Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H55

Full Review

When it comes to compact zoom cameras, there are not many choices in the market. Among them, the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H55 is one affordable compact camera equipped with a long zoom and many useful features to let you turn your moments into memorable ones.

Design
Dressed in the complet e black body, the Sony H55 has a front metallic body,  and its sides and back covered  with plastic. It is not as sleek and sexy as the Cyber-shot T-series nor as compact as the W-series, but it looks sturdy and serious.  Due to the long zoom lens, the body is not ultra compact but would still fit in your trousers pocket  unless you wear those tight EMO jeans. The build quality is excellent for its class and it is also a bit hefty at 198g approximately ( with battery and memory card).

Colors were generally alright with a hint of over saturation , which is very common in Sony Cybershot consumer lineup.

Controls placement is not much an issue and very easy to get used to.  its top has a small power switch flushed with the surface, a shutter-release button with the zoom-ring, and a mode dial. The flash on the front is easy to block with fingers if not careful when it’s fired. The lens barrel covers almost half of its front and its AF-assist lamp on the corner is well-positioned as fingers would hardly find its way there.

The back as usual is dominated by its large 3-inch LCD screen which is bright under sunlight and on its right,  there is a circular 4-way directional key with the center select button and three dedicated shortcuts – playback, menu and delete. A four-way controller changes can change Display settings, activate Smile shutter, changes Self timer and adjust the Flash. One slight issue here is the buttons placement at the back are a bit too cramped and are positioned a bit too far down which makes single handed operation slightly challenging at times. The bottom has a battery cum memory card compartment, a proprietary AV/data cable port and a tripod mount.

We are no strangers to Sony’s camera, so we feel right at home using the Sony H55. The icon-driven menu interface with tab-browsing is easy to navigate and each accompanying text for each feature made it easier to use. Even though we have to get to menu  first to change commonly used settings like ISO and exposure, the menu is quite intuitive and is easy to get along. Even for first time users, this non-touchscreen interface with its accompanying explanatory-text for each features would not be an issue.

Features
The Sony H55 is a 14.1MP camera that uses a CCD sensor and is powered by a powerful 10x Sony’s G lens with a focal range of 25mm-250mm  in 35mm term. It uses the BIONZ CCD sensor instead of the CMOS sensor found on other Cyber-shot models like Sony WX1 or TX7. Sony uses Optical Steady Shot image stabilization to reduce hand-shake effect on the images while shooting- it is available for while shooting still images and videos.  It has a large 3-inch LCD screen and it supports 720p HD video recording. Sony includes its famous Sweep Panorama feature that enables shooting effortless panoramic images just by holding the shutter button and panning the camera either horizontally or vertically.

To make shooting easier, Sony included shooting modes like Intelligent Auto, Easy Mode and eleven scene modes.  It also included the usual Face Detection feature with ability to find up to eight faces and there is also a Smile shutter plus Self Portrait Timer.

The Sony H55 has Program Auto to let you adjust ISO, white balance, AF points, light metering and exposure values. Its ISO speed ranges include ISO80/100/200/400/800/1600/3200. There is also Sony’s Dynamic Range Optimization to bring out more shadow detail. To tinker more with the controls, there is a full  manual shooting option that enable shooting with various shutter speeds and two-step aperture that ranges from F3.5 to F5.5. At wide angle, it also has option to shoot at F8 aperture stop. The included exposure bracketing feature which is a useful feature is also rarely seen on a sub 15k camera. The Sony H55 can also record HD videos (720p) with mono audio and optical zoom and image stabilization are available while recording. Fortunately, Sony now include support SDHC memory card apart from its own proprietary memory stick duo which is a good news.

The overall package offered in this Cybershot H55 is more than what you get from a camera in this price range.

Performance
The Sony H55 booted up in 1.8 secods flat which is good and the camera responded quick enough to most operations.  The camera could not maintain the same snappy performance while shooting, the delays between each successive shots without flash is slow at 3.9 seconds but much faster than the Olympus Mju 9010 which we reviewed earlier. This gets slower again with flash which is around 4.5 seconds. It has burst speed rate of 1.9 fps but unlike 10 images captured on the Sony Cybershot TX7 or Cybershot WX1, the H55 captured only 4 images in burst mode.  Shutter lag with prefocusing measured between 0.1 second to 0.2 second while it measured around .0.3 to 0.4 second without prefocusing, which is good. The overall shooting performance is not great but very much acceptable.

The Sony’s G-lens showed good overall sharpness with minor softness in the corner. Barrel distortion is minimal which is impressive. Purple fringing is visible in high contrast frames which is typical of mainstream cameras. The optical image stabilization compensates well for the hand shake and comes into play while shooting tele photo (full 10x zoom) or during low-light shooting.

ISO80                                         ISO100                                     ISO 200

ISO400                              ISO800                          ISO1600               ISO3200

The sample images looked sharp and managed good detail levels. Colors were generally alright with a hint of over saturation , which is very common in Sony Cybershot consumer lineup. But, again the colors weren't at par with the much costlier  Panasonic ZR1 which we reviewed some time back . Noise levels are tolerable till ISO400 but anything above that and the images appear soft and smeared due to excessive noise suppression that effects the details in return. The Cybershot H55 did well in our exposure test, dishing out good results in varied lighting conditions.

Flash worked great within 9 feet and red-eye reduction was accurate. Manual white balance does help in controlling any kind of tints that might effect the overall shot. Sweep panorama worked wonderfully as advertised but the output images are quite soft and tend to lose details.


Purple fringe on high contrast areas.                    Twilight Mode captured good low light images
Video recorded at 720p resolution was a mixed bag with many videos appearing dull and there was excessive noise when capturing indoors. The mono audio capture is alright and we can safely say that while the camera provides an option of HD video capture, video recording is not its forte.
The fully charged battery lasted for around 270 shots of still images including a few minutes of HD video recording.

Bottom Line

Priced at Rs. 14,990, the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H55 is a good buy if you want an affordable compact zoom camera that performs alright and has lots of features and presets for basic users. It’s slightly slow shot-to-shot performance and average HD video recording keeps it away from being a top performer in our labs. So, if you are looking for a feature-rich, well-built, fairly compact camera that offers 10x optical zoom and HD video capture, the Sony Cybershot H55 does fit in to the slot as long as you can live with some compromise in the performance department.