Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX5V

The Sony Cyber-shot HX5V digital camera is unique for its 10.2-megapixel back-illuminated CMOS sensor, and prized for its 10x optical zoom lens in a pocketable size. The Sony HX5V’s lens offers a useful 25mm wide-angle to an equally useful 250mm telephoto equivalent. The lens has a two-step aperture with an ND filter, which offers either f/3.5 or f/8.0 at wide-angle; at telephoto the maximum aperture is f/5.5, and the minimum aperture is f/13. Autofocusing is possible to just five centimeters at wide-angle, or 100 centimeters at telephoto.

On the rear panel of the Sony HX5V is a 3.0-inch TFT Clear Photo LCD panel with 100% coverage, and a resolution of 230,400 dots. There is no optical viewfinder. The Sony HX5V has a 9-point autofocus system, and includes a face detection and recognition system, capable of detecting up to eight faces in a scene and differentiating between children and adults. This capability is used to provide a Smile Shutter function that automatically triggers the shutter when your subject is smiling, as well as both anti-blink and blink-detection features.

The Sony HX5V includes both a GPS receiver and compass built-in, allowing it to tag images with both the location and direction in which they were captured. Sony’s bundled software and third-party applications such as Google Earth, which can read these tags, can then use the information to display images on a map by location. Cleverly, the GPS receiver is also used to keep the camera’s internal clock accurate. The Sony HX5V also offers Sony’s Optical SteadyShot image stabilization, useful for combatting blur caused by camera shake without adversely affecting image quality. This has been updated with a new Active Mode, available only when shooting video, which allows a greater range of movement for the corrective lens element so as to better correct motion from walking, etc.

Images and movies can be recorded on Sony’s proprietary Memory Stick Duo, PRO Duo (Mark 2 only), PRO Duo High Speed, or PRO-HG Duo cards, as well as the more common Secure Digital and Secure Digital High Capacity cards. 45MB of internal memory is also available, useful for capturing a few of the most important photos should you forget to bring a flash card along on a day trip. The Sony HX5V includes HDMI high definition and NTSC / PAL standard definition video output connectivity, as well as USB 2.0 High Speed data connectivity. Power comes courtesy of a proprietary NP-FG1 Infolithium battery pack.

Sony HX5V User Report

As Sony likes to put it, the company’s strength comes from making its own lenses, sensors, and processors. The Sony HX5V combines the best of all three — a Sony G lens, Exmor-R sensor, and Bionz processor — to deliver a different photographic experience.

That experience isn’t quite the one everybody is looking for, though. You know, the simplicity of a point-and-shoot with better quality. There’s simplicity and there’s quality in the Sony HX5V, but that’s just the starting point. The experience itself takes you places other cameras just don’t go, no matter their size.

The Sony HX5V — with built-in GPS, 1080i HD video recording plus HDMI output, 10 fps continuous mode, special shooting modes like iSweep and Handheld Twilight modes — will give them something to think about.

Design. Sony designed the HX5V to be pocketable. It isn’t among the slimmest designs, nor is it going to fit in a credit card wallet. But it isn’t much bigger. It easily fits in a shirt pocket without rearranging your collar.

That portability suggests you won’t need a case for the Sony HX5V and it really does take some of the fun away using one. This is the sort of device you leave near your car keys and goes everywhere with you.

The rectangular body design is actually finished off on the right in something of a column that passes for a grip. It works well enough that I did not pine for an add-on grip like the ones Richard Franiec makes for the Panasonic LX3, Canon S90 and other small digicams. The body surface is slick metal rather than rubberized, so don’t neglect to attach the wrist strap. But that’s all I needed.

Like the Panasonic Lumix ZS7, the built-in flash sits right next to the grip, rather than on the corner outside the lens. Your shooting finger rests above it on the Shutter button and your middle finger sits a bit below it in the grip groove, but big hands or large fingers may obscure the flash.

Controls. The top panel has a very small Power button with a green LED in the center to reveal status. It’s a good bit too small for me, and because it’s flush with the top panel, it’s hard to find by feel. The camera turns on so quickly that turning it off to save battery life was something I did a lot. But finding the Power button was always a chore.

To the left of the Power button is the small Shutter Release mode button, which lets you select between taking a single shot or firing off a few. And by “a few” I mean up to 10 frames per second at full resolution. That’s quite a bit more than most digicams this size can manage, which tend to be happy with about three fps or less.

The Sony HX-5V’s Shutter button is large and easily found. It not only captures stills or video but it can switch the camera to Record mode from Playback. It’s ringed with a Zoom lever that I found far too jumpy to comfortably compose images. The zoom behavior is the one thing that was not up to snuff on the Sony HX5V.

The back of the Sony HX-5V has just a few buttons, which means the LCD menu system is where you have to go for finer control of exposure.

At the very bottom are the Menu and Trash buttons. Menu takes you to the Sony HX-5V’s LCD menu system, of course, which you navigate with the four-way navigator above the button, confirming selections with the OK button at its center.

