Got myself a new amazing P&S

[dk]

i've not taken many pics lately, infact, very few, and its partly due to me sometimes not wanting to lug 20kg of camera stuff around, so i thought i would get myself a decent p&s for everyday use.

I then spotted sony were launching a new range, and i've always used sony for my compacts, never had an issue and love the features.

The one i went for was the new HX5, was launched this week and its fecking amazing, thew stuff this thing does for its size is amazing.

its 10mp, but has a 10x optical zoom, goes pretty wide, has sony's steady shot (which seems to work very well, better than IS i would say). It also has built in GPS for when you take a pic it records the location (didn't know cameras this small could have this feature), great low light and the face recognition is unbelievable, it'll even let you focus on childrens or adults faces in pics!

But one of the best features is the Intelligent Sweep Panorama, which allows you to grab a wicked pamoramic shot but just pressing the shutter down, then moving the camera in the direction you want to get the shot and it does everything else for you, stitches it together, you cannot see the stitching, its done in less than a second, its just unbelievable.

Add to that 1080 video, which is simply stunning, especially on the 40" bravia, i can't believe something so small can bring such good results, who needs a video camera these days, stunning.

Anyway, heres a couple of example panoramas.

 

[Dave]

Price/

 

[Nick_P]

That really is awesome. The advert looks good. But you think, surely not. Edit. wow, pricey.

 

[AK]

Worst i've got a 40" telly thread ever...

 

[Jason_E]

i can't believe something so small can bring such good results

It does surprise the ladies.

BTW, that panorama thing is epic!

 

[Daniel]

its partly due to me sometimes not wanting to lug 20kg of camera stuff around,

Yeah I can't imagine you're the fittest bloke on the forum.

 

[AK]

Yeah I can't imagine you're the fittest bloke on the forum.

:lolup::lolup:

 

[clairemae]

the panorama looks pretty good. shame its over exposed and blown out the sky.

 

[dk]

Price/

£300, which I know is expensive for a compact these days, but I wanted one with decent zoom and some fancy features.

 

[dk]

Worst i've got a 40" telly thread ever...

WTF, 40" I'd small, I've had the piss taken out of me on here for it being so small!

 

[dk]

Yeah I can't imagine you're the fittest bloke on the forum.

No but I can bet I'm fitter than you with all that boozing and smoking you've put your body through!

 

[dk]

the panorama looks pretty good. shame its over exposed and blown out the sky.

I've had the camera less than 24hrs, that was my first panoramic and my 8th pic I think, plus it was on auto and the sun was quite bright from that direction, so thanks for the feedback but it was not the sky I was showing......

 

[Daniel]

No but I can bet I'm fitter than you with all that boozing and smoking you've put your body through!

dk, smile. It was a bit of a joke sweetness.

(And no you're not fitter than me. I promise you that!)

X

 

[dk]

Touché

 

[Christopher]

When you take the P&S out, do you wear a t-shirt that says 'My other camera's very expensive'?

Tidy looking snaps though. Good buy.

 

[Daniel]

All fat jokes aside, I know absolutely NOTHING about cameras/photography but I think those pictures look bloody brilliant for a normal camera!

 

[ForceIndia]

When you take the P&S out, do you wear a t-shirt that says 'My other camera's very expensive'?

Tidy looking snaps though. Good buy.

Iirc he rents hugely expensive camera's for the weekend

Loving the panoramic pics, clever feature.

 

[Christopher]

LOL.

 

[dk]

I've never tried the whole stitching pics together to make a panoramic shot, always sounded hard work plus I haven't got a clue how to use Photoshop for anything other than simple touchups, but this thing makes it so easy, clever bit of software running in the camera to do it on the fly, you don't even have to keep the camera level when panning.

I know it's not going to produce out of this world shots, but it's so much easier to put in a pocket when popping out, and I'm loving the video.

 

[dk]

Iirc he rents hugely expensive camera's for the weekend

Loving the panoramic pics, clever feature.

