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My first digital camera was an Olympus I purchased at Costco more than 12 years ago. It was a pocketable point and shoot. After my second Olympus, I switched to Sony cameras with the HX-1, a super-zoom, and then the HX-10. My current digital camera is a Sony HX-100v and I have loved it well, though not long enough (10 days shy of 2 years).

Sony has provided me with incredible macro (close-up) capability coupled with a super-zoom. Each next Sony has pushed that zoom farther. The Sony HX-100v has a 30x zoom. More specifically it reaches the equivalence of an 810mm lens. Those DSLRs you see with the foot-long lens might only be 400mm. To buy the equivalent zoom for DSLR would cost more than a used car.

As Sony has evolved, it has added more useful features, such as GPS tagging to identify where a photo was taken. That was a feature I was indifferent to until I viewed a group of photos on a map with a single click. Cool.

Unfortunately, one component of my Sony HX-100v stopped working just over a year after I got the camera. This is the jog wheel which is used to change a variety of settings. As a result, although I have all the automatic functions as before, I have *none* of the manual functions. Understand that I love automatic features and rely on them 95% of the time. I don’t miss setting aperture and shutter speed, among others. However, one of my favorite features of the Sony died with the jog wheel: exposure compensation. EC allows me to step up or down, that is to slightly alter the automatic setting for a lighter or darker exposure. EC adds subtle but useful nuance to the automatic functions. I miss it every day. And I know that another photographer might never use EC. I’ve lived nearly a year without EC but now autofocus has become a little less reliable.

Each time I’ve upgraded, I’ve given the previous camera to my wife. I won’t burden her with this one, even knowing that it is 90% of an incredible camera. She’s understandably happy with the HX-10, a 20x zoom.

Moreover, each upgrade has been to the next Sony. In the two years I’ve had the 100v, the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX200V and Sony DSC-HX300/B have come out. I recently recommended the 200v to a friend who took it to New Zealand and loved the camera. (I’ve recommended other Sonys to several friends who have loved them.) I still think the 100v or 200v would be a great choice. However, though the Sony HX-300 pushes to 50x, I think Sony has made a mistake in also upping the megapixels. More megapixels are not better if the chip size doesn’t increase. Denser pixels mean more noise and image quality problems. I desperately want Sony to put one of the DSLR chips in a point and shoot zoom.

For the first time in a long time, my next camera won’t be a Sony. The early failure of the jog wheel stung me. The fact that repair prices started at $150 (for a $400 camera) stung me.

What will my new camera be? I’ll tell you later, but I’ll say that its major draw is even more zoom. And its negatives are many — it’s going to have to impress me to truly replace my Sony.

I posted other examples comparing the HX-100’s wide angle to its 30X zoom (~810mm), including video. Below are a few more.

This first shot is wide angle. You may be able to make out the sunflower. Note: I should have used the HX100’s HDR backlit setting for better exposure of the foreground.

From the same spot, I zoomed in on the sunflower. The following photo is the uncropped frame.

The third shot is cropped from the second. Note the ant at the end of one of the rays. Go back to the first photo and find the ant!

The next shot is full zoom, hand-held at sunset on a cloudy day.

This is a cropped portion of that preceding shot. Not as sharp as I’d like (my standing complaint about Sony zooms in less than bright sunlight) but surprisingly legible (if you click the photo). At the time, I couldn’t even tell it was a UPS plane; it was five to ten miles away.