H400

OK, straight out of the box and into action within the last couple of hours. Firstly, if you have used a similar bridge camera before then you will feel right at home with this one. It was easy to set up, the first time switched on it asked for language settings, date & time, image quality etc, just a few easy menus and then you are good to go. Battery and card compartments are easily located at the bottom the camera. The camera feels right for my hands, very comfortable and not overly heavy. The rest of the menus are easy to navigate and quite clear, it's not long before you find what you want and can change it, like the annoying click sound whenever I pressed anything on it at first! The mode dial has settings so that you can manually control aperture and shutter speed as normal but there is an intelligent camera setting which I used to start with. The intelligent setting was very good in a few different conditions and the manual settings were easy enough to control. There are 2 things that are most impressive about this camera and I guess they are the main reasons for buying it. The first is image quality, with 20 M/pixels on hand it took good, vibrant photos with lots of detail. The second is the staggering zoom lens. I was taking close up's of herons at one point, which are notoriously shy and getting some very pleasing close-ups given that I could barely see them with my own eyes! When zooming to maximum the lens does take a few seconds to catch up and home in as others have noted, but once it is at the correct magnification you can take shot after shot, even moving it a bit between shots and it copes fine. The range of control you have with this is perfectly adequate for me, I'm not a pro and nor am I interested in spending ages grappling with a multitude of variables like you would get on a true DSLR. All of this for less than £190 has to be good value. My only negative so far is the cheap and tacky lens cover, that is not going to be long before it gets lost or damaged I'm sure. But that is a minor point. I don't intend to use this camera for videos so haven't commented on that side of it, this is perfect for me to grow my ability to take stills when I have half an eye for a decent shot and don't want to spend all day achieving greatness! Love it, long may it continue. UPDATED REVIEW AFTER FURTHER USE --------------------------------- I've had the camera a bit longer to play around with now and can add the following comments :- I do sometimes miss a manual focus on this camera, occasionally it struggles to focus for itself, particularly if the subject blends in quite well with the background. I find it can constantly go in and out of focus as it searches (unsuccessfully) to find the subject. This is not very often but at those times I would like to be able to grab the lens and manually do it for myself. The panoramic setting is great. You point and click and hold down while you pan the camera left to right. It only lets you take left to right so sometimes you need two or three attempts to find the perfect start position on the left to get everything in on the right. But is does give a seamless panoramic shot. It won't let you alter the focus length though (eg you can't zoom in first then take the panoramic shot), it has it's own setting for the zoom in this mode. The ISO setting doesn't let you select a specific speed, it just offers a generic setting for low light conditions, but still works pretty well. I have tried the night time settings and found these to be good. When you switch on it takes a while to get going, the same sometimes when you quickly move towards full zoom, you are going to miss the odd shot as I have waiting for it to be ready in both these cases. But I'm not often wanting to quickly capture something spontaneous that is just happening now and I think most cameras will suffer some lag at switch on and zoom. All in all I'm still very pleased with the camera for what it does for the money, sometimes I find the settings just a little restrictive but as I said right at the start it isn't a DSLR camera where you be as creative with settings as you want to be if you have the time and inclination. It is a very good point and shoot camera with a thin but useful spread of features, a fine lens and zoom and takes good quality photos.

I got the camera on offer and it is amazing, easy to use, has full manual ability over shutter time, exposure time etc, it does way more than I know how to use, you cannot get different lenses for it but at 63X zoom it doesn’t need one. It is an ideal beginners camera ( which is what I am) N.B the newer version of this camera is considerably more expencive and does not have as big a zoom .... it is about 50-53 X ... mainly the newer camera as best as I can see it wifi/ bluetooth but you can buy a bluetooth sd card so I don’t see the need for un-necessary expence Anyway it is a lovely camera and takes fantastic pics My only gripe is it doesnt have a remote control as such to take selfies, The newer one does, that aside its amazing

