So after shooting with the full zoom and the macro, I had to try some of the other cool features of the camera. (BTW, the shot above was at full telephoto)

The new sweep panoramic mode

When I heard about the new PANO mode of this camera it intrigued me. I love shooting panos, but I hate stitching them and seeing the flaws in the software stitch, so I usually do not even shoot them. With the Sony HX1 you just press the shutter, move the camera from left to right in a smooth sweep motion and the camera tells you when to start and stop!

I gave it a shot and it worked as advertised...JUST CLICK EACH IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSIONS!

So the pano mode is simple and sweet. Set the dial to SWEEP PANO, press the shutter and there you go! Instant pano! Just open the JPEG and its already stitched! You can also do VERTICAL panoramas, not just horizontal.

Another cool feature I heard about was the TWILIGHT mode. If you have ever found yourself in a low light situation and your camera was deemed useless, then this mode would of saved you! Check this out...

With the TWILIGHT mode of the Sony HX1 you can get away with taking low light shots, WITHOUT flash and WITHOUT blur! How does the camera do it? When you press the shutter it takes six images at one time. You will hear the silent shutter clicking very fast and when the six exposures have been taken the camera will process the image.

It sort of stacks the 6 images to reduce NOISE in the image. Here is the one example where I tried it out...

I was at PF Changs with the family and it was pretty dark. I was able to get a shot with my M8 and 28 lens, but at F2 and ISO 1250 (on next page). With the Sony, I set it to twilight mode and here is the result.

Now, before you get excited at the cool “glow” in the image, remember I process most of my images in these write ups as I am a photographer first and foremost. If I put images online I want them to look as good as I can get them to look. Still, this image has had NO noise reduction. All I did was resize, selective sharpen the eyes, and use the Nik Color Efex pro filter called “Darken/Lighten Center” to add some light to her face. For ISO 1000, this looks great so the twilight mode works wonderfully well. If you want to see a crop (and i know you do) from the original out of camera JPEG, here you go:

100 % CROP OF OUT OF CAMERA JPEG, ISO 1000, TWILIGHT MODE

So with that out of the way we can say that the Pano mode works as advertised as does the TWILIGHT mode. What about the video mode? I will have more on that later with a sample video I posted to youtube but there are still a few things I need to talk about like aspect ratio and resolution.

When you shoot the Sony HX1 you have a choice of 4:3, 3:2 or 16:9 aspect ratios. I have tried them all and I personally preferred the 3:2 format. For some reason, shooting a digital in 16X9 seems like I am shooting a movie or video. I never really got on with 16X9 for my images, but I did try it! Here are a couple of goofy shots I took of my Mom after we wandered into an old Laundromat..

Many of you may be saying WHAT THE HELL! Why are all of these shot processed in photoshop!?!? Reviews are supposed to have out of camera shots!

As I state in my “About Me” page I usually enhance ALL of my images no matter what camera I use. Photoshop IS the darkroom for digital. There are no longer rules and we are free to express our vision. No matter what camera I use I ALWAYS process in photoshop to get to where I want to be. With that said, there is nothing wrong with the out of camera files or colors from the HX1. I like to show my final results and feel this is better than shooting a stick or a wall or a tree and saying “here is the quality of the HX!)!

But for those who want out of camera shots you will find some on the next page.

Go to page 4 for some out of camera shots, including full size downloads to show the detail/sharpness of the HX1...

MORE ON PAGE 4 OF THE REVIEW - CLICK HERE >>>