I have already posted the majority of this review elsewhere for this camera, however it seemed unfair to this seller to ignore them, as they are the ones I actually bought my camera from. This is an updated and expanded review of my other review of this camera.
I am interested in architecture where getting "up in the air" to photograph details on tall structures is just not possible. My old Panasonic with it's x18 zoom did pretty good at getting results from on the ground though, but the x50 zoom on this one was just too tempting. The cheapest I could get this camera elsewhere on Amazon at the time was only $10 cheaper and that included no extras. I am surprised that you can get all the extras from this seller included and it is only $10 more. The camera case has to be worth a lot more than the $10 after all. The memory card was a brand I was not familiar with, but it works perfectly, and the speed of the card has proved to really be class 10, so that is another great bonus. The battery has already lasted several charges and is rated 1800mAh, considerably longer than Sony's actual battery. In real world tests, that battery is lasting almost twice as long as the Sony one that came with the camera. Sunset electronics might not include brand name accessories, but they do seem to be picked with a lot of care for their quality. Even the memory card wallet pictured had been substituted. I already had one from a previous purchase from a different seller and it was so cheaply made that even getting the memory cards in and out of the holder was sometimes quite difficult. Also the wallet assumed you had the small plastic cases for the cards as well, and it only held 3 cards. Memory cards now often do not come with plastic cases and putting them in the wallet without them is just asking for them to be damaged from dirt and rain. The substituted holder is only a little bigger, but is made from quality plastic and can hold 12 cards (6 each side). It comes with labels and I suspect it would even protect your cards from being dropped in water. It looks like it is this case:
Xit Case for 12 Piece SD/SDHC Memory Card (XTMCASE)
Deciding on which camera to buy has taken me three months of research to finally decide that carrying a DSLR with all it's lenses everywhere I go Just in case I happen to see something of interest Is just not going to be practical for me sadly. The saying "The best camera is the one you have with you" (attributed to Andrew Harvey) has proved very true for me. There is no point in having a wonderful camera if carrying it with you all the time is not practical and you stop doing it. So it had to be a fixed-lens camera for me after all. This Sony just about wins over it's competitors for my needs.
However, there are two massive drawbacks for me with this camera No GPS and no RAW shooting. Those alone almost stopped me. Three further problems (but more minor ones for me) are no Wi-Fi, no hot shoe and no external mic or accessory sockets.
Most of these I cannot do anything about, but I have been delighted to discover that at least you can add Wi-Fi to any camera by using a combined Wi-Fi and memory card in it's memory card slot:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Delectronics&field-keywords=wi-fi+sd+memory+card
Amazon offer quite a selection. I have only just discovered that memory cards with wireless Wi-Fi exist (8GB or 16GB are common, all rated 10 for speed, so more than fast enough for most, if not all current digital cameras).
Today I wondered if it were possible to also add GPS to the memory card? It took quite a bit of searching as I cannot seem to find a card with true GPS facilities, but I did find Eye-Fi cards like this one:
Eye-Fi 16GB Pro X2 SDHC Class 10 Wireless Flash Memory Card Frustration Free Packaging EYE-FI-16PC-FF
It is 16GB and again class 10 for speed. It has Wi-Fi built in as well, but also note that they seem quite modest about it automatically adding GeoTagging information to every photo you take. If you do a search for this camera and if it is compatible, then you find from Eye-Fi's website that it is compatible, unfortunately I cannot give the direct link as it is being deleted by Amazon's filters
I have to say that I did not find any delay when turning the camera on to take some shots of things as others have sometimes said they have found with their cameras and the Eye-Fi card.
Reading the comments for the card, it seems that most of the criticisms are that you need to be near your Wi-Fi for it to work quickly and that you might have trouble with direct connection? (as soon as the card gets power, it starts to transmit your pictures immediately over the Wi-Fi if it is in range). I suppose you would not need direct connection under those circumstances though anyway. The limited range is understandable, since the aerial inside the card is shielded by the body of the camera itself.
It does slow down your camera starting up and that might stop me from having it as my default card in the camera all the time. The problem seems to be that it searches for a wireless access point each time it is turned on. I might have to get two cards then, this Eye-Fi card for when I am visiting somewhere I am not very familiar with and a normal card for when I am somewhere familiar, but need to take a quick shot.
