Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H50

Beauty is in the details, and this model captures them all. The DSC-H50 is a full-featured point-and-shoot with outstanding high-power zoom capability. It includes Smile Shutter™ technology which captures smile the moment they happen, as well as Face Detection technology to optimize focus, exposure and color for up to eight faces. Shoot detailed images with 9.1 megapixel resolution, and bring your subjects closer with the 15x optical zoom Carl Zeiss® lens. Intelligent Scene Recognition automatically selects your camera's settings based on detected lighting conditions, while Sony's Double Anti-Blur solution helps keep your images blur-free. The DSC-H50 completes the package with a 3.0" ClearPhoto LCD Plus™ display that lets you easily view your images and menu options. Also available in silver.

9.1 MP Super HAD™ CCD

More megapixels give you more detail and definition when you make big prints or crop in tight on your subject. The advanced Sony® Super HAD™ (Hole Accumulated Diode) CCD design allows more light to pass to each pixel, increasing sensitivity and reducing noise.

Carl Zeiss® 15X Optical Zoom Lens

15X optical zoom provides a superb ability to bring long-distance subjects up close — a significant advantage for situations where you can't be near the action, such as sporting events or wildlife photography.

9-Point Auto Focus

Because an off-center subject can make your shot more interesting, a 9-point auto focus measures auto-focus at 9 precision points instead of 5 -- giving you greater creative freedom to compose your image.

3.0”1 Tilt-up Clear Photo LCD Plus™ Display

The large, bright 3.0” Clear Photo LCD Plus™ display tilts up for comfortable low-angle shooting, and an anti-reflective coating provides for excellent visibility to help you compose, view, and share photos with superb clarity and color reproduction, even in bright sunlight.

15 MB Internal Memory

Even if you forget your flash memory card, you can get the shot because 15 MB internal memory lets you capture a limited number of shots with in-camera convenience, then easily transfer your shots to a PC or optional Memory Stick Duo™ media.

Memory Stick Duo™ Media Convenience

A built-in slot accepts optional Memory Stick Duo™ media or Memory Stick PRO Duo™ media -- the compact, high-capacity storage media that make it easily to upload photos to your PC and are compatible with millions of devices worldwide.

16:9 High-Resolution Mode

In addition to the standard 2-megapixel size, the convenient 16:9 aspect ratio shooting mode for HDTV3 display can now be shot in 7-megapixels, making it possible to obtain beautiful, high-definition prints with the same aspect ratio as HDTV.

Bracket Shooting Mode

In addition to standard exposure bracketing (±0.3EV/±0.7EV/±1.0EV), Bracket Shooting mode now includes settings for white balance and color modes. This function records three images with one shot, each with a different white balance or color mode applied, making it easy to capture the ambience and feeling of the original scene.

Burst Mode-2

You can fire off three shots automatically at 1-second intervals (VGA standard mode) or 2-second intervals (full resolution mode) -- a great way to capture a child's first steps or a pet's best tricks.

Color Filter Kit

Five color filter effects -- including Red, Green, Blue, Warm, and Cool -- provide the same effects via in-camera image processing that are typically achieved with colored lens filters. Each effect provides increased creative control when shooting.

Color Mode “Real”

For users who want to retouch their images after shooting, Color Mode “Real” helps enable faithful color reproduction by minimizing in-camera image processing. The color modes available are Real, Standard, Vivid, Sepia, and Monotone.

Convenient Photo Modes

To adjust quickly for specific shooting situations, you can choose from several convenient photo modes, including Auto, Program Auto, and Scene Selections such as Twilight, Landscape, Soft Snap, Snow, High Sensitivity, and Beach environments.

Dynamic Range Optimization

Powered by the exclusive Sony BIONZ®® high-speed processing engine, Dynamic Range Optimization preserves image data in bright highlights and reveals more detail in shadows or backlit areas -- for great results even in difficult lighting conditions.

Electronic Color Viewfinder

In addition to the LCD screen, a built-in electronic color viewfinder lets you shoot in traditional camera style and save battery power by turning your LCD screen off.

Face Detection-2

Face Detection technology automatically controls focus, exposure, color, and flash to help reveal faces in shadows, make skin tones look more natural, reduce red-eye, and eliminate harsh facial glare, so your photos bring out every expression on every face in every shot.

Function Guide

This beginner-friendly function helps manage various functions and settings by displaying the description of chosen functions or settings on the LCD screen. The Function Guide can also be switched off.

HD Slide Show with Music

It's the high-definition viewing experience that makes photos more entertaining to watch, accompanied by your choice of visual effects and any of four preset musical selections stored in memory or your favorite music downloaded from PC to your camera for use as background music .