A well made camera which feels solid in use. The 63x zoom is very useful but bear in mind that focusing times slow down the narrower the field of vision becomes. With this being a bridge camera, which uses contrast detection instead of the faster phase detection found in DSLR's and other more expensive cameras, focusing isn't as quick on the whole but it's manageable. Nice bright flash. The software menus are easy enough to navigate and use. The electronic viewfinder's lens seems to distort a bit if you're not looking at it just right but a simple fix is to use the screen on the back as a viewfinder. A lot of cameras in this price range don't even come with viewfinders. Camera provides full PASM program functionality which is good at this price point. The connector on the side isn't standard mini \ micro USB which is a bit of a pain. Takes decent enough movies but can struggle a bit with focusing. You can use either Memory Stick Duo or SD Card media for storage as the memory slot takes both.

Absolutely brilliant! Purchased for my girlfriend for her birthday so that she could get in to photography. The zoom quality is amazing on this camera. We went to a zoo to test it out and most of the animals were out of eyesight. Using this camera we were able to take photos as if they were right in front of us. The con to this level of zoom though is that you need to have a steady hand or a tripod as it is very shaky. There are plenty of settings available for those who know more about ISO levels and such (which we don't) but we used some of the other settings such as standard/optimised and brightness levels and got some pretty good results. For a first camera beyond standard digital and not as expensive as a DSLR, this is worth buying.

What a camera! This thing is absolutely amazing. I own professional DLSRs and this was a present for my father in law. The camera is light, you may think that is because it is cheap... trust me praise your lucky stars it is light. I can't stand lugging around my DLSR, it is ridiculously heavy and hurts my back. The grip on this camera is well proportioned and natural to grasp. The quality of the build is apparent when you touch it, use the buttons and of course taking photo's. Image quality is amazing, fantastic for this price range and even above it. If I wanted a camera for going on holiday or going on walks, I would buy this.

Great camera. Love the zoom and the quality of the stills that it takes. I'm no professional photographer but the shots I get from this never dissapoint. The focus on distant shots appears a little hesitant but if I press the two stage shutter button to the first stage, focus is made and the shot turns out clear and sharp on pressing through to the second stage. The battery lasts reasonably well and additional ones are readilly available if needed as its always a good idea to carry a spare or two. It is a lower priced version of its relative the DSCHX400 and does not have some of the features such as 1080 HD video (It's 720 HD) or Wifi but nonetheless its a very good peice of equipment.

Die Kamera ist wie erwartet sehr gut und war als Geschenk gedacht. Nur weiß ich nicht warum Amazon einen englischen Stecker in Deutschland liefert. Das war eine Enttäuschung. Die dazu bestellte Tasche lcs-u11b von Sony passt gut dazu mit Platz für Ersatzakku, Miniladeschale und zusätzlicher Karte. Der Zoom ist so stark das es doch ein Stativ braucht für gelungene Fotos. Alles in allem aber ein sehr guter Kauf.

algunas imagenes no son de buena calidad problemas con el enfoque

Esta camara esta bien para lo que necesito, es suficiente. Pero no trae manual de instrucciones y el cablle de conexion es para un pais extrangero que no puedo determinar, pero lo que es seguro es que para España no sirve. Total, que me he tenido que gastar mas dinero en un adaptador y queda como un churro. Esto se avisa?, pues no, en la descripción no dice absolutamente nada.

Appareil photo que je ne trouve pas performant, seulement pour debutant - j attendait mieux - je suis déçue de mon achat

Der Kamera ist ein Blättchen mit einigen Informationen beigefügt, aber keine Bedienungsanleitung. Die Sony- Website war nicht hilfreich. Irgendwo im Internet habe ich eine für Sony DSC-H400 gefunden. Diese hatte jedoch einige wesentliche Unterschiede zur gekauften Kamera, z.B. zeigte sie einen klappbaren Monitor, und nicht den vorhandenen starren. Bei Sonnenlicht muss man den Sucher verwenden, doch der ist sehr winzig und für Brillenträger ungeeignet. Ich habe die Kamera zurückgegeben, und die Lumix FZ1000 gekauft.