A Review of the Sony DSC-H3 camera

Posted by Dave Jackson on July 18th, 2008 at 07:14pm

It sports a 10x optical zoom lens with optical image stabilization, high definition output and face detection abilities. It will retail at $300 when it is available in September. The zoom toggle’s soft-touch feel allows for fine adjustments, and the zoom is not stepped – allowing for apparently limitless settings between 1x and 10x. An on-screen read out displays the magnification level. Dominating the front of the camera is a Carl Zeiss-branded Vario-Tessar 10x optical 38-380mm equivalent f/3.5-4.4 zoom lens, which feeds light to an 8.1-megapixel CCD sensor. Around back you’ll find a 2.5-inch, 115,000-pixel LCD.

Combine this with a step-less 10x zoom lens covering an equivalent 38mm to 380mm and multi-mode image stabilization and you’ve got the makings of a winner for an amateur sports/nature photographer. A promised battery life of around 330 shots is equally enticing; we’ll see whether the H3 lives up to this hype, but Sony’s Stamina battery technology has proven true to the advertising copy in the past. Whereas most compacts have a paltry 3x zoom - boosted by an often unusable digital zoom - superzooms typically offer around 10x-18x optical zooms. But do they fill a gap or merely offer too many compromises? Sony puts 10x optical zoom in the palm of your hand. With compact body design, 8.1-megapixel resolution, and a top-quality Carl Zeiss lens, the Cyber-shot DSC-H3 packs more photo opportunities in a small size.

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H3 is yet another take on the emerging compact ultra-zoom theme, sporting a 10x optical zoom in a large pocket camera package. Amid some other more prominent entries into this field, the Sony seems to have been often lost in the mix. The 8.1-megapixel Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H3 features an optically stabilized f/3.5-4.4, 38mm-380mm (35mm equivalent) 10x Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar zoom lens and 115,000-pixel, 2.5-inch LCD screen. In addition to the lens, the camera’s design, resolution, and price put it into close competition with Canon’s PowerShot SX100 IS . To begin, the new camera features a powerful Carl Zeiss ? 10x optical zoom lens, which makes it ideal for capturing every expression when shooting little stars from the audience. It also includes a long-range flash that lights up subjects farther from the camera.

It offers a generally good, stabilized 10x zoom lens, snappy shot-to-shot performance, a good flash unit, and nice color reproduction. But in evaluating cameras, I always come back to the idea of how refined a particular unit feels. But as is typical of the 10x pocket camera, there’s neither an optical viewfinder, nor an EVF on the H3.

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