Digital Camera Fiend - A Camera Review

Sony’s new Cybershot DSC H9 might not be a bad choice for families with budding athletes. The 8-megapixel digital camera was certainly built with the legions of soccer moms and dads in mind.

Sony debuts its new advanced sports shooting mode in the H9, and its other new Cybershot offering, the H7 (same camera, just a smaller LCD screen).

“This mode combines high shutter speed shooting and intelligent continuous auto-focusing,” according to a Sony rep.

The coolest part about this feature is that the camera can predict and focus in on where fast-moving subjects will be in the frame. That means you’ll see a lot less blur in your photos of junior racing towards the ball.

The H9 follows in some heady footsteps of earlier models of the Cybershot H-series–the Cybershot H2 and Cybershot H5.

Sony has improved on these earlier classics. The H9 has an amazing 15x optical zoom lens (blows the 12x threshold away), face identification (if your camera doesn’t have this technology, chances are it’s outdated), a 3-inch flip-up LCD screen, a 1/4000 shutter speed, movie mode with sound, and high-definition outputs.

That means you can view and share your photos or videos on an HDTV set and get the full high-definition effect. The Sony VMC-MHC1 HD component cable, which retails for about $40.
The Sony Cybershot DSC-H9 is no small camera, even though it technically falls under the category of “compact digital camera,” so you might not enjoy lugging it around. But if you’re not quite ready for the DSLRs yet still want impressive zoom and other capabilities, it won’t disappoint.