Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H55 review

Review of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H55

Sony’s H-series of digital compacts sits at the top of Cyber-shot range offering high performance and innovative features in small, easy to handle cameras.The Cyber-shot DSC-H55 sells at £239 and was one of several compacts launched by Sony at the beginning of the year and was introduced as a pared down version of the £329 DSC-HX5.

The H55 has a 720p HD movie mode instead of 1080i, there is a 14.1-megapixel CCD sensor rather than a back-lit 10-megapixel CMOS sensor and gone are the GPS and compass functions. The much publicised sweep panorama mode on the H55 is more basic in that it is not designed to cope with moving subjects, unlike the intelligent sweep mode on the HX5.

However, even though the H55 is a slimmed down version for the HX5, it remains rich in great features. Apart from the 14-megapixel resolution and sweep panorama mode, there is a 10x optical zoom with an equivalent of a 25mm wide-angle (35mm format equivalent) with optical SteadyShot technology to minimise camera shake and a 3in Clear Photo LCD.

Of the H55’s long list of features, the sweep panorama mode is the most attention-grabbing and you might have seen the TV adverts extolling its usefulness for wide views. There is no doubt that it is great fun and it works effectively enough to make it addictive. Try it once, get a good result and you will find yourself well and truly hooked. Groups of people, expansive landscapes as well as interiors and tall buildings all suit the sweep technique.

The feature is only available with the 25mm wide-angle setting and you can sweep from left to right, right to left, upwards or downwards. Just select the direction of the sweep in the menu, press the shutter button and pan round to capture the shot.  Actual sweep speed is not usually an issue because the camera is recording a video and images for the still panorama are grabbed from that. Problems can arise if the scene is too complex for the camera to stitch or if there is too much movement. If the camera cannot cope with the scene or if you sweep the wrong way, an error message appears on the monitor.The biggest problem with the sweep mode is getting the exposure right. As you can appreciate, the lighting levels or contrast range varies widely within a broad scene.

Image quality in the sweep mode is not outstanding and noise an detail loss is evident even at the slowest ISO settings. Colours looked rather flat too. Not only that some of our test sweep pictures suffered badly from lens flare. The H55 cannot cope with the change in light levels so there is the risk of poor exposure of parts of the scene. With experience you will learn to partially depress the shutter release to lock exposure from the most important part of the scene and then do the sweep. In normal use, our H55 had the tendency to overexpose average daylit scenes giving very wishy-washy images. Leaving the camera’s exposure compensation to -0.7EV as default corrected this.Having a 10x zoom lens with a 35mm format equivalent of 25-250mm is amazing and the long end does give tremendous pulling power. The downside is that the autofocusing at the long telephoto end was a little less sure-footed. Also, with a 10x zoom, camera shake is a risk at the longer setting and the Optical SteadyShot system helped a little but it did not seem as effective as other systems. Also, annoyingly when the shutter release was depressed and the system cut in, the composition would change noticeably.

Image quality at ISO 80 and 100 is good but not exceptional. Detail started to suffer at ISO 400 and above. In fact, the speeds of ISO 1600 and 3200 should be avoided unless you really have no choice,because noise levels and detail loss are significant. All in all, the Sony DSC-H55 is a decent compact and you get many features for your money including the innovative sweep panorama mode. In terms of value for money, though, £239 seems on the high side for the quality of pictures that you get.