Sony Cyber-shot H50 Review
I’ve written and have just published my review of the Sony Cyber-Shot H50, a prosumer ultra-zoom with 15X optical zoom, a large tilting 3 inch LCD and full manual controls. Be sure to check out full-sized photos taken straight out of the camera in the Sony Cyber-Shot H50 photo gallery too. Hit the link for the full review of the camera.
DPInterface Sony Cyber-Shot H50 Review
Brad Soo – February 11th, 2009
The Sony H-series has come a long way since the days of the H1, Sony’s debut big zoom camera, years ago. The new Cyber-shot H50 has 9 megapixels, a 15X zoom lens, full manual controls and all the things you’d expect in a digital camera of recent times – face detection, smile shot and high ISO sensitivity.
With various manufacturers coming out with new ultra-zoom cameras featuring bigger and bigger zoom lenses (18X, 20X, 24X), it does make you wonder how the Cyber-shot H50 stacks up against them. Here’s your chance to find out, now.
Size and Weight
The Sony Cyber-shot H50 measures 116.0 x 81.4 x 86.0 mm and weighs 415 grams when empty, without a battery or memory card. That’s about average in size for an ultra-zoom camera. You’ll need to carry the camera around in a bag or around your neck, and obviously you can’t put it in your pocket!
Box packaging
In the box, the Sony Cyber-shot H50 comes bundled with many things, which include a lens adapter, lens hood and a very useful remote control which should come in handy in a variety of situations:
- NP-BG1 Rechargeable lithium-ion battery
- Battery charger
- Shoulder strap
- Lens cap and strap
- Lens adapter ring
- Lens hood
- Remote control
- Multi-connector cable (for USB and A/V Out)
- Camera software CD (Picture Motion Browser)
- User’s manual
The Sony Cyber-Shot H50 has a mere 15 MB of built-in memory. So I’d recommend that you get at least a 2 GB memory card with the camera. By the way, the Sony H50 uses Memory Stick PRO Duo memory cards and its variations (Pro Duo High Speed and Pro-HG Duo)
The Cyber-Shot H50 uses the NP-BG1 rechargeable lithium-ion battery and comes with a charger in the box. With the LCD screen on, the Sony Cyber-Shot H50 is rated to last about 300 shots per charge (CIPA Standard). That’s pretty good battery life but some other big zoom cameras can out-do the H50 since they use AA batteries.
Accessories
The Sony Cyber-shot H50 offers compatibility with conversion lenses, filters and various other accessories. The only thing the camera is missing is the ability to attach an external flash:
- Wide-angle conversion lens (0.7X lens factor brings wide-angle down to 22 mm)
- Telephoto conversion lens (1.7X lens factor brings telephoto reach up to 791 mm!)
- Circular polarizing, UV and other 74 mm filters
- AC adapter
- Various camera cases
Camera Tour
The Sony Cyber-shot H50 looks quite professional with its digital SLR-like looks, save for the missing hotshoe. The camera is well-built and ergonomics are average for a camera with a grip with just two quirks – the rear command dial which surrounds the navigation pad is a tad loose which makes it easy to bump by accident (yes, you’ve heard this before if you read some of my latest Canon camera reviews); and certain buttons are on the small side. The camera comes in just one color – black – which isn’t a bad thing since I can’t imagine the H50 in pink.
As I mentioned at the beginning of the review, the Sony Cyber-shot H50 features a 15X optical zoom lens equivalent to 31 – 465 mm in 35 mm terms. The lens has an aperture range of f2.7 – f4.5 and features Sony’s Super Steady Shot (say that three times as fast) optical image stabilization which helps reduce blur caused by shaky hands. In a world full of 18X to 24X ultra-zoom cameras, the 15X zoom lens on the H50 can be considered to be on the small side.
To the upper left and right sides of the H50’s lens are the camera’s autofocus assist/self-timer lamp, remote control receiver, infrared unit for Night Shot and a microphone for recording sound. Directly above the lens is the automatic pop up flash. The flash on the Cyber-shot H50 is very powerful at both ends of the focal range with a range of 20 cm to 9.1 m at wide-angle and 1.2 to 5.5 m at telephoto.
