Review of my new toy, the Sony Cybershot TX-10

Released in Malaysia: Sometime in mid-2011 (I think)
Price: RM1299 (now on discount at Sony stores for RM999!)
Specs: In the name of efficient use of blog post space, you may refer to the specs here
Disclaimer: This is not a paid review, the camera is my own and I will certainly not be liable for any problems you may have with the Sony Cybershot TX-10 if you bought it based on anything I write in this post and it turns out not the way you hoped. Just making sure we have a common understanding here. Now on to the review!

So my trusty old Ricoh camera 's on/off button has been failing on me, the video mode no longer records sound and it did not help that it took a nasty fall in the hands of a friend (which is why people must always put the camera strap around their hands especially when handling cameras that don't belong to them), so last week I decided get myself a new camera. I do like taking some arty farty photos on occasion and also wanting a hardier camera than my previous one which had problems of water entering it and screwing up the video sound recorder. So my specs for my dream compact camera were simple: high optical zoom (around 10x), able to take good macro shots, able to take good shots under low lighting, waterproof and reasonably priced.

The TX-10 unfortunately didn't meet the specs for high optical zoom (only 4x) but it had other cool features that got my interest. It also has some specs and features which seem to be most awesome but for me personally are unnecessary and has limitations. For example:

1) 16.8 megapixels: I think is ridiculously high as it would take much massive space on a hard disk, so I set most of my photos to 10MP. Of course this would be good if you want shots to make into large prints. No score for this feature coz' it really depends on the individual whether you like high MPs or not.

2) 3D still image: The camera has 3 modes for taking 3D images - 3D Still image, 3D Sweep Panorama and Sweep Multi angle. For the first two modes, you can only see the 3D effect on a 3D TV, but not on the camera, computer or print. Which makes it useless to me coz' I don't have a 3D TV, and I doubt even if I did, I would hardly take the time to hook up my camera to the TV just to ogle at some 3D pics. This probaly would be significantly cooler if you had a digital photo frame. The Sweep Angle mode effect, on the other hand, can only be viewed on the camera by tilting it left to right. Which is cool for all of two seconds, but since it's not viewable on computer or print, it's also kinda useless.

3) AVCHD Full HD movie recording: You need a special HDMI cable that can connect to the camera and to your HD tv in order to see recorded movies in HD. Currently I don't have one, so can't test it out and that to me makes it a cool but useless feature, especially since apparently you don't get the HD effect once the video is burned onto a DVD or other media (only plays in HD from the camera).

Nevertheless, there is plenty of good stuff about the camera which I love. I went on a trip to Sabah last week with a colleague, where I got to visit Mount Kinabalu, Poring Hot Spring and do some snorkelling at Manukan Island, so I had a good chance to test some of the many features and see what it was capable of, and I was quite happy with results although there are a few things about the TX-10 that could be improved. Here are some of the features and capabilities of the Sony Cybershot TX-10 which I think are pretty awesome, including my score for the feature out of 10 (the sample shots here are unedited except for size):


1) Touchscreen (6 out of 10): Just coz' everyone loves touchscreen stuff these days. The touchscreen menu is quite user friendly and easy to understand. However, the score is a bit low coz' I have some problems with the sensitivity of the screen. Sometimes on start up, the touchscreen takes a while to be able to detect my touch, and also on playback, I can scroll through photos by swiping my finger across the screen, but it also sometimes does not detect my touch properly and ends up zooming in on the photo where I touch it. Obviously, this can be quite annoying, although the touchscreen is still cool. I just hope the sensitivity doesn't deteriorate over time, but anyhow the camera has a one year warranty and I bought an additional 2 year warranty for RM90, so I can go bug the camera shop people to fix it when my touchscreen starts acting up on me and not pay a dime.
When underwater, the touchscreen totally cannot function, so I have to set the camera to whichever mode I want beforehand (usually Underwater mode) and then when I'm in the water, I can only on and off the camera, zoom in and out, press the shutter, record movies and view playback. Changing mode or adjusting white balance is not possible. I did try the camera while snorkelling, with some nice results (see below), but I have not tried taking it diving yet (need a casing for that), so I have no idea how good underwater mode will be under the changing lighting conditions when diving.


2) Intelligent Auto mode (8 out of 10): This is the default mode and quite useful because in this mode, it automatically detects what kind of photo is being taken and changes mode accordingly. For example, a landscape shot will result in the camera adjusting to landscape mode, and when I move the camera up close to an object for a macro shot, it change to macro mode. That is pretty cool coz' I don't have to change modes all the time. However, the camera sometimes detects the wrong mode (like a few times, close up shots were mistakenly detected as landscape shots).

3) 25mm wide angle lens (10 out of 10): This is one seriously wide angle lens. It's wide enough that I can take camwhoring shots without it being so blatantly obvious that I'm camwhoring, as in my face doesn't look like it's extremely up to close to the camera, as shown below.

