Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H9 First Impressions Review

by Emily Raymond
Published on March 10, 2007

Navigation
Intro	Physical Tour
Components	Design/Layout
Modes	Control Options
Image Parameters	Connectivity/Extras
Overall Impressions	Conclusion
Specs	Photo Gallery

 

Picture Quality / Size Options

The Sony Cyber-shot H9 comes with 8.1 effective megapixels on its 1/2.5-inch Super HAD CCD and borrows the Sony α DSLR-A100’s Bionz image processor. With these, the camera can snap JPEG images in the following sizes: 8MP, 3:2, 5MP, 3MP, VGA, and 16:9. Pictures can be trimmed to smaller sizes in the retouching portion of the playback menu.

 

The Sony H9 has a few retouching effects in the playback menu: some are useful and some aren’t as much. A soft edge filter allows users to scroll a cross around the LCD screen with the multi-selector to determine what they would like focused. Once selected, the camera softens the background; the softness can be adjusted in 5 levels. This is one of the more useful features. It would look great with portraits or even candid shots. Next is a cross filter that places starry crosses on lights and highlights in pictures; the stars come in 9 different sizes and make pictures look ridiculously fake. Remember those toothpaste commercials where the teeth would sparkle unrealistically with stars? It’s like that. There is a partial color filter that allows users to scroll around and select one color in a picture to be highlighted, while the rest of the frame is dulled down to black and white. This looks very similar to Canon’s color accent mode, although it only works while recording and Sony’s only works in playback. The H9 also has a fish-eye effect with 9 levels of distortion.

 

If users do want to play with picture effects in the recording mode, there are a few color filters: Normal, Vivid, Natural, Sepia, and Black & White. These same modes can be found on other Cyber-shot digital cameras. In the recording menu, the sharpness and contrast can also be adjusted to + and – options, along with a DRO (Dynamic Range Optimizer) choice in the contrast sub-menu. That will be discussed in the Other Features section of this first impressions review.