There’s a large 3 inch LCD on the back of the Cyber-Shot H50; mounted on a two-part tilting mechanism so you can tilt and view it at multiple angles. This is the same concept as found on Sony’s Alpha 350 digital SLR where you can tilt the LCD upwards/downwards for those creative high or low angle shots. The only thing the LCD can’t do is flip forwards for self-portraits.
Speaking of LCD usability, the one here is sharp with 230,000 pixels and good in the visibility department. The screen brightens in low-light and is fairly usable in bright light (you might wanna use the EVF outdoors though). Directly above the LCD is the H50’s electronic viewfinder, something you would expect on a big zoom camera like this. The EVF is useful when you want to steady the camera to your eye or for improved visibility when framing under bright light.
To the upper left of the back of the Cyber-shot H50 is a button to toggle between using the camera’s LCD and EVF. On the other side next to the EVF are two more buttons – the smaller one activates the camera’s fancy slideshow feature while the larger one is used to access playback mode. It’s not that easy to hit the playback button using your right thumb without moving your whole hand as the button is on the small side and fairly recessed.
Now, let’s move on to the row of buttons on the right. Firstly, you’ll find the camera’s zoom controller beside the aforementioned playback button. You know what it does – it operates the zoom lens and playback zoom. Next up is the MENU button which brings up an overlay of camera settings on-screen (something like the function menus of other cameras).
Next up is the H50’s 5-way navigation pad with a rotary command dial (used for changing camera settings) surrounding it. My complaint here is that the command dial feels quite loose, though it does have some very subtle “clicks” when you rotate it, and the fact the navigation buttons themselves are quite small:
- Up – Display; toggle the information shown on the LCD/EVF display
- Down – Self-timer
- Left – Focus mode (Normal, macro, auto macro, manual focus)
- Right – Flash setting (Auto, auto with red-eye reduction, on, slow sync, off)
- Center – Confirm/Select
The H50 has a manual focus feature which allows you to adjust focus manually by rotating the command wheel. There’s also manual exposure on the H50 and you’ll be using that center button frequently to toggle between adjusting ISO, shutter speed and aperture (you need to change them one by one).
The last button you’ll see on the back of the camera is further down – the HOME button. Pressing this button brings up the camera’s Home menu which is a cross between a conventional camera menu and Sony’s Cross Media Bar (XMB) system.
Let’s move on to the top of the H50 where you’ll find a few more controls and buttons. There’s a switch to toggle the camera’s Night Shot feature which turns on the infrared emitter on the front of the H50 so you can shoot in the dark. Night Shot doesn’t shoot in color though; instead you get this eerie greenish tint (like in video cameras or the movies… anyone watched Quarantine or played Left 4 Dead?). Here’s an example:
Hop across the top up flash and there’s the power switch and mode dial on the other side. The mode dial is filled up with shooting modes so let’s take a closer look (going clockwise):
- Program mode – All the settings are unlocked but the camera still decides exposure for you. Program shift is available so you can select different aperture/shutter speed combinations
- Shutter priority – Choose a shutter speed (between 1/4000 to 8 seconds) and the camera will pick a matching aperture value
- Aperture priority – Choose an aperture (down to f8.0) and the camera will pick a matching shutter speed
- Manual mode – All the menus are unlocked AND you get full control over shutter speed and aperture
- Movie mode
- Scene position – filled with scene modes: twilight, twilight portrait, landscape, beach, snow, fireworks
- Sports mode
- Soft snap
- Smile shutter
- High sensitivity – The camera boosts ISO automatically; I’d advise setting ISO manually though since sometimes the camera overkills ISO, resulting in a lot of noise
- Easy mode
- Automatic mode
The Sony H50 has a smile shutter mode where all you have to do is press the shutter button and the camera will wait until a smile is detected before snapping three photos in a row. The Easy mode on the camera offers fool-proof picture taking operation as a very simplistic, literally point-and-shoot, mode.
And now, we come to the last three buttons on the H50. There’s the shutter button and two other buttons near it. The left button toggles metering mode (multi-point, center weighted, flexible spot) while the one on the right toggles the camera’s drive mode (one shot, burst mode, exposure bracketing).
The Flexible Spot metering feature allows you to move the “exposure box” around the frame using the navigation pad. The camera also has an exposure bracketing mode which takes three photos in a row at different brightness (exposure) settings.
