and Speed Priority Continuous shoots at 10fps with focus and exposure locked from the first frame. I tested the NEX-5N's in Speed Priority Continuous mode with a freshly formatted Lexar Professional 16GB SDHC card with a class 10 speed rating. The image quality was set to Large Fine JPEG and the exposure mode was set to Shutter priority with a speed of 1/500. The NEX-5N fired of a burst of 10 frames in just under a second and then slowed to a rate of around 2fps. In RAW+JPG mode the NEX-5N managed a 5 frame burst before slowing to less than 1fps.

The NEX-5N has a 16.1 Megapixel CMOS sensor with a sensitivity range of 100 - 25600 ISO. Images can be saved as RAW files in Sony's ARW raw format or as JPEGs using one of two compression settings, Fine and Standard. There's also a RAW+JPEG mode which saves a fine quality JPEG in addition to the RAW file. Fine quality JPEG compressed files are around 3 to 5MB in size. The shutter speed range is 1/4000 to 30 seconds plus Bulb.

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