I got myself the HX9V after seeing it in a shop on Friday. It had been interesting to me anyway so I was already familiar with the online reviews and features, but seeing it in person at the right price sealed the deal.

So what is it? I think they lump it in the category of travel compacts. These are on the bigger end of the compact market, but without resorting to the bulky bridge form factor. This one is about as thick as an E-P1 without lens, but shorter and narrower. Some quick specs are: 16MP sensor (5.6x crop factor), 16x zoom (24-384 equiv) built in GPS and all the other usual compact stuff.

Since I only got it on Friday I haven't really got in depth with it yet, but I think m4/3 is about to be dumped by me as a "carry anywhere" camera, which it was always too big for anyway. In short, the camera makes it dead easy to get acceptable looking shots in most conditions, including low light where you may think the bigger sensor advantage would play in. Note I say acceptable. It is not a camera for pixel peepers. 16MP is way into the diffraction zone for the lens, which using a calculator I worked out has a useful effective output of 6.7 to 4MP depending on the zoom position. At pixel peeping level the noise reduction makes it look like something out of a photoshop "artistic" filter. But that doesn't matter as at any reasonable output size you don't see it. So in parallel to the not for pixel peeper statement, you could also follow that it isn't great for heavy croppers either. Note it is theoretically better to have a higher MP count and reduce it in post, than to capture at a lower MP in the first place.

I'm by no means saying this is making me ditch m4/3 or DSLRs totally. Of course here I'm after the most capability in a small size. If you do want to get decent pixel level results, or the real shallow DoF effects, you will still need the bigger sensor formats and the lenses to go with it. But the HX9V cost me about the same as I paid for the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 lens, so in the big picture the cost is insignificant for the huge functionality potential it offers.

I've posted some samples from today at http://lydiardwildlife.deviantart.com/ where the latest 4 images were taken by the HX9V. There is a download button on top right corner if you want to see the original files.

That's rather impressive. The ladybird stands out so much it almost looks like an advert for 3D. The thistle too.

There's an awful lot to be said for a small camera - and now that they are getting to a point where noise is becoming less of an issue, and shallow depth of field is achievable I can understand your feelings. I looked briefly at the XZ1 to complement my E-P1 but decided it wasn't quite good enough in low light, which is something that is important to me. I hate flash pictures. It would be interesting to see how your Sony does in the "dark".

Congrats for the find, we all need a p&s, I love the ladybug, could you post them here?

They're downloadable at full size at the site I already linked, but I can re-upload them here too if that help anyone? I'll have to do it when I get home later though.

The equivalent to 24-384mm range covers pretty much 90% of shooting for me. I don't often need wider, and being realistic longer isn't going to be easy to use. Since this camera is very clearly lens limited, I can't complain about the pixel sharpness. Distortion is well controlled and the little CA isn't really significant.

Manual controls are lacking. This isn't one for control freaks. The lens only has two apertures, which vary as you zoom. Essentially you get wide open and stopped down, whatever value they happen to be. There is quick access to ISO, although even at ISO100 the quality isn't there at pixel level so there's not much concern about going a lot higher when needed. You don't get full PASM, only P and M. And I haven't seen program shift in a quick look so far.

I have to say I'm generally impressed with the auto modes, although it does seem to have rather a lot of them. They manage to get a decent enough output under conditions that most DSLRs would struggle over in auto mode.

Edit: no raw either, in case anyone was wondering.

Due to the high pixel count sensor, the image is always diffraction limited with the aperture settings available. So there is no point in looking at pixel level on the sensor. The limiting factor to image quality is therefore the lens, which I think does as well as it can be expected. Since the camera doesn't do RAWs we wont know for sure if the body is applying corrections to the jpegs but I'm happy with the output given these constraints.

The 16x zoom is pretty high, although there's several others out there with 18x too. But to me the HX9V has about the right balance of features that I'd look for in a compact just pipping the TZ20 which was my 2nd choice. It certainly isn't cheap for a compact, but compared to most DSLR stuff it is nothing