This side of the H50 features one of the two neck strap loops on the camera as well as a connectivity port hidden under a door at the bottom. You can connect the camera to a TV or computer via the port (the H50 supports USB 2.0 High-speed connectivity). You can also find the dioptric correction wheel on the side of the electronic viewfinder for times that you want to look into it without wearing glasses.
Over here is the other neck strap loop as well as a port to plug in the camera’s optional AC adapter.
At the bottom of the camera is the memory card/battery compartment and tripod mount. The camera is missing the two-in-one door of its predecessors which allowed you to swap memory cards without opening the entire compartment door. The good news is, the battery has a dedicated locking clip so it doesn’t fall out when you’re swapping memory cards AND the tripod mount is aligned to the lens (And far away from the compartment), giving you sufficient room to open the door when the camera is attached to a tripod.
Taking pictures (Shooting mode)
For an ultra-zoom, you wouldn’t expect anything less than shooting and exposure info and a live histogram, which is exactly what the H50 offers you. An on-screen zoom indicator also appears when you use the zoom controller.
The image quality options on the H50 aren’t as plentiful as on most other cameras but will suffice for a digital camera. You can choose from 9 MP, 5 MP, 3 MP or VGA resolutions as well as select either 4:3, 16:9 or 3:2 aspect ratios. There are two image compression options available as well: Fine and Normal but no RAW image output setting to be found though.
The Sony Cyber-shot H50 has two menu systems; the first is the “normal” menu which overlays itself on the camera’s display. It allows you to change several settings:
- Image resolution
- Face Detection (Off, auto, child priority, adult priority)
- Exposure compensation and flash exposure compensation (+/-2 EV in 1/3 EV steps)
- White balance (Auto, daylight, cloudy, fluorescent 1,2 & 3, incandescent, flash, custom)
- Redeye reduction
- Dynamic range optimization
- Noise reduction level
- Color filter
- Sharpness, saturation, contrast
- Optical image stabilization mode
- Setup menu
One thing about the menu system on Sony’s Cyber-shot cameras of recent times is that things have gotten a lot more less intuitive for users – the menu overlay takes up about a quarter of the screen area and is not transparent (check out competing cameras with function menus that are semi-transparent and/or take up less preview real estate). There’s animation (which you can NOT opt to turn off) when scrolling through the options so it takes a brief, but noticeable, split-second when jumping from one item in the list to the next. On a positive note, you can quickly exit the menu when you half-press the shutter button.
Sony also just had to confuse everyone even more with ANOTHER menu system in the camera called the “Home menu”. The Home menu is essentially a Cross Media Bar style menu which attempts to replace the conventional “page by page” menu system of cameras but implementation here was bad. It’s not as easy to use as the XMB on other Sony products (ie PlayStation); even PS3 owners will have a hard time figuring out the half-XMB, half-camera menu here.
Here’s what the Home menu looks like… the first page of the menu is probably the best example of how the confusion begins. Hit the Home button and the first thing you’re presented with is a “Shooting” item under the “Shooting” tab. When you select this “Shooting” item, all it does is bring you back to the live view screen which doesn’t make sense at all. Of course, the other pages aren’t as puzzling but using the menu system here will certainly require some learning and a lot of patience (and knowing when a menu item takes you nowhere).
The H50 has an ISO sensitivity range of 80-3200 and the settings are selectable in most modes (Auto, 80, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200). I’ve already gone into the H50’s scene modes in the previous section so let’s take a look at the camera’s macro mode now: the camera allows you to go as close as 1 cm at wide-angle and 120 cm at telephoto which is nice and close.
Video Recording
The Sony Cyber-Shot H50 has a VGA (640 x 480) movie mode which records at 30 FPS with mono sound. Some of the H50’s competitors *ahem*Canon SX10*ahem* are able to record movies with stereo sound. There are two other (less usable options) where the H50 can record VGA clips at 16.6 FPS or QVGA (320 x 240) clips at an insanely choppy 8.3 FPS.
You can use optical image stabilization while recording movies. Overall movie quality was average with decent sound. You’ll probably be getting the H50 for its picture taking abilities and manual controls, but the camera is still usable for the occasional video clip.
Performance
All performance testing of the Sony Cyber-Shot H50 was performed using a 1 GB SanDisk Ultra II Memory Stick PRO Duo card.
