Sony DSCH400 Digital Compact Bridge Camera - Black

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

I am not a professional photographer however I have owned a few decent cameras in my time and I have to say this is the best one I have used so far especially for its price range. By the way this is not an SLR camera it is called a bridge camera which is designed to be in between a normal digital camera and an SLR for quality. It is has some very good features that make snapping away very easily. Pros: + 64x optical zooms is excellent and more than you will ever need. If you do happen to need more you can go up to 120x digital zoom (however with digital zoom the more you zoom in the blurrier the picture will get. It is best to stick with optical). + 21 MP pictures are great quality and certainly much better quality than any phone camera. + Fairly easy controls to use. It is nice to have a button that allows you to look through either the viewfinder or use the screen to take pictures. + Will accept standard SD cards. I have a 64GB which allows me to take thousands of pictures. + It is nicely built, feels very high quality and is not too heavy. + Many different in built settings and custom options with which to take pictures. Including many Instagram style filters you can apply. + Video has a stabilisation mode which works well. Cons: - Can be tricky to get it to focus on smaller objects sometimes. - The advertised 720p video recording is not very high quality. I would say it is more like 360p or 480p. Stick with photos and maybe use your phone for videos (This is its biggest failing in my opinion). - Unable to change lenses as it is a bridge camera not a full SLR camera (However its default lens is very good and it keeps the camera nice and sealed preventing dirt and debris from entering). Overall despite its poor video it is a fantastic camera for taking pictures and has many useful features that are fun to play around with. I could not believe you could get a camera this good for this price before I stumbled across it. It is brilliant for amateur photographers and would make for a very good introduction camera for someone to practice techniques before shelling out for a really expensive SLR camera. It does what it says. It bridges the gap between ordinary digital cameras and SLR cameras and all without breaking the bank. Highly recommended! (I have attached a few of the photos I have taken with this camera just to give you some examples of the picture quality in different situations) S93

Okay: yes, it is occasionally a little slow to respond, and yes it does occasionally take a few seconds to focus, but the clarity, ease of use, price and compactness of the camera more than make up for the few shortcomings. I work with monkeys (not really known for their ability to sit still and pose) and managed to take some stunningly clear close-up shots from a viewing deck about 20m away. This camera is excellent, better than some DSLRs for a fraction of the cost. If you're wanting to up your photography game from a point-and-shoot but a DSLR isn't in your price range, this is a great camera to go with.

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.

I have a number of SLR camera's plus a great Olympus Bridge, which "She who must be Obeyed", has now grabbed. So I was looking for a camera to replace it, plus I'm becoming more and more reluctant to carry around a bag of lenses and other stuff. I looked at a lot of bridge cameras with a good zoom facility in the £250 or less price range. I eventually settled on the Sony DSCH400 as it had a good spec, good reviews and the price on Amazon was the best I could find. The camera has a solid build feel and although it has a good selection of menu options it not an Encyclopaedia Britannica, like some. The Intelligent (Easy) mode lets the camera choose the best settings for you and does a reasonably good job. It obviously also lets you choose your own setting if you are a more experience photographer with Manual, Aperture, Shutter and Program modes. The Sweep Panorama mode works well but does need a little experimenting at first (nothing unusual there). It has a 720p Movie mode which works well, but shame its not full HD, nevertheless it produces good sharp video and mono audio. The 3" LCD panel is clear, but unfortunately does not cope well with strong sunlight. The simple remedy is to switch to the view finder, but if you like taking shots using the LCD panel you may find this a pain. The disappointing bits, hence 4 stars: Mine came with the Zoom set to Smart mode, but when I tried to zoom any thing approaching 25 times magnification it resulted in an error message saying "Power off and on Camera". I was very close to sending it back at this point. I also noticed that the lens, when zooming, was very grouchy. I then changed the setting to Precision mode and low-and-behold it went up to the full 63 x zoom, plus offered me a further 63 x digital zoom taking it to a total of 126 magnification. This is something that you have to dig deep into the Sony online user guide to find. After a full day of use the lens got smother and less noisy and eventually the Smart setting worked without error. The only thing I can think here is that the lens zoom mechanism had some fine grit in it, but its not what I would have expected from Sony. The major gripe is that the Auto Focus is not responsive. Sony's spec says it will auto focus in 1.4 seconds. I would suggest its closer to 5 seconds and 7 seconds if your at the top end of the zoom. Depending on what shot your taking this can be broadly acceptable, or just too long (the bird has flown). So, good quality camera that takes decent photos and video, but could probably benefit from a faster processor and better factory Q&A. Tip: I purchased a 16GB Mobi Eyefi SD SDHC card with mine which adds a WiFi photo and movie file transfer facility to PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Android devices. Works great and one less cable to worry about. You will need the Pro version if your sending RAW format, but not an issue with this camera. Available at Amazon and elsewhere.

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.