So sadly not a perfect solution, but a possibility to consider if the lack of wireless connectivity or GPS is important to you? I just wish Sony would LISTEN to what the reviewers are saying, if only they would have built these in to the camera from the start, it would have had no real competition then. In camera special effects are nice toys, but really, how often are you likely to use them compared to RAW and GPS?
I guess like most people, the rapid increase in speed of memory cards has left me with a nice little collection of still-useable cards (and once very expensive), but that are a bit slow now for regular use. So I am trying to "future-proof" my next memory card by getting one with plenty of memory, but outrageous speed that should keep it useful for a few years, hopefully until the card itself is wearing out:
SanDisk Extreme Pro 64 GB SDXC Class 10 UHS-1 Flash Memory Card 95MB/s SDSDXPA-064G-AFFP
But you might want to consider paying a few cents more for the full retail packaging as there seems to be a few suspicions in the 1-Star comments that the memory cards they have received in frustration-free packaging might not have been genuine?
I have also found a partial solution to the lack of a hot shoe. There are slave flashes that are guaranteed to work with your digital camera anyway, such as this:
Swivel, Bounce & Zoom Slave Flash With Flash Bracket For The Sony Mavica MVC-CD500 CD1000 CD350, DSC-HX1 DSC-H20/B DSC-H20, DSC-TX1 T90 WX1 W230, ALPHA DSLR A700 A300 A350 Includes Bonus Mini Tripod & Exclusive SSE Micro Fiber Cleaning Cloth
Although it is not as good as having a proper shoe built in to the camera right from the start of course. I have found one of the slave flashes available that are compatible, can help a lot with close to medium range shots that would need ISO400 or over as the grain really begins to show with this camera at that speed. Mine works like a dream with the Sony and with it taking 4 x AA batteries, it does not drain your precious camera battery either.
I am still familiarizing myself with the camera, but I have already found many useful features that do not seem to get mentioned much in reviews. It is a much better camera than I expected from the many reviews I had read. It has a built-in level that you can turn on or off, so there will be a level line on the display to aid in setting up shots. I have found this useful already in an emergency when having to use the camera as a makeshift scanner for documents.
It does have an "Intelligent Auto" function of course and I wonder how many reviews were based on just that? It has a "Superior Auto" setting right next to it which seems to make a lot of improvements in every situation I've tried it in. In low light, it takes three pictures for example and seems to use in-camera HDR to improve the colors considerably. There also seems to be more image stabilization to help with longer exposure times. It works so much better than IA, that I find I never even consider intelligent auto for quick pictures anymore.
One step away in the opposite direction on the dial and you have a complete treasure trove of pre-configured settings for different situations. It is called "Scene Selection" and has the following choices:
1. Soft Skin
2. Background Defocus (Bokeh)
3. Soft Snap Soft Background
4. Anti-Motion Blur (Tries To Reduce The Blurring From A Moving Subject)
5. Landscape Background In Sharp Focus
6. Backlight Correction HDR
7. Night Portrait
8. Night Scene
9. Hand-Held Twilight Extra Stabilization & Noise Reduction
10. High Sensitivity No Flash In Low-Light, Reducing Blur
11. Gourmet Makes Food Look Really Good
12. Pet Makes Your Pet Look Really Good!
13. Beach Shoots That Make Water That Look Rich & Blue
14. Snow Anti-Dazzle?
15. Fireworks
16. Advanced Sports Shooting Sets Focus In Anticipation Of Subject Moving
They do make a big difference, so are worth familiarizing yourself with.
The camera can only shoot in jpg. So you might think that noise reduction adds blur, but I do not seem to be seeing that. Like every digital camera, it applies noise reduction itself as part of preparing the jpg picture it records on the memory card from the RAW data from the sensor. I think that is what is making the difference? The noise reduction is being applied as the jpg is prepared direct from the sensor, rather than trying noise reduction on an existing jpg. I believe this to be why the picture is staying sharper than when you try to do it on the computer later.
I am very pleased I bought this camera now, as most of the reservations I had with it are not as bad as I was expecting. Using the specialist settings, you can actually get pictures with quality near that of larger sensor DSLR cameras costing much more.
0 comments:
Post a Comment