Sony is adding a new compact 30X optical zoom camera to its Cyber-Shot line with the Cyber-Shot HX50V. It is Sony’s most compact (4.4”x2.6”x1.2” for 9.6 oz) “long zoom” camera to date, and that’s particularly true if you compare it to the Sony Cyber-Shot HX200V or Cyber-Shot HX100V found on the market today.
It features a 20.4 Megapixel Exmor R CMOS image sensor which sends raw information to the BIONZ image processor which comes from the Sony Alpha DSLR line of products. The processor’s speed is key to the overall camera responsiveness while shooting photos because there are millions of pixels to work on before saving a photo to the camera’s flash card. Sony says that the HX50V autofocus is twice as fast as the HX200V model — we would love to test this.
WiFi and GPS are part of the many functions of this camera, and the networking capabilities allow the Cyber-Shot HX50V to send images to a smart device (phone, tablet), or to be being controlled by the smart device in “wireless remote” mode. This is an option that is becoming increasingly popular.
Users who want to tweak the settings manually can do so quickly thanks to the two physical dials present on the camera. Finally, the HX50V has a shoe interface that lets the photographer mount a full-size flash (there’s an integrated flash too), microphones or an electronic viewfinder. Hopefully third party accessories will become popular too. The Sony Cyber-Shot HX50V will be available “next month” for $450 according to Sony.
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