I wasn't going to say, but I do have about £4k of dslr

 

[ForceIndia]

I wasn't going to say, but I do have about £4k of dslr

Have some awesome points.

 

[dk]

the things this will do keep amazing me, in low light conditions it will take two pics straight after each other to enable you to choose the right exposure, it'll even take 6 together and merge them together to get a more crisp image. It also has a blink mode so when taking a portrait takes 2 shots to make sure it captures a shot without the person blinking (for some reason my mum is quicker than a cameras lens and i'm not joking, 90% of photographs of her are of her blinking so this should come in handy)

then the face recognition, it can detect smiles and you can set it to automatically set it to take the picture once it detects a certain level of smile from small to big.

Can also do self portraits (we all know women love doing this for some reason), you point the camera at yourself and when it detects the head is in the shot (and makes sure part of the head is not cutoff) it takes the picture.

I swear this thing is putting me off my dslr, its got so many features, i'll really need to be wanting a good set of prints to be taking the slr out with me.

i've not messed with a p&s for a few years, are these features normal now or something, as my sony of 4 years back had nothing like these features?

 

[dunganick]

Sony make some class products currently, every Sony compact i've ever tried has been excellent, the modern models are also getting some excellent features shoe horned in. The panoramic feature is very nice.

 

[conneh]

I know you love Sony, in everyway possable. But i can't help but think you should of bought a TZ10 for that money.

 

[dk]

I know you love Sony, in everyway possable. But i can't help but think you should of bought a TZ10 for that money.

guess it depends on your priorities, sony is lighter, faster (burst and iso), better video, has the fancy panoramic mode and i can use bravia link to play back images and vids on my tv.

the lumix has a slightly better mp and zoom, but apart from that it doesn't really offer anything more, and if i want high res pics to print out in A2 size i'd be using my SLR anyway, this is just for snaps and short vids really.

http://snapsort.com/compare/Panasonic_Lumix_DMC-TZ10-vs-Sony_Cyber-shot_DSC-HX5

 

[Andy.]

Some interesting technology on there. I was also looking at getting a small PAS for keeping in my pocket. I used to use my N86 which has usable images when needed but the iPhone photo quality is shocking.

I had a look at the full size versions on Flickr, when you look at the shots at 100%, you will notice the huge difference between a shot on the 50D and the Sony. Printed on a 10x15 and it won't be so visible.

Any normal images? I'm just curious to see if a normal shot is slightly clearer.

 

[dk]

Yeah, the panoric shots are shot using the HD video feature I think, so won't be as high res for blown up shots, I'll take one tomorrow in the daylight and upload it.

 

[The Hoff]

Looks decent, though I can't understand why they used a 2 year old screen resolution, instead of an equivalent Lumix res. Cost, not battery life I expect.

Also a shame it doesn't give you full manual control like the TZ10, and that you lose 50mm zoom. On the plus side, 10fps is good [though a 30 second pause to write is a ballache]. Don't see the video res as being an improvement either way.

I'll wait until my TZ7 dies before looking again. Looks good though, along with the new Canon, p&s is becoming interesting.

The colour processing seems a lil dull in these shots also:
http://cameralabs.com/reviews/Panasonic_Lumix_DMC_TZ10_ZS7/outdoor_resolution.shtml

 

[dk]

To be fair, the screen resolution is not an issue, like saying you have a 1080p 32" tv, looks no better than a 720p 32", you can't really appreciate the extra resolution on such a small screen. And for me personally, I don't really want full manual, if I wanted that much control I'd use my slr, this is for quick snapping, not masterpieces.

 

[The Hoff]

To be fair, the screen resolution is not an issue, like saying you have a 1080p 32" tv, looks no better than a 720p 32", you can't really appreciate the extra resolution on such a small screen. And for me personally, I don't really want full manual, if I wanted that much control I'd use my slr, this is for quick snapping, not masterpieces.

Yes you can, easily, try comparing your playback mode against the Lumix, then tell me that. I also thought full manual wasn't an issue, until I bought my Lumix traveling... as it turned out, it would have been very useful for some photos, if only to get more dof.