| Wednesday, April 30, 2008 |
| Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H3 - Digital Camera Review |
The Sony DSC-H3 is the latest addition to the company's Cyber-shot H-series, forming a new entry point to the line beneath the existing DSC-H7 and DSC-H9 models.
The Sony H3 combines eight megapixel resolution with a 2.5-inch LCD display and a powerful Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar branded 10x optical zoom lens, offering a range from a rather tight 38mm wide-angle to a very useful 380mm telephoto. As with previous H-series models, the DSC-H3's lens incorporates Sony's Super Steady Shot optical image stabilization to minimize blur caused by camera shake -- an essential feature for such a long zoom when not using a tripod. Other Sony H3 features include ISO sensitivity to a maximum of ISO 3,200; an advanced sports shooting mode which combines predictive continuous autofocus with high shutter speeds; a Memory Stick DUO/PRO DUO card slot and 31MB of built in memory; and power from a proprietary lithium-ion rechargeable battery. The DSC-H3 also offers high definition component video output via an optional proprietary cable.
The H3 includes Sony's face detection technology, which is linked not only to the camera's autoexposure and autofocus systems as in most similar systems, but also to white balance and flash metering as well -- allowing the camera to ensure proper flash exposure and pleasing flesh tones. Also, the Sony H3 includes Sony's Bionz image processor -- first seen in the company's Alpha dSLRs -- which the company says will offer improved image quality, faster response times, and better battery life in its compact cameras.
The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H3 ships in black from early September 2007 and is priced at U.S.$300.
Sony H3 User Report
Intro. Sony's H-Series is the company's stable of long zoom thoroughbreds. The H1 was launched in early 2005 with the H2 and H5 following in Spring 2006. When I reviewed the H5 last year, I complained that it was awkward to use but took marvelous pictures.
Closed. The included lens cap is covering the lens.
Extended. The lens extended and ready for action.
The 2007 H-Series is completely redesigned. The Sony H3 is probably the most radical member of the series. Gone is the electronic viewfinder and the LCD has shrunk from 3.0 to 2.5 inches. That, along with a move to lithium-ion power from AA power has made the Sony H3 a much smaller camera.
That's good because you'll want to take the Sony H3 with you everywhere, particularly to sporting events.
A long zoom is essential for shooting sports. Turn the television to any sporting event and you'll see the pros shooting with what look like telescopes. Even from the sidelines of a grade school soccer match, though, you need a long zoom. The Sony H3 has just the reach you need. Its reach at the equivalent of 380mm is serious fun, and you can double that at full resolution and get a crazy 51x zoom if you'll settle for 640x480-pixel image.
Rear View. The 2.5-inch LCD with simple controls to the right.
Focus is also an issue in trying to track fast-moving athletes. The Sony H3's Sports mode uses a combination of continuous focus and predictive focusing to set focus where the action is, according to Sony. And, of course, the Sony H3 can select a shutter speed as high as 1/2,000 second to stop the action.
This little sibling to the H7 and H9 is great for shooting outdoors, period. And you won't have to take out a loan to acquire the Sony H3, either.
Grip. Very comfortable grip for such a small camera.
Look and Feel. While the Sony H3's design is inspired by the mini-SLR school, it's flatter on top and the grip is more of an add-on. That makes it sort of an odd duck to look at but comfortable in the hand.
I liked the both the grip and the heft of the Sony H3. The grip actually has a little breathing room between it and the lens, making it comfortable to hold. And the Sony H3 weighs a bit less than average for its class, so you won't get tired holding it (sporting events require a lot of holding and just a little shooting). It comes with a nice shoulder strap but you should find a bag to transport it.
Lens Shade. You attach it to the included adapter that screws onto the body. It makes the little Sony H3 a lot bigger.
