Sony DSCHX90V/B Digital Camera with 3-Inch LCD (Black)

For years, I've been a dedicated DSLR user, with my Canon 40D and a slew of lenses being my "serious" camera. I have also become quite adept at producing some surprisingly good pictures from my iPhone 6S, which I have often used as my travel camera. Looking for something much smaller than my Canon DSLR, and more versatile than my smartphone, I purchased the Sony HX90V. It was a toss-up between this camera and the Panasonic Lumix, but I did not need RAW shooting and thought the GPS on the Sony was a nice feature, and one not offered in the Panasonic.I have now put this camera through a couple of weeks of use and, I must admit, am quite impressed with its feature set and image quality. Using either of its two "auto" modes, the images are crisp with excellent exposure, focus, and color saturation. It has a variety of shooting modes available, and all seem to work well. I was surprised at how simple things were, with macro and anti-shake functions engaging when needed. The control ring on the lens is smooth and acts as a manual zoom in auto mode. It's function changes with the mode being used, and it works well as a manual focus ring when in that mode. The pop-up EVF is clear and has a simple diopter adjustment. It can be set to activate when it senses your eye next to it, which is the default setting. It can also be set to turn off the camera when closed. The EVF must be pulled to the rear after it's opened, which can be awkward.The buttons on the rear of the camera are rather small; much smaller than any other camera I've used. This means that the easiest way to access the functions you want is with a fingernail rather than just pressing a button with your finger. It is different, but not very difficult to adjust to. The on/off button is recessed, and also really requires a push with a nail.The wifi software provided is enough to pair your phone with the camera, but it is anything but intuitive to use. With an IOS device, it requires several steps. The Fn button on the camera must be pushed while in view mode, and a picture or pictures selected for transfer. After you initialize the transfer process, you must then go to your phone's settings menu and select the Sony SSID. After that is checked, you then close your settings and open the Sony app on the phone. At that point, the pictures will start loading on to your iPhone. The transfer itself is very fast, and the new photos show right up in your All Photos folder. The Sony app to remotely control your camera is very awkward and not at all user friendly.One excellent feature is the "selfie" feature, which i part of the pivoting LCD screen. When you flip the screen up fully, the "selfie" mode is enabled and a time delay is part of that mode. It is quite clever.Low light shooting is this camera's supposed Achilles heel, but I have yet to experience any significant noise at higher ISO settings. In normal shooting, and at reasonable ISO levels, this is a non-issue anyway. The 30x optical zoom is amazing, but I would advise against using the extended digital zoom, which can degrade or crop the image. In any case, it can be quite challenging to keep this tiny camera steady at very high zoom ranges.I think this is a fantastic little camera, offering virtually every feature any photographer would want. I don't see the lack of RAW format as a real disadvantage for this camera's intended audience, since most would find the JPEG quality to be more than acceptable.One recommendation to anyone buying this camera would be to immediately go to the Sony online manual for this camera. It is a very inclusive and well written description of every function of this camera. The documentation with the camera is basic and not very informative.Small size, formidable zoom, excellent image quality, versatile preset modes, manual controls, GPS, a very usable EVF, and wifi image transfers make this one of the finest compact cameras in its class. In my opinion, it is worth the price and produces images that can rival the finest DSLR cameras out there. It gets my strong recommendation.

My camera cam last night and so far it is very impressive.I'm wring this review to help people with downloading some of the features as it was a very frustrating process (Shame on Sony!) and I want to try to help. I also comment on the viewfinder as I wear bifocals and am questioning whether it was worth the extra $100.When you buy the camera give yourself 2 hours if you want to get apps downloaded and know that you're probably going to have to connect to a computer to do it. Apps that should have been included on the camera need to be downloaded and it isn't as easy as it should be in a plug and play world. Many people are going to want to do this because the sync to cell phone feature seems attractive for travel and so does the ability to take remote photos for group photos. To download the apps you first need to register with the Playstation network and download the Sony PlayMemories app to you telephone, tablet and/or computer, so you'll need a smartphone, tablet or computer, and patience as it wasn't the clearest process and involves verifying your e-mail. None of it worked as smoothly as other things I've registered for. Next, I tried to use my new account to download the software through the camera - BIG MISTAKE! You have to enter your e-mail address (not your user name) and password, and the connection to the network doesn't work, so each time you try you have to enter it again. This never worked for me after multiple tries! (I want the name and telephone number for the software engineer who set it up this way to give him/her an earful.) Thankfully I was able to connect the camera to the computer, download software to the computer and register online. Next, I tried to download the apps via Google Chrome, which did not work. Using Firefox I was able to download them slowly and one at a time. Instructions weren't very clear to me, possibly because of age, but any event it worked. Also the webiste was buggy and didn't let me go back easily to the page with the others apps to download, but I finally realized you have to go through path message to get back to the page with the other apps you may want to download. MY MESSAGE TO SONY - MAKE THIS AUTOMATIC ONCE A CAMERA OWNER CONNECTS TO A WIFI NETWORK OR COMPUTER!!! THE LITTLE BIT OF USER INFORMATION YOU ARE GETTING CAN BE OBTAINED THROUGH REGISTRATION AND WITHOUT FRUSTRATING THE BUYER!!!!!!Connecting the camera to an iphone works, but might not be intuitive to you. One place referred how to connect using my iphone as a network hotspot, a feature I don't use on my iphone. Luckily I found the instructions that tell you to USE THE CAMERA AS NETWORK ON YOUR WIFI setting on the iphone (SETTINGS, GENERAL, WIFI ...). When I first tried it, it wasn't there, but after a little while it popped up. You then need to enter the password the camera displays in the PlayMemories app, not the settings.Another thing I noticed is that the sync to telephone feature defaults to auto sync, which means when you turn off the camera it tries to connect to your telephone and sync the photos. If you are on a wifi network it won't work and the camera will keep looking for the connection burning through battery. The reason is that you need to go into settings and turn on the camera is the wifi network for this to work. (Obviously if you already had the camera as the wifi network this should work fine.) I turned the auto sync feature off.Everyone I talked to said get the viewfinder for sunny days. I listened. I wear bifocals and so far I have mixed impressions. I'll post on this once I use it more. I will say that I wish that the viewfinder was a little more rigid in place and that the diopter adjustment was easier. It works, but because the camera automatically switches back and forth between viewfinder and display, it is a pain. Also, I wasn't able to adjust it enough to use without glasses although that might be the solution for other people. I'm glad that the camera gives me some options about use, and I may just need to change settings. I also found the electrical viewfinder to be very different than the SLR and rangefinder cameras I've used in the past, as well as the older Olympus and Nikon digital cameras I used in the past. Once I use it for awhile, I may edit this and provide more info.The display and viewfinder do have an unbelievable amount of information available. I dimmed the display to save on battery life and it may have also dimmed the viewfinder - I can't tell yet.The pop up flash works and I understand the value of having it higher above the lens, but I still might prefer a flash I don't have to pop up.