2010-04-14

If I may play Devil´s Advocate

10-04-15 21:16
forum post for this entry also look here

For everybody who is not familiar with the meaning of the headline, you slip in the role of your opposite and argue from his point of view.

So far I have been quite impressed with the Sony Hx5. All the pictures, videos, information from users and reviews.
Every time something was a bit not so right I have looked for a solution or if no solution was possible for an excuse why this feature was not so important for me.

... if you already have a HX5 you might want to read no further ...

What is it with the bad low light performance in video mode? Why are the night time videos so much less vibrant and so dark if we compare to the actual ccd travel zoom models of 2010?

If the EXMOR sensor not good at low light, all the fancy low light modes start to make sense.
HHT and AMB are just software tricks to hide the bad low light performance of the EXMOR sensor and the EXMOR R does not deliver either, in fact I do not see a visible improvement to my HX1.

So what is it with the fuss about the soft (read not so sharp) pictures and why do we have a barrel distortion in wide angle movie mode but not in picture mode?
Is it because the G lens is maybe not so good?

Does G just means glass?

So the pictures get processed and unbend in wide angle so everything is straight but the processing power is not enough to do that in video mode too?
How about putting more engineering into the G lens so there are not to fancy hard and software tricks necessary to get a halfway decent result.



Talking about halfway decent results, what was the big idea in not giving the customer any way to modify the picture setting? No sharpen the way I want , no contrast the way I want, no color the way I want. Sony if you put in a sensor who has known problems with color and contrast and brightness in low light how about giving the customer a leg up at least to tweak the setting so it is half way bearable?

I know it is just a fancy point and shoot, but would a full manual with a real iris have been so hard to engineer into the new lens array?
The HX5 has already the shortest zoom range, and even Samsung could manage to squeeze a 15x zoom into the same size with a real iris.

Also why do we have in 2010 to accept a 3" screen with only 230k dots while other travel zoom cameras have already a much higher resolution, brightness and viewing angle in their 2009 models? Ricoh can, Panasonic can, Samsung can, even Canon starts to think.
And let´s not forget there is a thing called AMOLED display available since a while.

We always heard that the Megapixel race is not good for the image quality. Then how is it possible that the 14 MP cameras have sharper fotos than the 10 MP EXMOR?
Wait there was something, last year when I did my take on the Canon Sx1 and SX10 there was the thing that the much cheaper SX10 with the ccd made sharper pictures than the SX1 with the cmos. We are talking identical cameras and lenses here just different sensors and firmware.
Is that the reason why Canon quietly let the SX2 die? Well the SX10 was a joke anyway with just VGA as a movie mode in 2009 in a superzoom.

But you guys always try, don´t you. There is always the flashy new thingy you show us but under the hood you often do things what are not in our best interest, because next year you want to sell the feature you just willingly crippled the camera with.

So where were we? - Oh yes Devil´s Advocat, right.

I understand the need of a connector at the bottom to use the fancy party shot - BUT the party shot is not available for the HX5 and even Samsung got it that this is a bad idea and changed from proprietary connector at the bottom to a full HDMI connector behind a sturdy hinged door.

An easy on/off switch at least in the main menu would have been nice for the GPS function.

Who did design the microphone placement? Directly where you tut your finger and just together, come om how hard would it be to have one on the left corner and on on the right corner out of the fingers way and put a bit of foam in front of them INSIDE the casing?
No you were just too lazy to go the extra mile.

Is it so hard to put a decent flash into the camera? So it might get a bit bigger, but who cares when you can cram better features inside.

It is not the problem in paying a few dollars more, look at the TZ10 - the charge 50$ more and people still buy it.

The movie button is a nice idea but Canon had that already with the S1 in 2004 so dedicated buttons are nice how about to have at least one where we can put ANY function we like?

Why do you call a silver camera gold and why did you choose HX5 because the HX1 is a totally different camera so the HX5 is not the 5th generation of the HX1.

Sony, you finally got it that cramming your proprietary products down the users throat backfires mostly and you now have the SD card embraced. BUT what about that unhandy octopus cable you still force the user to use for just a usb connection to the computer?
And that stupid dongle we have to use if we want to connect to HDMI? Isn´t is much cheaper to just have a standard connector and there would be no need for these unnecessary cables and adapters?

What is the idea in giving us a ultra slow charging charger except to force people to get a faster one and pay you for it.

Dear Sony if you could find it in your heart to give us the possibility to tweak your firmware, like Canon did and you would post a downloadable update once a while that would be great. Just thinks all the wonderful things fans can do like the team around chdk
... and while I am on my dear Sony Santa list, how about a bit more progressive design and remember over 5 years ago the Kodak Easyshare One

she was not different in size (103 x 63 x 26 mm (4.1 x 2.5 x 1 in)) but man, what a concept, even wifi was thought of for transfering pictures. Now use the full flip out size with a AMOLED touch screen and we are talking innovation here.

To be quite honest, if all the things would be addressed, even a price tag from $499 would be acceptable for me.

If YOU want to play Devil´s Advocate too, you can add your thoughts here.

to be continued...

6 comments:

  1. As I was saying at dpreview, the low-light video on this cam is awful. Despite Panasonic's AWB/color cast issues, I am leaning towards the ZS7. At least those issues can be fixed in post.

    ReplyDelete
  2. 1. This is about CCD vs CMOS sensor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_sensor "Neither technology has a clear advantage in image quality." So why? "CMOS sensors are less expensive than the CCD sensors when it comes to manufacturing." Aha.

    2. HX5V and H55 are strikingly similar. With H55 being 100$ cheaper. H55 having CCD sensor and no fancy software features like HHT and HDR. So what amazing ISO levels new advanced back-illuminaty CMOS sensor provide in comparison to CCD? None. Both have 3200 ISO max.

    3. What is "G" lens from company that can use Zeiss, but not used in this model? Probably it is just Glass lens. Not plastic.

    So on hardware level HX5 is not outstanding at all. + limitations But software HHT/HDR features is quite interesting. + bugs.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Please spell and grammar check your posts. I feel like I'm reading the Japanese blogs.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Joe, if you design that perfect compact superzoom you describe above let me know I'll buy it in a heartbeat!

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  5. Btw, that blur problem could be because of software removal of lens distortion. Depending on algo used. You can try for yourself - decrease picture size few pixels with bicubic interpolation in photoshop and instantly you have blur all over it. It is because part of color data from every pixel goes to nearby pixels. So if they even slightly fix picture for very small lens distortion they can add blur to it. That could explain why 10mpix is more blurry than 14 on other camera - different filtering algo. Properly we should compare raw images, but we can't.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous said...
    "As I was saying at dpreview, the low-light video on this cam is awful. Despite Panasonic's AWB/color cast issues, I am leaning towards the ZS7. At least those issues can be fixed in post"

    The video's brightness and contrast can be edited and fixed too just like photos.

    ReplyDelete

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