Also included with the Sony H3 is a lens adapter and a lens hood to shade the lens when shooting into the sun. The lens adapter is required for the optional 0.7x wide angle converter and the 1.7x telephoto converter. You also need the lens adapter to attach the hood and the combination blocks the light from the Sony H3's flash. Not a big deal indoors, since you rarely need a hood when shooting with flash, but good to know when shooting outdoors with fill flash. The adapter also accepts 58mm screw-on filters.
Top Panel. The Sony H3's Power button is flush with the top panel behind the large Shutter button. The Mode dial occupies the back corner.
The Sony H3's controls are really minimal and easy to find. So you won't have to remember much from one session to another. On the top panel, the small but functional Power button sits flush behind the large Shutter button. A Mode dial occupies the rear corner of the top panel, making your options easy to find.
Controls. Zoom lever and navigator are joined by the Menu and Home buttons.
On the Sony H3's back panel, zoom is controlled by a rocker switch and the four-way navigator with arrow buttons that also control what you see on the display, the flash mode, Macro mode and the self-timer sits in the corner to the right of the Menu and Home buttons that give you access to the LCD menu options.
Right behind the popup flash is the Playback button. You can press this to turn on the Sony H3 without extending the lens, but you have to hit the Power button to turn it off.
Charger. Very compact. The prongs swivel out to connect and back for travel.
You do all your framing with the Sony H3's 2.5-inch LCD. With just 115,000 pixels, text isn't displayed very smoothly, but it works fine. There's no optical viewfinder and no electronic viewfinder either, but that just helps hold the cost down.
The Sony H3's LCD, like all LCDs, is a very accurate viewfinder, however. At wide angle it shows 102.6 percent of the scene. At telephoto it shows exactly 100 percent.
Despite its shiny surface, I was able to use the Sony H3's LCD in direct sun, something I can't say about many LCDs these days.
Source:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/H3/H3A.HTM
by Mike Pasini
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Reviewed by: Philip Ryan,CNET.com
The good: Has 10x optical zoom lens; small size; optical image stabilization; face detection.
The bad: Noisy images at higher ISOs; no place to put your thumb.
The bottom line: If you don't like electronic viewfinders, but want a superzoom, this Sony packs a 10x zoom lens and 8 megapixels into a tiny package, but image quality at higher ISOs is a bit lacking.
If you're reading this, then you probably already know that there are a lot of different kinds of cameras in the world. This year, we saw the birth of a new variation with the advent of superzooms that don't have electronic viewfinders, such as the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H3 I'll be writing about here. The upside is that the cameras can be smaller than their EVF-laden counterparts, and if you despise peering into a tiny hole at an LCD while framing your shots, then you'll welcome this evolution. However, if you've discovered as I have that an EVF can come in handy when shooting certain subjects (I like using one when shooting baseball batters), then you might want to check out one of Sony's other superzooms, such as the DSC-H7 or DSC-H9.
While the H3's small body design (for a superzoom) is definitely handy when trying to fit it in a bag or jacket pocket, it leaves few options for the button layout. Sony basically had to put the zoom rocker smack in the middle of where your thumb should naturally rest, which might seem good at first, but I ended up accidentally nudging it often when shooting, throwing off my zoom setting and messing up the framing of my shot. If Sony would've moved the shutter button a little to the left and the mode dial forward, the zoom rocker could've been moved farther right and given room for your thumb. However, as the body design goes, that's the biggest flaw. The grip, though small, is effective--curl your middle finger over the top of the grip, and the rest of your fingers fall nicely into place, though it does leave your pinky dangling, which always irks me. It seems as though camera makers have begun to despise the pinky finger. Most entry-level dSLRs and almost all superzooms have grips that can't fit a pinky.