HDTV Compatibility

High-resolution images can be enjoyed in all their beauty simply by connecting the camera directly to a Sony BRAVIA® HDTV or other compatible HDTV3. This provides an excellent alternative to viewing photos as prints or on a computer monitor, and is ideal for users who want to share photos in the comfort of their living room. Optional HD solutions include a Cyber-shot® cradle/charger with component cable output, or component cable directly to your HDTV.

High Sensitivity (ISO 3200) Mode

With high sensitivity of ISO 3200, you can shoot effectively in low light without flash to preserve the mood, while the Sony Clear RAW™ Noise Reduction system helps suppress the color noise that can degrade low-light shots.

In-Camera Retouching

Add creative effects to photos after you shoot using any of 10 editing functions, including: Trimming, Red-Eye adjustment, Soft Focus filter, Unsharp Mask, Cross filter, Partial Color filter, Fish-eye filter, Retro, Radial Blur and Happy Face. The Happy Face effect uses photo retouching to put a smile on faces, with smile levels adjustable from 1 to 5.

Intelligent Scene Recognition Mode

Intelligent Scene Recognition mode automatically detects six different types of scenes and selects the appropriate camera setting: Backlight, Backlight & Portrait, Twilight, Twilight & Portrait, Twilight with Tripod and Portrait. Intelligent Scene Recognition has two different modes, advanced and auto. Advanced mode takes two shots, one with the standard automatic settings and the other with optimized settings. Auto mode takes a single shot, arbitrarily deciding on the proper setting.

MPEG Movie VX Fine Mode

Capture VGA (640 x 480) audio/video clips at a high frame rate (up to 30 frames per second), with the length of your video limited only by the capacity of your media.

Multi-Resizing Function

Resize your photos in-camera for virtually any purpose! Standard 4:3 images can be resized to widescreen 16:9 and 2 MP resolution for display on an HDTV. Conversely, high resolution, widescreen 16:9 images can be resized to 4:3 size with VGA (640 x 480) resolution -- perfect for sharing with friends and family via e-mail (internet connection required). A simple 4-direction touch-screen control also makes it easy to trim photos.

NightShot® Infrared System

Sony's NightShot® Infrared System lets you shoot photos in near-dark or totally dark (0 lux) conditions without using a flash, so you can capture creative night scenes that lie beyond the power of conventional cameras.

“PhotoTV HD”

PhotoTV HD compatibility allows the camera to be connected to a PhotoTV HD-capable Sony BRAVIA® HDTV via the optional HD output adaptor, for highly detailed, high-definition color images displayed in unprecedented realism and full HD quality.

Optical Viewfinder

In addition to the LCD display, a built-in optical viewfinder lets you compose your photos in traditional rangefinder camera style, and also helps save battery power by turning off your LCD display.

PHOTOMUSIC

Expanding the HD Slide Show with Music feature , PHOTOMUSIC combines images with music to produce fun and entertaining slide shows. The five standard visual effects (Simple, Basic, Nostalgic, Active and Stylish) have been supplemented with Face1: Basic, Face2: Nostalgic and Face3: Stylish for a total of eight effects. Additionally, the number of music tracks stored in the camera memory has been doubled from four to eight, and music playback time has been extended from three to five minutes per track. More personalized slide shows are also possible by transferring music from a PC to the camera.

Picture Motion Browser Software

Supplied software makes it easier to upload, organize, and search photos on your PC. When shooting photos using your camera and an optional GPS unit, the software even provides a convenient map view function that lets you sort photos by location and display their origin on a world map.

Remote Control Function

In both shooting and play mode, you can use a supplied remote control unit to control basic camera functions -- including zoom, menu settings, etc. -- so you can put yourself in the picture when shooting with a tripod or sit back and enjoy the show when you share images on your home TV screen.

Smart Zoom® Feature

The Sony Smart Zoom® feature intelligently “crops into” the central portion of interest in your photo, helping avoid the image degradation of other digital zooms.

Smile Shutter Technology

Smile Shutter™ technology captures smiles the moment they happen. Used in conjunction with Face Detection technology, Smile Shutter is able to differentiate between children and adults, and can be set to automatically shoot a picture when your subject laughs, smiles, or even grins -- only when focus is fixed. You select the person to watch and the expression to catch -- your Cyber-shot® camera does the rest!

Sony Double Anti-Blur Solution

The combination of Super SteadyShot® optical image stabilization and high ISO sensitivity helps compensate for shaky hands, minimizes blur, and allow flash-free shooting to preserve the mood.

Stamina® Battery Power

Provides extended battery life and shooting capacity when using a fully charged Lithium Ion battery-- enough to cover a long weekend or a whole vacation.

