I know it's a bit weird that I'm doing what amounts to a sort of review of my lil Sony P&S camera on the eve of the arrival my new Sony A77 II...
But I'll still be using my Sony DSC HX10V P&S for backup and specific situations.
The point I want to make regards the "sharpness" and overall quality one can achieve with P&S cameras...at least the Sony H10.
Lots of glass in the 16X(max) zoom but this lil cam still makes 1st class images and video for the money.
So those of you who may not want to spend the money on a full size DSLR with all it's "bells and whistles" might want to look at this model(it's still available).
Or something similar from Sony. The image quality can be quite good despite the zoom ratios with all that glass. And features like the "tracking focus" really work well.
I say that after I was looking at the technical details of the below pics. All in iAuto mode.
This first one of Clyde
Wide open f3.3 1/100 sec EV=0 ISO =100 lens at 4mm(fully wide)35mm FoV =~24mm
Technically not a great picture, but the exposure was at the extreme end of it's limit and still pretty good I like it anyway
Clyde had calmed down and was pretty still. Much sharper image. Still same exposure specs on this one---at the extreme wide open end.
These next two images show something about the sharpness one can achieve. This top image is the original "full frame" image as it came from the camera--~4600pixels x 3600pixels. Zoomed out to 56mm(14X) f 5.6 EV=0 1/100 sec ISO800
This is same image cropped to 750 pixels X 705 pixels. Yet look at his eye. The white streak you see from center eye to "8 O'Clock" is the snow bank he was sitting on. The dark area from 8 to about 1 is the dense trees behind the snow bank.The white area opposite the snowbank is "sky". and the large grey area is the pavement of the parking lot on the exit side. I think the image is pretty darned good considering it's zoomed 14X, etc. You can even see the tiny feathers under his eye that look like "eyelashes" in this image.
My lil buddy "Stinker"(Steller's jay, another corvid cousin of Clyde) showed up at some point. I could hear him long before I spotted him. These pics are all zoomed to the max--64mm(35mm FoV = 384mm) /b]
Plus, the lens is stopped to 5.9(all the way) 1/250 sec ISO500. Hand held while leaning back to shoot straight up, these images of Stinker would have been impossible without "tracking focus" and "image stabilization"....both of which work well imo on the H10
Fully zoomed f5.9 1/200sec ISO800
This came out well. Zoomed 14X at 58mm f5.6 1/125 ISO800. The histogram looked pretty good
Bonnie making one of her strange calls. Zoomed 14X-58mm F5.6 1/250 ISO 800 EV0
Bonnie again. I liked the look of her tilting her head like that. Same exposure as above
I As I was getting ready to leave. I heard Clyde clomp across the roof and jump down to the mirror. The window was closed so he flew up on the door to keep an eye on me
pete