The Sony Cyber-Shot H50 has a fairly average two second startup time (to extend its lens and all). Focusing time was pretty good; with times ranging from 1/6 to 1/2 second, longer if you’re shooting in low-light.
- Shot-to-shot speed – 1 shot every 2.2 seconds, fast
- Flash recharge time using a fully charged battery – 5 seconds on average
The Sony Cyber-shot H50 has a decent full-resolution continuous shooting mode which snaps at 1.4 frames per second up to 100 photos. The zoom lens operates silently, going from wide-angle to telephoto in around 3 seconds. The camera powers down in around 2 seconds. Overall, the H50 performs quickly in most areas and rarely keeps you waiting.
Image Quality
Now it’s time to find out how the Cyber-shot H50 performs in the image quality department:
At lower ISO settings, the Cyber-shot H50 performs well with low noise levels. At ISO 200, we start to see a little noise creep into photos and noise goes up again at ISO 400. Image quality should be usable up till ISO 800. I’d advise against the ISO 1600 and 3200 settings as there’s just too much noise and a lot of detail sacrificed in noise reduction as well.
The Cyber-shot H50’s lens exhibits some mild barrel distortion and, perhaps a little less, pincushion distortion. Edge softness was rarely an issue while chromatic aberration (Color fringing) did appear in photos at times.
Photo gallery
Check out the many photos I’ve taken with the camera in the Sony Cyber-Shot H50 photo gallery.
Playback
The Sony Cyber-Shot H50 has a playback mode that’s quite fancy. You can browse through pictures and play back video with sound. First off are the playback basics which include print marking, deletion, playback zoom, image protection and rotation.
You can tag photos as your favorites and view only those later on or sort and view photos by date via the calendar view tool. As for the fancier features, you can even look up and filter photos according to the faces in them. A Multi-purpose resize feature gives you the ability to quickly resize photos for your HDTV (16:9 ratio) or for the web (smaller resolution and file size).
There’s also a fancy slideshow feature, which you can also activate directly via the dedicated button, which plays back your photos automatically with transition effects and background music.
The Sony Cyber-Shot H50 tells you everything you need to know about your photos with exposure information, shooting details and a histogram.
Conclusion
The Sony Cyber-shot H50 is a 9 megapixel super-zoom camera with a big 15X lens. The camera comes with an above average bundle, that includes a lens hood and very useful remote control. The H50 features a nicely viewable 3 inch LCD that can be tilted for high/low angle photos and powerful built-in flash. There’s no hotshoe for an external flash though.
The Cyber-shot H50 features a 15X zoom lens with optical image stabilization. In this day and age, there are much larger zoom lenses you can get in a single camera though – 18X, 20X, 24X lenses, so keep in mind you’re not getting the most extreme reaching of lenses with the H50.
There are full-manual controls and expandability via a range of accessories as well as a Night Shot mode for shooting in utter darkness. However, some of the camera’s buttons are too small and the command dial used for changing settings is fairly loose and easy to bump. The camera also features a new Cross Media Bar (XMB) designed “Home menu” along with transition effects as you scroll down items… the downside is that the menu system is confusing and those who value every split second in shooting will not be impressed (you can’t shut off the menu animations).
Image quality was generally good with acceptable noise levels up till ISO 800, though with some color fringing, barrel distortion and a little redeye in people photos at times. If you want a decent ultra-zoom camera with some fancy features (Like Night Shot and fancy slideshows), keeping in mind you’re not getting the biggest of lenses, of course, then the Sony Cyber-shot H50 MIGHT be a possible candidate. If usability (or a conventional menu system), more zoom and features is what you’re looking for, you’ll be better off looking at alternative ultra-zooms.
What’s hot:
- Generally good image quality (though with some issues)
- Good 3 inch tiltable LCD
- Very good in-the-box bundle: lens hood and remote control
- Powerful built-in flash
- Fast performing
- Night Shot mode
- Full manual mode, with expandability via accessories
- Fancy playback mode
What’s not:
- Some color fringing, barrel distortion and redeye
- Competing cameras have bigger zoom lenses (18X, 20X, 24X)
- Certain buttons are too small; loose rear command dial
- No flash hotshoe or RAW image format
- Unintuitive and confusing menu and “home menu” system
Recommended Accessories:
2 GB Memory Stick PRO Duo memory card
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