Sony cyber shot dsc h9 owners manual

One of the more interesting features of the H9 is Sony's Dynamic Range Optimization, which is designed to provide a broader range of highlights and shadows. While it won't turn a bad picture into a good one, it seems to provide some subtle improvements. Even without using the DRO, the H9 generally delivered accurate and well-balanced exposures.

Colors were well-saturated, but a Vivid color setting is available if you want to take the color intensity up a notch. I found that the Normal setting produced colors that were both accurate and naturally vibrant. My first instinct was of course to shoot with the Sony H9 outdoors. Since I have no access to a large indoor space, it's difficult to put the telephoto lens through its paces any other way. As it turned out, an early morning foray outdoors found droplets of water from the previous night's rainstorm.

Though the H9's strong suit is its long lens, this was obviously the perfect time to test out its macro capabilities. I was surprised at how well the H9 handled close-ups, even when set to Program mode. Images of water drops on leaves were crisply focused, well-exposed, and nicely detailed. On other occasions, I used the Sony H9's manual exposure modes.

I preferred shutter-speed mode, with and without Super SteadyShot, to ensure I could handhold the camera without blurring the image. For me, this was preferable to boosting the camera's ISO to gain extra shutter speed. Even though the H9's ISO goes up to 3,, I was careful to keep the light sensitivity settings as low as possible to avoid blurring from the Sony H9's overly aggressive noise reduction. Using the Shutter-priority and Aperture-priority modes, the H9 delivered good exposures and the automatic white balance provided well-balanced colors even in shadows.

Indoors the H9 didn't do as well compensating for incandescent lighting. With its long lens, good continuous shooting speed, and fast autofocus, photographing wildlife in a neighborhood park with the H9 was fun. Only the most skittish of birds flitting between tree branches eluded the camera.

Although the Sony H9 offers automatic Face Detection, photographing people was somewhat limited since Face Detection is only available in Auto and Portrait modes. And, like most other options, activating Face Detection requires a trip through the menu system. It was often easier to just let the autofocus do its thing and not engage the Face Detection feature at all.

All images were shot at the highest resolution, but unfortunately there's no way to assign a compression level, which didn't make sense for a camera of this class. You can select from among six resolution modes, however, including 8 megapixel, , 5 megapixel, 3 megapixel, VGA, and Whenever possible, I kept the ISO to Night Shot switch. With a quick flip of this switch, you move the infrared filter out from the sensor's path.

Very cute. And most importantly he didn't wake up. But it's certainly not the sharpest image. Night Shot mode. Unique to the Sony H9 is its infrared Night Shot mode. Unlike past models with Night Shot, there's no Night Framing mode, nor does the H9 have Sony's excellent Holographic AF assist beam, which threw a marvellous laser pattern that stayed focused out to many yards. It has an infrared assist lamp that throws a narrow beam of infrared light.

Our Senior Editor Shawn Barnett took the H9 into his kids bedroom to catch a few shots of them at night. He says they flinched a bit as the infrared illumination beam was shone on them. All words, images, videos and layout, copyright Gordon Laing.

May not be used without permission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Summary Buy it now! The lens hood should be removed before using this mode as it may block the IR rays. At the wide position, the lens can focus to 1 cm in macro mode, which is engaged by pressing the left arrow on the arrow pad.

The flash is ineffective at such close distances and should be switched off. Like the H5, the H9 is supplied with a lens hood, which is fitted via a screw-in adaptor ring. It also vignetted wide-angle shots, although the adaptor on its own did not. The SteadyShot stabilisation can also be switched on and off. Audio quality was also very good for subjects within about two metres of the camera.

Other playback options include slideshows with background music, which can be chosen from four pre-loaded tracks or uploaded through the Print sub-menu of the Home menu.

Performance Pictures taken with the test camera were bright and colour-rich, with little difference between the Normal and Natural colour settings but high saturation with the Vivid setting.

This mode should be kept for simple subjects where over-saturated colours are required. Exposures were consistently well-pitched to provide a good balance between highlights and shadows, although highlights blocked up in bright subjects taken with the Normal contrast setting.

The Super SteadyShot stabilisation system was effective, but not quite good enough to allow the camera to be hand-held when the digital zoom was used. Imatest showed resolution to be slightly below expectations and revealed colour shifts and boosted saturation in red hues. Otherwise colour accuracy was good. Lateral chromatic aberration was generally low. Little image noise was seen in long exposures up to ISO but it quickly became obvious thereafter.

By ISO shots were seriously noise-affected. We would caution potential users against shooting with this setting unless it was absolutely necessary. The Night Shot mode produced monochrome pictures that were greenish, monochrome and very grainy looking. Contrast was slightly flat, revealing areas that were invisible in shots taken with the normal camera settings. Although a lot of people only upload images to Instagram from their smartphones, the app is much more than just a mobile photography platform.

In this guide we've chosen a selection of cameras that make it easy to shoot compelling lifestyle images, ideal for sharing on social media. Submit a News Tip! Reading mode: Light Dark. Login Register. Best cameras and lenses. All forums Sony Cyber-shot Talk Change forum. Started Jun 23, Discussions. Forum Threaded view. Jun 23, Reply to thread Reply with quote Complain. I can give you my reasons for choosing the H9. The tilting LCD is really useful for both low angle and high angle shots. I use it all the time.

Reply Reply with quote Reply to thread Complain. I agree with SIngraham - The tilting bigger screen is worth the extra dough alone -- hide signature F Forum M My threads. You may also like. Sony ZV-1 review. Will vlogging change your next camera?

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