Dominating the front of the camera is a Carl Zeiss-branded Vario-Tessar 10x optical 38-380mm equivalent f/3.5-4.4 zoom lens, which feeds light to an 8.1-megapixel CCD sensor. Around back you'll find a 2.5-inch, 115,000-pixel LCD. Caffeine addicts should be pleased to know that the H3 includes Sony's Super Steady Shot optical image stabilization to help compensate for hand shake. In case the built-in lens isn't wide or long enough for you, Sony offers both a 0.7x-wide angle converter (VCL-DH0758) and a 1.7x telephoto converter (VCL-DH1758). The necessary adapter ships with the camera and can also accept 58mm screw-on filters. The camera also comes with a lens hood that attaches to the front of the adapter. Unfortunately, it's so large that it obscures a large portion of the flash, which makes the use of fill flash almost useless if you use the hood. However, the adapter itself can likely provide enough shade from the sun when the lens is zoomed to its widest, which means that the hood is only really necessary when shooting telephoto shots, in which the camera's built-in flash probably won't be able to provide fill flash anyway.
As is the rage these days, Sony separates the H3's menu system into two sections. If you press the Menu button, it brings you to the shooting menu, which is home to settings you change often while shooting, such as image size, face detection, exposure and flash compensation, ISO, white balance, and more. If you press the Home button, you go to the setup menus, which let you control less-oft-changed settings, such as whether you have a lens adapter attached, or whether you want the AF assist light on or off. The menus use a new design that looks very similar to the menus on Sony's PlayStation Portable. They look nice and are pretty intuitive, though it's strange that there's an option for the shooting menu in the home menu, but if you select it, it tells you to press the Menu button instead of just porting you over to that menu.
Like a lot of superzooms, the H3 includes manual exposure controls, though there are only two apertures to choose from and these vary depending on the focal length you're using at any given time. You won't find aperture- or shutter-priority, but there are the usual array of scene modes, some of which are in the menu and some of which reside on the mode dial, as well as program and full auto shooting modes.
Sony says that the H3 can output images and video to an HDTV if you buy the optional VMC-HD1 component video cable. However, since it's not included with the camera and Sony didn't send us one with the review sample, I can't verify this, though I don't really doubt them. This is a nice option, but I'd rather have seen an HDMI output on the camera instead of being forced to buy Sony's cable. Either way, viewing images on HD has always been a better experience for me than using the regular standard-definition outputs found on most compact cameras.
Except for a slow flash recycle time, the DSC-H3 performed well in our lab tests. The camera took 1.8 seconds to start up and capture its first JPEG, no doubt slowed a bit by the fact that the lens has to extend before you can shoot. It took 1.3 seconds between JPEGs with the flash disabled, jumping to 2.6 seconds between shots with the flash turned on. Shutter lag measured an impressive 0.4 second in our high-contrast test and 1 second in our low-contrast test, which mimic bright and dim shooting conditions, respectively. In burst mode, we were able to get an average of two frames per second, regardless of image size.
Image quality from the H3 can be quite nice if you stick with ISOs 100 and 200, though that niceness is marred a bit by the lens' noticeable distortion, as well as some purple fringing on high-contrast edges toward the edges of images. I saw more noise than I would've liked at ISO 400. While images are still very usable and much of the noise is minimized during printing, there is a noticeable falloff in shadow detail and fine detail at ISO 400. Stepping up to ISO 800, noise increases only slightly, but there's more of a falloff in shadow and fine detail. At ISO 1,600 noise becomes heavy and most shadow and fine detail is lost. The top sensitivity setting of ISO 3,200 yields extremely noisy images with completely blocked up shadows and fine details. For example, text which was crisp and clear at ISO 200 and below, becomes completely illegible at ISO 3,200. I suggest staying below ISO 1,600 when shooting with the H3 and sticking with ISO 100 or ISO 200 whenever possible.
If you want a long zoom lens in a camera that's smaller, if not lighter, than most superzooms, Sony's DSC-H3 is a decent choice. Since this is a new category, it's hard to draw comparisons, but when Canon's Powershot SX100 hits the market in October, we should be able to get a better idea of how this Sony compares with the competition.
Source:http://www.zdnetindia.com/index.php?action=pro_review&prodid=13612Labels: Camera Reviews |
posted by Raisa @ 10:11 PM  |
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