First impressions of the Sony HX9V digital camera

This compact camera features 16x optical zoom and 1080p recording so it had to be worth investigating. it has sony's "G" glass so the optical specification should be good. It has things I love and things I don't like but its hard adapting after years of Panasonic cameras. The video mode is, well better than the panasonic TZ20 and the FZ100 cameras as they are only 1080i and the bit rate of the Sony is a full 28mbps so it beats the panasonic at 17Mbps and delivers this with great clarity. Stills mode is a little bit more restricted. You have only 2 apertures to work with and no Aperture or shutter priority modes. swept panoramas create a new dimension in wide angle photography - you can do landscape or portrait high resolution images. Image stabilisation is good and noise seems controlled upto iso 800 where Panasonic maxes out (for me) at iso 400. there is some scope for customisation of colour saturation, contrast and in camera sharpening as well as the usual film modes of standard, vibrant, realistic etc so there is plenty of options to create ideal profiles for different situations. Todays shots were all taken in very overcast lighting so the camera hasn't had a full dynamic lighting thrown at it. It does "blow" highlights very easily ( notice the white swan and geese) so it may be necessary to underexpose slightly and compensate in post edit. Audio seems good but no manual control or mike input but you would expect that on a travel zoom type of camera.