Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Currently I own the Sony H2 and decided to upgrade to the H9 because of the added features. I was VERY please with my H2. It produced fantastic shots. This camera doesn't even come close. Also SONY LIES in their description (down further in the review). First off, the camera is strange in your hands. It leaves such little room for your fingers. On the H2 I have plenty of room to place my fingers and manipulate the controls. The tilt LCD seems flimsy and could easily be broken. It also is stupid to have a moving LCD if you can't twist it. Its good for getting above and below your eye level and thats just about it. Also, the EVF is hard to use in the sun, and you smudge the LCD constantly when you try and use the EVF. The older style allowed room for an eye cup which is a MUST with an EVF. The LCD is non useable in the very bright sun. The ONLY saving grace is that you can tilt it down to shade the sun, but if you are trying to get something at ground level from your waist area by tilting the screen and its bright out FORGET IT. So if the lighting is midlight to dark everything is useable, if not its worthless. Here is the second bummer. Sony has switched from using a normal sized ring on their camera. So everything went from a 58mm size ring to a 74mm (which is a nonstandard size). So Sony again like they typically do, stuck with their OWN products (much like they do with the memory sticks). It is SOOO much easier to find 58mm products, and at more resonable prices. As far as I know the Canon line is sticking with 58mm. Smart move by Canon. Stupid move by Sony. The other bummer is the size of the adapter and hood that you now have to use with their camera. ITS HUGE!!!! This ruins the entire concept of compact SLR like camera and ruins the entire balance of the camera. Its odd and strange. It also makes hooking up something like a telephoto lens unstable. I know they had to do it because the lens in the camera is larger than previous models but COME ON!!! Next on my list is the battery system. I can understand why Sony did the change to a different type battery, the flash does recharge faster. There are some differing results with the battery chargers depending on how you use the camera. If you use the EVF and not a lot of zoom you will get about 800 shots, but if you use the LCD and zoom a lot and go through the menu then you get about 400 out of one charge. I still like the tried true method of using AA's. Sony should have gone with 4 instead of 2, and stayed away from again THEIR line of product. A replacement battery is about $50 and chargers for your car or rapid chargers are about $100 to $200, if you stick with Sony. There are a few off brand chargers out there but... who knows what you get. They are considerably cheaper, but its my opinion you get what you pay for (hint, hint). Bokeh is WORSE in the H9 than the H1/2/5. I know this has to do with lens quality, but yuck. Its too detailed and distracts you from the item of focus. EVERYTHING is located in the menu. You have to go through several menus to get to everyday use items. It makes it rather ridiculous, and you will lose shots if you are constantly trying to manipulate the menus. In my opinion the way things were in the H2 were far superior. The H9 is considerably lighter than the H2, but it is almost to the point of feeling cheap. I don't like it at all. I liked the H2 because it was "just right" in the weight department. The H9 does come with a remote, which is fantastic for taking shots you want to be in, or if you don't want move the camera by pushing the shutter button. The camera also featuers better movie modes than the H2, but they stink compared to a camcorder. If you want REAL movies of your family buy a camcorder. The nightshot is kinda cool and does pretty goood, but the shots of course come out in black and white. If you have a HD monitor its kind of neat to be able to see the shots on that, but if you are like the majority of Americans you don't have an HD TV set.. Yet. So what about picture quality? The picture quality is good. However, here is WHY SONY LIES!!! The camera does NOT have a fine setting for compression. This is ULTRA important if you plan on doing any type of editing. It also impacts the picture quality at the higher megapixels. There is a compression issue as well that makes the picture quality even worse than their previous lines. This leaves you to the post processing nightmare. Sony so far has done NOTHING about it!!! They themselves DON'T KNOW WHERE THE SETTING IS!!!!! Their engineers can't figure out what went wrong. Dunce. Thus the 8megapixels are WORTHLESS!!! This is not the only complaint I have about this camera. It has significant problems with in camera processing. I think this due to the use of their Bionz processor. It leaves color distortions and smearing. It also has soft edges and a barrel distortion like no other (wide angle shots of buildings are horrible, the buildings look like they are curved). The DRO is worthless and should be taken off the Sony line of cameras. Sony was trying to be innovative but I honestly think they failed. This camera is not worth the price tag and needs work. They should have never tried to cram more megapixels on a tiny chip and then try and make up with it by using horrible in camera processing. They should have quailty tested it better than they did. Now they will either have to issue a firmware upgrade if the issues are software related OR they will need to issue a recall if its hardware related. My thought is they have stopped sending the cameras out as they are not available through their website (out of stock) and trying to maybe fix the newer models, but I wouldn't buy one of these cameras for a while until the issues are corrected. If you are coming from a point and shoot with no optical zoom and very little megapixel or quality, you will think this camera is the bomb. However if you come from another good quality ultra zoom you will be VERY disappointed. The new Canon S5 is coming out and they stayed within the sensors capabilities and added a HOT SHOE. Buy either an older H series (H2 is honestly the best out of the bunch, for IQ) or get a Canon (either the S3 or soon to be released S5). You can also find clearance H2's at several stores at a VERY discounted price. Great camares with NONE of the problems mentioned here. It also gets a Highly recommended rating from dpreview and ranked number 2 by consumer reports.