Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX1

Viewfinder

The HX1 includes an electronic viewfinder that shows the same image as the LCD, which shows the entire captured image. But like the LCD screen, the viewfinder is a 4:3 aspect ratio screen, so you get big black bars along the top and bottom when shooting high definition video. This isn't helped by the fact that the viewfinder is rather small; it looks like a small TV viewed from a distance.

The viewfinder on the Sony HX1

LCD

The LCD screen is a 3-inch model with 230,000 pixels that produces bright, clear images. The screen is on an articulated arm that allows it to rotate 90 degrees up and down, so you can shoot from above or below. It can't, however, rotate the screen around the camera body or allow you to fold it flat against the camera body, which the similar screen on the Canon SX1 can do.

The LCD screen in the up position (top) and in the standard, flat position (bottom).

Flash

The flash on the HX1 pops up from the top of the camera body when required. The flash is on the small side, but Sony claims that it has a range of 30 feet with the camera in auto ISO mode. This seems a little optimistic to us, but we'll reserve judgment until we can get the camera into the labs for proper testing.

The small flash of the HX1 pops up out of the camera body

Lens

The lens of the HX1 is a sizable one in both physical and zoom terms; it's a 20X zoom that has a focal length of 28mm to 560mm. That's a decent zoom length, but we wish it was a bit wider; 28mm is not enough to get a large group into shot. The lens also has a decent aperture range, starting at a very decent f/2.8 and going up to f/8.0.

The large lens of the HX1

Jacks, Ports & Plugs

Sony put all of the camera's outputs into a single location; the multi purpose port on the left side of the camera body provides both analog and digital video outputs, plus a USB connection. The analog and USB connections come from a single included cable, and an adapter that turns the multi purpose port into a HDMI output is also included.

The two ports of the HX1, for power (top) and USB/Video (bottom)

Battery

The HX1 is powered by a small Lithium Ion battery that hold 9.6 Ah of charge. Sony provides a battery life figure of around 390 images or 195 minutes of use, which is about average for cameras of this type. We'll have to wait until we get the camera into the lab before we can evaluate this claim.

The small battery of the HX1

Memory

The HX1 stores both still images and video on Memory Stick Duo cards, with a maximum capacity of 16GB for the pro versions of the card. Some other Sony cameras have added a second memory card slot that supports CompactFlash memory cards, but the HX1 sticks with Memory Stick.

Other Features

Sweep Panorama - Many cameras include panorama features, but the HX1 includes a new approach on this; the camera can capture and process a panorama in one pass. To create a panorama, you set the camera to panorama mode, press the shutter and then pan the camera. The direction of pan can be set in the menu; you can go left to right, right to left or up to down or down to up. As you pan the camera, it takes a series of exposures and stitches them together, creating the panorama file. In our brief tests, we found that this feature worked well in good lighting; we were able to create panoramas quickly that had few obvious joins or image glitches. It wasn't so good in low light, though; the results there were somewhat blurry.

Panoramas taken with the HX1 in low light (top) and daylight (bottom). Click on the image for the full sized version

Handheld Twilight - Another interesting feature is Handheld Twilight, where the camera tries to improve the quality of images in low light by taking a series of 6 images and combining them together to form the final image. The idea is that 6 underexposed images will look better than a single image created with a long shutter speed. The camera takes all of the images, then scans and combines them. If it detects any movement or other blurring in any of the images, it doesn't use this portion of the image. Again, we found in the limited testing that we were able to do at the PMA show that this new feature did a decent job; images taken with it enabled looked much better than images taken in the normal low light mode.

Crops from images taken with the DSC-HX1 in high sensitivity mode (left) and Handheld Twighlight mode (right)

Anti-motion Blur - This feature takes a similar approach to the Handheld Twightlight, but for moving subjects. With this selected, the camera takes 6 images quickly, and layers them together to create the sharpest image, eliminating the sections of the frame that are blurry.