Super SteadyShot® Optical Image Stabilization

Super SteadyShot® Image Stabilization compensates for shaky hands and minimizes blur with optical sensors that detect camera movement and send correcting signals to a stabilization lens -- so there's no need to crop in on your shot to reduce blur.

Variable Noise Reduction (NR Level Setting)

To allow greater control over NR, three NR Level Settings are available -- High, Low and Standard — allowing you to select the optimal setting depending on the scene and individual tastes. For example, applying high NR helps obtain smoothly textured images for portraits or dark scenes, while the low setting is helps reduce noise without sacrificing resolution, making it especially useful for landscapes, detailed subjects, and contoured surfaces.

Wheel Dial for Manual Exposure Modes

For more creative freedom, a simple wheel-dial control lets you quickly change camera settings in manual modes (shutter speed priority, aperture priority, manual exposure) and also control ISO sensitivity, focus area, and exposure value. In play mode, the wheel dial provides a quick way to view your next or previous shot.

More external Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H50 reviews!

Sensor	• 1/2.3 " Super HAD Type CCD • Approx 10.3 million pixels total • 9.1 million effective pixels
Image sizes	• 9M (3,456 x 2,592) • 5M (2,592 x 1,944) • 3M (2,048 x 1,536) • VGA (640 x 480) • 3:2 (3,456 x 2,304) • 16:9 (3,456 x 1,944) / (1,920 x 1,080)
Movie clips	• MPEG VX Fine / Standard (640 x 480 @ 30 / 16.6 fps MPEG-1 with audio) • 320 x 240 @ 8.3 fps • Optical zoom can be used during movie recording
File formats	• Still: JPEG • Movie: MPEG VX (MPEG-1)
Lens	• Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar • 31-465mm (35mm equiv) • 15x optical zoom • F2.7-4.5 • 13 elements in 8 groups(including 1ED glass element and 4 aspheric elements)
Image stabilization	Super SteadyShot®
Conversion lenses	Yes
Digital zoom	• Up to 30x Smart Zoom (dependent on selected resolution)
Focus	• Auto • Manual • Macro • Single • Monitoring
AF area modes	• 9 Area Multi-Point AF • Center AF • Flexible spot AF • Contrast detect
AF assist lamp	Yes
Focus distance	• Normal: 50cm (19.7 in) minimum (W), 120cm (47.25 in) minimum (T) • Macro: 1cm (0.4 in) wide only
Metering	• Multi-pattern (49 zone) • Center weighted • Spot
ISO sensitivity	• Auto • ISO 80 • ISO 100 • ISO 200 • ISO 400 • ISO 800 • ISO 1600 • ISO 3200
Exposure compensation	• +/-2EV • 1/3 EV steps
Exposure bracketing	+/- 0.3, 0.7, 1.0 EV
Shutter speed	• Auto: 1/4-1/4000sec • P: 1"-1/4000sec • S: 30"-1/4000sec • A: 8"-1/2000sec • M: 30"-1/4000sec
Aperture	F2.7-F8 (W)
Modes	• Program (with program shift) • Easy Shooting Auto • Aperture priority • Shutter priority • Manual • Scene modes
Scene modes	• Twilight • Twilight Portrait • Portrait • Landscape • Beach • Snow • Fireworks • High Sensitivity • Advanced Sports Shooting • Smile Shutter
Face Detection	• Off / Auto / Child / Adult • 8 faces • Smile detection
White balance	• Auto • Daylight • Cloudy • Fluorescent 1, 2, 3 • Incandescent • Flash WB • One Push Manual
Self timer	• 10 or 2 secs
Continuous shooting	100 shots,1.6fps, 9MP (max)
Image parameters	Vivid, Real, Sepia, B&W, Sharpness, Contrast, DRO, Saturation, Color Filter, NR
Flash	• Auto • On • Slow Synch • Off • Red-eye reduction • Front/rear synch • Auto/Daylight synch • Range: 0.2 - 9.1m (wide) 1.2 - 5.5m (tele)
Viewfinder	• 0.2" EVF • 201K pixels
LCD monitor	• 3.0-inch tilting TFT • 230K pixels • Clear Photo LCD Plus
Connectivity	• USB 2.0 high speed • HDTV (requires optional component lead) • AV w/multi-jack • DC in
Print compliance	PictBridge, DPOF
Storage	• Memory Stick Duo / Pro Duo compatible • 15MB internal memory
Power	• Lithium-ion NP-BG1 battery • BC-CSG Charger
Weight (inc batt)	547 g (1 lb 3.3 oz)
Dimensions	116.1 x 81.4 x 86.0 mm (4.6 x 3.2 x 3.4in)
Other features	• Playback effects • Face search • In-camera retouch • NightShot • Remote Control • Histogram • White balance and color mode bracketing • three level noise reduction setting

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