Lens. With 10 elements in 7 groups including 4 aspheric elements, the Sony G lens on the Sony HX5V is real glass.

One of the absolute delights of this G lens is its automatic iAuto Macro mode. You may have noticed there was no Focus mode button on the back panel. You just don’t need it. You can get as close as 0.16 foot in wide-angle or 3.28 feet in telephoto and the Sony HX5V will still find focus.

Image stabilization is Sony’s optical SteadyShot technology. The latest version of Sony’s SteadyShot image stabilization technology now compensates for a larger range of motion (like walking as you shoot). There is no menu item to disable it or pick a mode, however. That speaks to the intended audience for the camera, apparently. And frankly, that would be me. I turn it on in normal mode and leave it. Why wouldn’t I want steady images?

Modes. The available shooting modes on the Sony HX5V are all accessed from the Mode dial on the top panel.

Easy mode displays simple instructions on the LCD with the camera under automatic control, relying on Intelligent Scene Recognition to set the camera options. Preview mode is also simplified. Menu options use very large type and are greatly reduced. For example, only Image Size (Large or Small options) and GPS settings (On or Off) are available. Flash options are limited to Auto or Off, as well.

Intelligent Scene Recognition mode automatically detects nine different types of scenes and, within 1/30th of a second, selects the appropriate camera settings. The nine scenes include Backlight, Backlight Portrait, Twilight, Twilight Portrait, Twilight using a tripod, Portrait, Landscape, and Macro.

iSCN has two modes: Auto and Advanced. In Auto Mode, the camera takes a single shot using optimized settings. In Advanced Mode, the camera takes a photo with optimized settings and, if the lighting is difficult (either low light or back light), it immediately takes a second photo with different settings so you can choose between them.

Program Auto selects the shutter speed and aperture automatically, letting you adjust overall exposure using the EV option in the menu system.

Manual mode lets you select between the Sony HX5V’s two apertures and any shutter speed from 30 seconds to 1/1,600 second. Press the OK button to change the displayed values using the arrow keys.

Anti Motion Blur captures six images in a fraction of a second at a higher shutter speed than a single exposure would call for. It then composites the six images into one, building the equivalent of a long exposure but avoiding the side effect of subject blur. And it does this without requiring a tripod, aligning the images precisely.

Handheld Twilight is, I must insist, misnamed. This is not something you’ll only use at twilight. Here in the fog of San Francisco twilight is never guaranteed, but I use HHT all the time because I love shooting in low light. It’s really Handheld Low Light mode.

Backlight Correction HDR is another mode that relies on the Bionz processor to composite an image. In this case the Sony HX5V takes two shots at different exposure settings, one for highlights and one for shadows, before building one image with the best of both, extending the density range of the shot.

This is Sony’s answer to the backlighting problem where your subject is in the shade of a brighter background light like a sunset or a window, a situation which normally captures a silhouette, not the person you thought you were photographing.

But it obviously has many other uses. I think of it as HDR mode. Not the stylized HDR effect Photomatix users foist upon innocent bystanders, but an actual high density range mode that extends tonality with detail beyond what Sony’s Dynamic Range Optimization contains.

Scene modes include High Sensitivity, Twilight, Twilight Portrait, Soft Snap, Landscape, Beach, Snow, Fireworks, Advanced Sports Shooting, Gourmet, and Pet.

Movie modes. The Sony HX5V has five movie modes. For the highest quality, it offers AVCHD recording at 1920 x 1080 and 60 fields per second. There is also a 1440 x 1080 AVCHD mode which may sound like a 4:3 aspect ratio, but is actually a subsampled 16:9 mode. AVCHD captures more detail and records smoother movement while minimizing file size. But you can also record HD video in MP4 mode at 1440 x 1080, 1280 x 720 or 640 x 480, all at 30 fps.

iSweep Panorama is the last option on the Mode dial but the one that’s the most fun. I really needed the manual for this one because I kept goofing it up by panning too slowly. But the game is played by sweeping from one side to the other (or up and down or down and up: you use the menu system to indicate which way you’re going) as the camera grabs 100 shots and stitches them together in one second.

Playback is dramatic. Press the OK button and the camera plays the image back at full height, panning just as you did when you took the shot. And if the LCD isn’t big enough for you, it works the same way on your HDTV.

Sony HX5V Conclusion

The Sony HX5V will capture what you saw, what attracted you to the scene, not what a camera sees through its tiny lens, crammed on its tiny sensor and massaged with brass knuckles by its image processor. The Sony HX5V makes few excuses.

And a camera that makes few excuses is a great traveling companion. You don’t have to worry about choosing between a wide-angle zoom and a long zoom because the compact Sony HX5V starts at a very wide 25mm and stretches to a barely hand-holdable 250mm. You can get the interior of a chapel or, just as easily, that faraway castle.

And when you’re in that dark little chapel, you can switch to the Sony HX5V’s Handheld Twilight mode and actually get the picture. It’s great for museums, too, where flash is verboten and tripods proibito. You won’t need either with the Sony HX5V.

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