Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX1

Shooting Modes (22.58)

There is no shortage of shooting modes on the HX1. If you just want to point and shoot, the fully automatic Easy and iAuto modes have your back, as both make all of the decisions for you. If you like to make some decisions, there are the standard program, shutter priority and aperture priority modes, plus a full auto mode.

There are also several other modes available from the mode dial: Anti Motion Blur, Hand-held Twilight and Panorama. All of these use the super-powered Bionz processing chip to provide extra features. Let’s take a closer look at each in turn.

Anti Motion Blur – This mode is like a stabilization mode, but on steroids: it takes 6 photos in quick sequence, then analyzes and combines them to find the one with the least blur and keeps it. Sony claims that this analysis will mean that moving objects are taken from one image, but the static background built from all 6 images combined. This means, in theory, that you get the best of both worlds: the moving object will be as static as possible, but the background will look better because it is an amalgamation of 6 images. The shooting takes about one and a half seconds, while the analysis takes about an additional 4-5 seconds. An example is below: the shot on the right was taken with the Anti Motion Blur enabled, and is much sharper and has more detail.

Hand-held Twilight – This mode won’t turn you into a teen vampire who likes to hold hands with humans. Instead, it is designed for taking steady shots in dark situations. When you press the shutter, the camera takes 6 images in quick succession, then analyzes and combines the results into one image. The idea is that the combined photo should have more detail in it, but without the noise and shake you get from a long shutter speed. The analysis is also smart enough that it will discard any images that are too blurry. A sample shot using the Twilight shooting mode (left) and the Hand-held Twilight mode (right) are below. As you can see, the shot with the Hand-held Twilight mode is much sharper, less noisy and has more dynamic range.

Panorama – This mode turns the HX1 into a hand-held panorama mode. To use it, you set the direction you want to pan, press the shutter and then pan the camera until it is done. The camera detects the pan and builds the panorama in memory. It works very well; we found that it was easy to use and produced very attractive results. It’s also a lot easier to work with than the usual in-camera panorama method of pan-shoot-pan-shoot-pan-shoot, etc and a hell of a lot easier than doing it on a computer afterwards. But it’s not foolproof; if objects move while you are panning (such as a car driving by), they either get a weird stretched look or become squished, depending on which way you are panning. Look at the cyclist in the first panorama: she has been chopped in half.

Auto Mode Features

Focus – The auto focus of the HX1 was generally quick and snappy: we rarely had to wait more than half a second or so for the image to snap into focus. It did swim a bit more in low light, but an assist light is included on the front of the camera body that helped a lot. The camera uses a contrast detection auto focus system with 9 focus points around the center of the image. In the Muti AF mode, the camera tries to get as many in focus as possible, but there is also a Center AF mode that focuses on the center, and a Flexible Spot mode that allows you to choose the focus point from the center 75% or so of the screen.

Exposure – If the exposure settings that the camera picks for you don’t cut it, you can set exposure compensation to plus or minus two stops, and bracketing is also supported, with options for exposure bracketing (at +/- 0.3, 0.7 and 1 stops), white balance and color bracketing.

Metering – The HX1 gives you the standard options for metering modes: you can set the camera to multi, center weighted or spot metering modes. If the camera is in face detection mode, it will also meter for the detected faces.

Self-Timer – The self-timer is pretty basic; you get options fro a 2-second or 10-second delay. There is no remote control or interval shooting on this camera. If you are looking to do a self portrait, you could use the smile detection; set the camera pointing at the wall, enable the smile detection, then walk around to the front of the camera and smile.

Scene Modes

In addition, there are 10 scene modes available when you turn the mode dial to the SCN setting: High Sensitivity, Portrait, Advanced Sports Shooting, Landscape, Twilight Portrait, Twilight, Gourmet, Beach, Snow and Fireworks.

Picture Effects (3.00)

The HX1 has a handful of picture effects modes: you can add a color filter that accentuates red, green or blue, or one that makes colors cooler or warmer.

Picture Samples
No color filter Red color filter Green color filter Blue color filter Warm color filter Cool color filter More...

Manual Controls (8.84)

The usual suspects for white balance settings are lined up for you to use: there are options for Daylight, Cloudy, Fluorescent 1, Fluorescent 2, Fluorescent 3, Incandescent and Flash. There is also a full auto mode and an evaluative mode, where you point the camera at a white object and press the button so the camera can judge the lighting.

The HX1 has a decent aperture range, but it gets a bit limited at the telephoto end of the zoom range. At the widest setting, it ranges from f/2.8 to f/8.0, but the widest aperture falls to f/5.6 at the telephoto end of the range. That could be a serious limitation if you are trying to shoot in low light; f/5.6 doesn’t gather a lot of light.

In the auto modes, the HX1 has a shutter speed range of 2 seconds down to 1/4000 of a second. This gets a bit wider in manual mode, where you can have a shutter speed of up to 30 seconds.

Drive/Burst Mode (6.00)

The HX1 can take a burst of 10 photos at three different speeds: 10 a second, 5 a second or two a second. That’s a useful feature, but the camera then takes about 17 seconds to save these images to the memory card. That’s rather annoying, and it also means there is no way to save more than 10 pictures in a burst. Some cameras allow you to capture as many photos as the memory card can hold, but the HX1 is limited to 10 photo bursts.

Shot to Shot (11.0)

With the limitations described above, the HX1 is a fast camera: we were able to manage the advertised speed of 10 frames a second at the full resolution of the camera.

Other Controls (0.00)

Facial Recognition

The HX1 also includes some interesting facial recognition features. One of these is the ability to set the amount of smile that you want: you can set this to slight, normal or big smile.The smile shutter feature will then take the shot when it detects the requested amount of smile. You can also set the priority of the focus to either adult or child faces.