HX9V picture quality? (is it still smoothening details like HX5V?)

[TrickyXXXX]

Hello,

I was forced to sell HX5V becouse its very poor image quality (very strong post-processing resulted to image smoothness and loss of details). Now I am considering buying new camera but I am worry that the HX9V will have the same poor picture quality. Has the quality been improoved or not? Are there any links for downloading some picture samples to my computer?

Thank you for the answer

Branislav

[Mick2011]

Hi Branislav, welcome to the forum 🙂

In image quality terms, the HX9V is quite a step up from the HX5V. Not just the higher pixel count, but in overall clarity and sharpness. Certainly side-by-side test images I've seen show marked reduction in the 'smoothing' you mention, probably due to better noise reduction and improved low-light performance, even over the HX7V.

I found you some full-size sample images here: http://www.photographyblog.com/previews/sony_hx9v_photos/ which seem to bear this out.

Hope that helps you decide!

Cheers

Mick

[TrickyXXXX]

Hi Mick,

I do really appreciate your assistance, it helped. I wanted to buy the HX9V first of all because of the unrivaled movies it is making, but I did not want to loose picture quality that TZ series of Panasonic is known for (and for HX5V was unfamous) . I Will wait for a september, when an NEX-C5 should be unveiled. If it will have in-body image stabilisation (for stabilising movies) I will purchase it. If not, I will purchase the HX9V 😉

Once again, thanks a lot

Branislav

[oRBIT2002]

I got the HX9V yesterday but I am not satisifed with the results. The "smoothing" is caused by too high JPEG compression, there's alot of detail-loss. There's no setting to adjust the quality either.

The compression artifacts aren't very visible on printed photos, but on the computer screen they're pretty obvious. Things looks very smoothed and details are lost.

My old 12Megapixel camera generates larger files than this 16megapixel camera. More pixels and higher compression = bad idea.

Here's a 100% crop sample in lossless PNG. As you can see, there's almost no detail on the road and sidewalk.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2590713/bilder/artifacts.png

Message was edited by: oRBIT2002

Message was edited by: oRBIT2002

[TrickyXXXX]

Hi,

picture sample you have posted is exactly what I was talking about. This camera is taking worse pictures than some 6 megapixel cameras I used many years ago... I just do not get it - why somebody builds camera with great potential (great and costy hardware parameters, for example 16 megapixels ) and when the picture with this hardware is taken, at the end, there is some valueless algorithm that makes this picture unusable... I also do not understand how that "review experts" at various websites can describe this camera as great (I guess they must be blind or corrupted)... I hope that Panasonic will upgrade soon their TZ camera series to make better videos (this is only one advantage of Sony), so there will be no reason why even to speculate to buy Sony cameras... I am very dissapointed of this Sony marketing approach (making products to look well, not to work well - at least if they tried co communicate with their customers, but Sony is well known for not listening to their customers).

This post has been seen by hundreds of users, I hope that they find it useful and will seriously consider listed fact before purchasing this camera...

Best regards

Branislav

Message was edited by: TrickyXXXX

Message was edited by: TrickyXXXX