And combining camwhoring AND panorama shots is just super cool. ^_^


FYI, there is also an underwater panorama mode, but I did not test this because the site I snorkelled at had poor visibility, and most of the corals were quite dead, i.e. not colourful, and since I can't change camera modes when in the water, I decided to skip on testing this feature out.

5) Macro shots (9 out of 10): I was very very happy with the TX-10's ability to take macro shots. It can focus up to 1cm distance and that means I can take pretty nice shots of pretty flowers up close:


The one above was taken indoors in a shaded area, whereas the one below was taken outdoors. In my opinion, the colours came out beautifully under the lighting conditions.


The picture quality after zooming in such a distance on 16x digital zoom is pretty good, although it has a little water-coloury effect. And words on the signboard can be read although in real life, I could not read it where I was sitting. For me, the quality may not be of print quality but it's good enough to serve the purpose of capturing a clear zoomed up shot.

5) Low-lighting shots (10 out of 10): The TX-10 performs SUPERBLY under low lighting. The camera has a Twilight mode (if you're using a tripod) and a Handhedl Twilight mode. Shots below were taken at night on the latter mode, and the camera did a great job of picking up and enhancing whatever light there was, especially on the photo below of the boats and hotel because in real life, it was NOT as bright as it looks in the photo.



6) Background Defocus (6 out of 10): One of the reasons I was lured in to buy this was the Background Defocus feature, which makes the subject of the photo clear while the background is defocused. This effect is usually only achievable on DLSRs, although it can also be achieved on most compact cameras when taking macro shots, as seen in my shots of the flowers. So to be able to take shots that are not so close up and defocus the background sounded like a pretty cool feature for a compact camera.



Unfortunately, this feature was a little disappointing for me because the recommended distance from the subject of focus is only 30cm (which is about the distance of a camwhore shot) but when I try to use this mode, more than 50% of the time, the defocus effect does not work and the background is still in focus. If I take a self-shot, with arm fully extended further than 30cm from me, the defocus effect does not work. So I have to move the camera closer to me. Which makes the wide-angle screen really really helpful for making sure my face does not take up more space on the photo than I want it to. Out of about 15 times that I took variations of the shot above, only 3 came out defocused. Maybe the distance wasn't right, but if it's going to take that many times to get a nice shot, it's annoying.

7) Underwater mode (9 out of 10 - tentative): I say tentative for the score because I am itching to get an underwater casing for this camera and test it out when diving to see how the lighting affects the photos. But from what I saw when snorkelling, the camera took shots that were better than expected. The camera did pretty well focusing underwater, with only a few slightly blurry shots, and those were usually for the fish moving really fast. But I took many pics of moving fish that came out really well in focus with no flash whatsoever, and the colours were nice considering the visibility was a bit poor. Some sample shots below (be reminded that these are completely unedited from the camera).







8) Shockproof and freezeproof (no score): At least, this is what Sony says about the camera. I didn't give a score because I didn't test these features and I am not about to throw my camera around or put it in the freezer coz' it's MY camera and I don't want to end up killing it before it's time. But these are of course really cool features as well coz' I no longer have no be so worried about drops except for unsightly scratches, and I can use the camera in cold countries without it freezing over... which was another problem I had with old cameras. So if these features work like they should, I say, double thumbs up for the TX-10!

On a final note, here are some things that could be improved about the camera:
1) The camera battery must be inside the camera to be charged. It would obviously have been nicer if the battery could be charged outside the camera so I could continue using the camera with a spare battery while charging the other one.

2) Battery life is ok but not great. According to the battery specs, it can be used for about 250 shots. During my snorkelling day trip, I took about that amount of photos, and also playbacked photos in between before the battery knocked out.  So on a typical vacationing day, expect your battery to last you about one day before knocking out. I bought a spare one as back up and it cost RM180 or something like that.

3) Photos come out too orangey under incandescent light. I guess that's the downside of a camera that does too good a job of capturing colours well. There is a mode to adjust the white balance under incandescent light, but it still turns out bit too orangey for my liking.

4) No options to change colour of photos to black and white or sepia or other filter effects. Not that I actually used such effects, but if you are one of those who do, this might be a bit disappointing although it can be easily rectified with a good photo editor.

5) IT DOESN'T COME IN RED! Yeah, you lose big marks from me on this aspect, Sony. Blek.

CONCLUSION: Pretty awesome cool looking compact camera producing pretty good photos with few minor flaws, although I could do without paying for some supposedly awesome features that I'm hardly ever going to use. I give it an overall 9 out of 10. ^_^

P.S.: You folks at Sony, if you're reading this and would be so kind to send me an underwater casing for the TX-10, I'll be most happy to review that during my next dive trip. As long as I get to keep the casing. *GRIN*