I’ve had the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX300 for about a week now and my first impressions of this camera are pretty solid!! I’ve taken a ton of sample photos already playing with the mega zoom 50x Zeiss lens, and I must say, the lens is awesome!! Not perfect by any means, but so far the lens is performing better than I anticipated considering the huge range and overall price point of the camera.
The Cyber-shot DSC-HX300 goes for $489 @ BHPhoto >>, but you can pick up the older DSC-HX200v 30X version used for about half price Here >>.
The HX300 has an unbelievable mega zoom lens range of 4.5-215mm!! When you factor in the crop factor of the sensor size (1/2.3″), the 35mm equivalent works out to 24-1200mm!! Oh Yeah, 1200mm is correct. I was so intrigued by this I asked BHPhotovideo to send me one of these guys to review, just to see what it can really do. I mean 1200mm is so much zoom I wasn’t even sure if the camera could do it hand-held or not. Perhaps tri-pod only at those really long zooms? Lets check out some sample photos and remember about the focal length distances as Lightroom uses the actual lens values and not the 35mm equivalent! So 215mm = 1200mm, and 4.5mm = 24mm.
Sony DSC-HX300 High Res Sample Photos
Be sure to click on these photos for the High Resolution version that I exported from Lightroom 4 at 1200px, and 60% quality. The original files were the best quality jpeg images the camera can take which is 20mp pretty much. A very high pixel density considering the size of the sensor. Please keep that in mind when looking at these images, as the much larger sensor equipped Nex cameras do have much better image quality. They can’t produce a zoom range like this for anywhere near the money though, so the compromise 🙂 The focal length info is just below the images in the caption area.
Be sure to Click on the Photos for the high res 1200px Version!!
You can get really good separation from the background when using the higher focal length’s at a relatively close distance to your subject!! In this case, the truck antenna was only about 15-20 feet away from me when I took the photo at almost 210mm, which is almost the 1200mm equivalent.
Here is a slightly wider view of the same scene (92.7mm), so you can see the base of the antenna and the background a little. The white snow drastically changed the metering though rendering the scene much darker. I was using average metering mode, so this is exactly what the camera is supposed to do 😉
A 3d kind of looking puddle 😉
Posted taken at the maximum zoom of 215mm or the 50X/ 1200mm equivalent! The Bokeh is great and totally Zeiss rendering in my opinion.
Another scene all hand-held showing off the full zoom capabilities of the DSC-DX300. I started off at the fully wide 4.3mm and then took a few photos in between while going to max 50x zoom. Check out the sequence below and be sure to click on the images for the full res 1200px versions!
Almost max zoom @ ~210mm
100x using Clear Image Zoom
And one more www.bonus-vacanze.org from the same scene 😉
Closing Remarks
That is about it for now with the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX300 Sample photos and first impressions, but stay tuned for much more from this mega zoom bridge style camera!
Please feel free to comment or ask questions below if you have any 😉 Also, please consider using BHPhotoVideo (DSC-HX300), if you plan to buy this camera. They are kind enough to let me review it for you, and it also gives me a small credit to insure getting future products to review!! See the sign-off below for more info on that sort of stuff 😉
Thanks again,
Jay