Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H20
Digital Camera Review
Mar 05, 2009
- By Richard Baguley
The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H20 falls into a curious mid-range point in the consumer camera market. With a 10X zoom lens, it doesn't have the incredible zoom reach of some cameras. But neither does it have the sleek, thin profile of other compact cameras; it has a practical, blocky design that is more for use than show. But it does have an attractive feature set, shooting 10.1 megapixel images and 720p high definition video.
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Auto Mode
The H20 has two auto modes; easy mode and the Intelligent Auto mode. The former is a full auto mode; everything but the image size and the flash mode is controlled by the camera, leaving the user to focus on framing and taking the shot. The intelligent adjust mode provides a bit more control for the user, as settings such as white balance can be controlled.
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The mode dial of the H20 has two auto modes; iA and Easy
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Movie Mode
The H20 is another camera to follow the trend of adding high definition video recording; it can shoot video at up to 720p resolution. That's an improvement on the standard definition video that most capture, but it is lower in resolution than cameras such as the Sony HX1 and the Canon XS1, which can record full 1080p video. And there is no HDMI digital video output; the high definition video output is analog only, via component cables. Videos are stored as MP4 files, and there are additional options to capture video at standard definition resolutions.
Drive/Burst Mode
The H20 is a middling camera in terms of the speed at which photos can be captured: it can only manage a relatively pedestrian 1.8 frames per second, although it can keep this up for 100 frames.
Playback Mode
The usual selection of preset controls is present; images can be viewed as slideshows, as thumbnails (up to 9 on the screen at once) or zoomed in up to 10X. Videos can also be viewed, and there are a few basic image editing tools, such as a crop and resize option.
Custom Image Presets
The H20 has 11 scene modes; High Sensitivity, Twilight, Twilight Portrait, Soft Snap, Landscape, Beach, Snow, Fireworks, Hi-speed Shutter, Underwater and Gourmet.
