Opticallimits

Test setup: HX9V placed on tripod. Set to 2 second delay for all shots. 100% lossless crops from camera jpeg. Target is back of a DVD box.





Intelligent Auto - Auto





Intelligent Auto - Advanced





Superior Auto (multishot)





P, ISO100, standard sharpness





P, ISO100, softer





P, ISO100, sharper





P, Auto ISO, standard sharpness





P, Auto ISO, softer





P, Auto ISO, sharper



It looks like when manually set to ISO100 my room lighting was too low for correct exposure to be obtained in the P mode limits. I'll retry that later with more light.

Canon 600D Zeiss 50mm makro, ISO100





Canon 600D Zeiss 50mm makro, ISO3200





Coverage of HX9V output





Coverage of 600D output - I had to move back a fair bit to get a similar vertical height coverage.

P, ISO100, standard sharpness





P, ISO100, sharper



Yup, a bit more light helped a LOT here.

Thanks! Btw do you prefer iso 100 hx9v; iso 100 hx9v sharper or 600d iso 3200 ?



By the way I want to thank you for taking the time to do this comparison. There is a comment on amazon that suggest there are ways to make the camera do better but I'm not sure if he was referring to the m/p mode you found or if there is some other way to reduce the noise reduction. Gotta say a lot folks really like this camera.

Basically it just confirms that straight camera JPEGs are not desirable.

The Canon PowerShot SX230 HS has better IQ, according to dcresource..

Well the more I stare at the image the more I realize it is hard to judge because it is after all a texture that plays to the sony weak point.

-

Anyways the two camera are probably pretty close overall. I did pick the sx230 (not sure if was a very good choice) for various reasons but there is a lot in favor for the Sony. If I had more time I might try the s95 (the lx5 and xz-1 were too big for my pocket - also by the time i get the size of the xz-1 i should start considering the pl-2).

-

Hopefully there will be lots of sun (where all the cameras excel).

Hi Popo,



Your Sony pictures are horribly underexposed. When I had my Lumix TZ-3 new a few years ago, I did similar tests. I learned that the problems this has (e.g. noise, smudging, posterisation) get worse in shadow or underexposed areas. It is virtually impossible to lift the shadows with a curve/level tool in photoshop. You might be interested to study that yourself and retry with a hotter exposure from your Sony which matches your Canon.



J.

I know, and I did. There's two samples from the HX9V in better light. I didn't re-do the ones from the Canon since that correctly lengthened the exposure to compensate. It does show that the HX9V logic might not be as good as I thought earlier, as in this case it appears it may have compromised exposure probably to balance other settings such as shake prevention.



And to save myself another post, I think the general conclusion here is that, under good lighting conditions I'm surprised how close it got to a SLR. I wasn't even expecting that much. In worse light, it does seem to fall off more. I never expected it to replace my Canons, and once again, it is good enough for what I want.

This is a personal thing but I think my problem with the sony isn't the amount of details but how it present those details.



Btw how do you like the ep1 relative to the sony?