Are the images produced by my Sony HX90V as good as they should be?

[Peter Brown]

I have just bought a Sony HX90V to replace an HX50 (which gave up the ghost), and I believe that the images produced on maximum telephoto (including digital) are inferior to those produced by my old HX50 camera. With a 18MP camera on 4x digital zoom, I calculate you would get an approximately 1mp picture, which should still be of reasonable quality.

What I am getting is on the background, a pattern of squiggly patterns. (sample attached - owing to file size, I had to crop it. However, I believe the bit selected is the same pixel density as the original). I certainly did not get this with my HX50.

Am I being too fussy, or should I take this up with the supplier?

Sorry this is a bit mundane, but any advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

[ACS641]

I agree it's not much of an image but without having your EXIF data it's hard to know what to expect.
Your HX50 had a very slight advantage as it has a 20MP sensor compared to the HX90's 18MP sensor.

On the other hand your attached photo is not far off of what I would expect from an over sharpened 2-3MP (my calculations) image.

I suspect you'll most folks on this forum don't use in-camera digital zoom but will do any cropping/resizing in post processing.

A. C.

 

[Peter Brown]

Thanks very much for your advice, AC, and apologies for the delay in replying.
Firstly, as regards the photo shown above (DSC 08572 cropped), the details of the picture as taken are attached as a screen dump from a picture viewer. I take on board your observation about cropping a photo taken without digital zoom, and I have now turned off digital zoom on my camera.
I do understand that picture quality will get worse as you use digital zoom, but the thing that is really worrying me is not the castle in the photo, but the background. When magnified, you see the whole of the sky is covered with little white squiggles and grey dots. This does worry me, and certainly was not present in my HX50.

I'm now going to attach another photo which did not use digital zoom, and when magnified, you can still see this pattern of white squiggles and grey dots. DSC 08570 (cropped). Again details of the pic before cropping is attached.
I'm wondering whether I should complain that the camera is faulty, or am I expecting too much?
Thanks once again for your advice.
Peter Brown

 

[Derrel]

Looks like what one might expect from a severe crop-in segment,seen large. Also, environmental conditions play a HUGE part in photos shot outdoors. Air quality issues, heat mirage, etc.all can wreak havoc on photographic efforts.

 

[snowbear114 46]

Also - MPs refer to image size, like square centimeters.

 

[ACS641]

The EXIF data is still attached to your new picture. It shows that the digital zoom was 2.75x. Any digital, magnified enough, will show "squigglies" if noise reduction and sharpening are used. Again, according to the EXIF the default sharpening and noise reduction were used. That's not necessarily a bad thing depending on how the picture is to be used, other than pixel peeping. I'll attach two files, 1st Is a 100% crop of a 20MP 4/3 sensor photo. I think you'll agree it's pretty sharp. The 2nd is a 500% crop of the same photo. Guess what, squigglies. Now, how do I use the photo? Well, as the full 20MP photo is displayed (full screen) on my computer as a .22x magnification. I cropped it severely, for me, so the final image is shown full screen at .62x magnification, a tight head and shoulder shot of what started out as a horizontal full length shot of my two grandchildren. My wife uses the head & shoulder shot as the background on here computer. It is a sharp shot even though her monitor is larger than mine. It would also print at any size from 8x10 to 20x24. Squiggles are irrelevant at any realistic size.

A. C.