Camera Labs

8 MP, up to 3200 ISO (dependind on Noise), 3" display, 31mm-468mm (35mm equavilant) Carl Zeiss lens, Image Stabilization and a wireless remote that zooms and trips the shutter.

And many more features like an infrared feature.

And the Kicker is, the flop-up screen will make me feel like I am using a 2 1/4 again.

It looks like it will beat out the Olympus and Panasonic, just have to see the reviews and test prints when it comes out.

I just hope the Shutter Lag is short and I am not a fan of the Sony Memory Stick, if thats the only hic-cup I'm sold.

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Jason
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonkaye

It's interesting, that Sony is going for an optical image stabilizer
Unfortunately the Sensor is only 1/2.5", whereas the Sony DSC N2 has a 1/1.7" 10MP sensor. That doesn't bode well for signal2noise ratio...
Est. street rpice in Germany for the H9 seems to be 450EUR.

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

Hi guys, yep, the H9 looks like a very promising Superzoom - on paper anyway. I especially like the sound of a 15x optically stabilised zoom and a 3in flip out screen, although as Thomas says, don't expect miracles in terms of noise at higher sensitivies. I look forward to reviewing it and comparing it against the Olympus 550 UZ.

In the meantime we've updated our Sony pages to reflect the new announcements: http://www.cameralabs.com/cameras/Sony/

Apologies this took a little longer than expected. We received conflicting specifications and wanted to verify and publish the correct ones.

Gordon

Well you can't expect miracles for $480.00 USD, have to wait for image samples.
To bad the screen does not swing like the Canon and a Bulb setting would be nice.
Gordon I to am waiting to compare it to the Olympus and the Panasonic FZ8 as well.

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Jason
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonkaye

Hi Gordon, What about the initial rumor that it's supposed to be a very fast focusing camera. Don't they claim that the engine is from their A100 and they promise a DSLR performance? Or, did I read it wrong? S

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GH1 HD Video
Flickr

Hi Shiva, if the H9 focuses quickly, that'd certainly be very nice, but I wouldn't expect miracles, especially when fully zoomed-in.

Having the same image processor as a DSLR doesn't necessarily promise miracles either - after all Canon uses its DiG!C processor on almost all its cameras these days...

We'll just have to see!

Gordon

would be very interested to see your take on this cam. I've been playing with the G7 for over a month now. really like it, but wondering if the H9 is going to kick it's butt or not. I like that it can shoot 2.2fps for 100 shots... we shall see indeed...

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GH1 HD Video
Flickr

Gordon, look forward to your video review of the H9. It's getting very good to excellent consumer feedback. Most comments mention that this is the fastest non-dsrl camera they have used... do you have one to play with yet? S

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GH1 HD Video
Flickr

Hi Shiva, nope, no sign of it yet, but I'm hoping to get it soon!

Gordon

Well I received my H9 last week and have just really started to play with it.
The only negatives for me are the Battery Life (a spare battery will take care of that) and the controls are a little hard for me to use as they are made for small fingers (the camera is quite small), the included software is a little weak and the screen cannot be viewed from the front.
The 3" screen is Awesome and a crowd pleaser,the in camera re-touching, cropping and color adjustment is nice(you can live without a computer but it eats battery life).
The Slide Show with music is really cool and the ability to hook it up to a HDTV is a bonus. The Nightshot looks neat, but have not really used it to much yet.

I have another 3 weeks before I have to keep it (I bought it on-line through Sony Style a paid for the express shipping And had it in 2 days)and my trip next week to Vegas will let me really try it out, but I think this is a keeper.

I am really looking forward to Gordon's review.

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Jason
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonkaye

Hi Jason, I'm really looking forward to testing the H9, but I'd love to hear more about what you think of it - and I'm sure others here would too!

In particular what do you think of the handling - the autofocus times especially when zoomed-in, the shutter lag between pressing the button and getting the shot, the low light performance etc.

In short, do you think this camera could be any substitute for a DSLR at, say, a sporting event? Typically these superzooms disappoint in this respect, but we always keep our fingers crossed!

I love Vegas and insist you take a photo of some neon lights next week with your H9 and post the results here!

Cheers!

Gordon

PS - how bad is the battery? Is that big screen draining the power?

Hi Gordon,
I would love to post some pictures, but I don't know how as I have not figured it out yet. Still pretty new at this, so any advice would be appreciated.
The H9 is a little tricky if you have large hands, the controls are small. Plus I have MS and it effects my dexterity.
If you use the 3" screen allot it does drain the battery.
The Face Recognition only works in 1 mode, fully automatic (incl ISO).
The Shutter Lag looks like it is close to a DSLR and depends on focus speed.
I still have to give it a real work out and will do that in a few days.
And I will be taking the charger with me and I have 2-1 Gig Memory Sticks as well.

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Jason
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonkaye

Hi Jason,

if you get yourself a free account at www.flickr.com you can upload 100MBs worth of photos each month and can link to them from here either with the [img]URL[/img] tags, that will display your photo or with just the URL.
flickr will only show your latest 200 photos on your flickr page, but links to older photos get never broken. So you can live with that for some time. If you want to have more, you can upgrade to a pro account for 25$ per year.
There certainly are other sites out there, or you have your own homepage where you can upload your pics to and link to them, but my experience is that your normal webspace gets pretty fast eaten up with the collection of your pics...

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

Thanks Thomas,
I have been looking at PBase (www.pbase.com) as well, will have to make up my mind after Vegas.

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Jason
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonkaye

Well I did go with a free Flickr site at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonkaye/.
There are 3 pics (2 of the geese and the lake) with the H9 on there now. The others are with a Nikonos (scanned), Rebel XT and a Fuji.
They (geese) are at around 30x zoom, will have more when I get back from Vegas.

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Jason
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonkaye