Introduction and features
Travel-zoom compact cameras are now an extremely important segment of the camera market with cameras like the Panasonic TZ70 and TZ57 proving popular with people who want a small, highly portable camera with a huge zoom range and plenty of control.
Sony has also fared pretty well in this area with the likes of the HX60, but it is clearly looking to steal Panasonic’s crown with the new Sony HX90 (and HX90V, which has GPS technology).
For many, the most significant difference between the HX90 and the HX60 will be the addition of an electronic viewfinder. This is a similar OLED Tru-finder to the one found in Sony’s RX100 III high-end compact camera and it collapses into the camera body to maintain the small size and clean lines of the camera during transport. The new finder, however, has a slightly wider viewing angle (23.8 degrees) than the older model and rubber seal to keep out dust.
While the HX90 has a 30x zoom like the HX60, it’s been upgraded from a G-lens to a Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T* f/3.5-6.4 optic with an optical focal length range equivalent to 24-720mm. Sony has managed to reduce the size of the lens in comparison with the HX60’s by about 30%. It achieved this by using an Advanced Aspherical (AA) lens and using a sliding shaft rather than gears to move the fifth lens (to keep the image plane flat) and thus allow the other groups to be used to obtain the correct focal length.
The HX90 has the same 1/2.3-inch type Exmor R CMOS sensor with 18.2-million effective pixels as the HX60. As before, Sony has coupled this sensor with its Bionz X processing engine, which uses both area-specific noise reduction and diffraction reducing technologyto help produce sharper, more detailed images.
This processor also enables the HX90 to record Full-HD 8 bit 4:2:0 video footage at up to 50Mbps in AVCHS, MP4 or the new XAVC S format at 50/60p.
Like the HX60, the HX90 has Sony’s SteadyShot system, but the stabilization has been extended from 3-axis to 5-axis, which should mean blur is avoided in a wider range of situations – and this stabilization operates for stills and video recording.
Other differences from the HX60 include the addition of Expand Flexible Spot AF to help with focus tracking (the system uses a larger spot to track the subject if it is momentarily lost), the ability to adjust the speed to lens zooming and the ability to bracket exposures when using self-timer mode.
Sony produces two versions of the HX90, the CyberShot HX90 and the CyberShot HX90V. The only difference between the two models is that the V-version has GPS technology inside whereas the HX90 doesn’t. Both versions have Wi-Fi and NFC connectivity built-in and are compatible with some of the apps available via Sony’s PlayMemories scheme.
Build and handling
Sony has designed the HX90 along the same lines as its popular RX100-series of compacts and the new camera looks similar to the RX100 III. It’s also about the same size and Sony claims that the HX90 is the world’s smallest 30x zoom compact camera with a viewfinder.
Unlike the RX100 III, the front of the HX90 has a slim, triangular grip on the front which makes the camera feel a little more secure in your hand.
Helpfully, the camera can be powered-up by releasing the electronic viewfinder (EVF). The main EVF unit pops-up smartly enough when the dedicate control is used but, as with the RX100 III’s finder, the rear element needs to be extended manually, which seems rather unsophisticated. If the rear element isn’t pulled into place the image looks very blurred.
One of the benefits of Sony’s OLED Tru-finder design is that the three constituent colours (red, green and blue) are shown at the same time, so you don’t see the colours break to give the rainbow effect that can trouble viewfinders that show the colours in a sequence – for example in the Panasonic TZ70.
On the back of the camera is a 3-inch 921,000-dot screen which can be tilted through 180 degrees for shooting selfies. When the screen is tilted up, the camera automatically switches to Face Detection mode and a countdown starts once the shutter release is depressed to give you time to get your smile right.
The screen can only be tilted up fully if the EVF rear element is pushed back into the main housing. It also makes sense to push the finder back inside the camera body so that it doesn’t obscure part of the screen.
Unlike the Panasonic TZ70, which has a 16:9 screen, the HX90’s screen is a 4:3 unit, which fills most of the back of the camera, and this means that standard 4:3 full-resolution images are shown larger because they match the screen’s aspect ratio.
Like the RX100 III, there’s a control ring around the lens which, in the default set-up, is used to select shutter speed in shutter priority mode and aperture in aperture priority mode. However, its use can be customised and there are a variety of possible uses, including focal length adjustment.
There’s also a customisable Function menu, which is accessed by pressing the Fn button on the back of the camera. This provides a quick route to your most commonly used features.
Performance and verdict
As it has the same sensor and processing engine as the HX60 we might expect the HX90 produce similar quality images. However, Sony has used a higher quality lens which should improve detail resolution. Also, in response to criticism that the HX60 applied too much noise smoothing, especially at high sensitivity values, the manufacturer has adjusted the image processing to allow a little more noise to be visible so that detail is better preserved. It will be very interesting to see the impact of these changes when we get a full production sample in for testing.
We found that the HX60 produces images that generally look great when they are examined at normal viewing sizes, but they looked rather off-putting at 100%. It seems likely that the HX90 will go some way to correcting this and perhaps widen its appeal.
I’ve only been able to use a pre-production sample of the HX90 indoors, but its autofocus system seemed fast even in quite dim light and its selfie system worked a treat.
Early verdict
On paper and in looks the Sony HX90 appears to be a really good competitor for the highly rated Panasonic TZ70. The lens zoom range is wide, but not excessive, making the camera pretty versatile, yet the camera is small and neat enough to be slipped into a jacket pocket. It’s heartening that Sony has taken on board the criticisms that were made about the HX60’s image quality and I’m looking forward to seeing what the HX90 is capable of.
As the HX90 is aimed at holidaymakers and travellers who are likely to want to shoot in bright conditions, the presence of a viewfinder is a major bonus. The only real disappointment is that there’s no raw file recording.
The HX90 will go on sale at £330 (about US$484/AU$620), while the GPS-enabled HX90V will cost £340 (about US$500/AU$660).
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