New Sony Cybershot HX5V coming soon

The Sony Cyber-shot HX5V digital camera is unique for its 10.2-megapixel back-illuminated CMOS sensor, and prized for its 10x optical zoom lens in a pocketable size. The Sony HX5V’s lens offers a useful 25mm wide-angle to an equally useful 250mm telephoto equivalent. The lens has a two-step aperture with an ND filter, which offers either f/3.5 or f/8.0 at wide-angle; at telephoto the maximum aperture is f/5.5, and the minimum aperture is f/13. Autofocusing is possible to just five centimeters at wide-angle, or 100 centimeters at telephoto.

The Sony HX5V can capture 4:3 aspect ratio images at up to 3,648 x 2,736 pixel resolution, 16:9 aspect ratio images at up to 3,648 x 2,056 pixels, or 60 fields-per-second video at 1080i (1,920 x 1,080 pixel) resolution or below with Dolby Digital stereo audio, using AVC HD compression. In addition, the HX5V includes an updated version of Sony’s Sweep Panorama function. Now dubbed Intelligent Sweep Panorama, this now analyzes frame content when capturing and stitching images, avoiding chopping up larger moving subjects. The function allows automatic creation of 270-, 185- or 129-degree panoramas in-camera by simply sweeping the lens across the subject.

Images and movies can be recorded on Sony’s proprietary Memory Stick Duo, PRO Duo (Mark 2 only), PRO Duo High Speed, or PRO-HG Duo cards, as well as the more common Secure Digital and Secure Digital High Capacity cards. 45MB of internal memory is also available, useful for capturing a few of the most important photos should you forget to bring a flash card along on a day trip. The Sony HX5V includes HDMI high definition and NTSC / PAL standard definition video output connectivity, as well as USB 2.0 High Speed data connectivity. Power comes courtesy of a proprietary NP-FG1 Infolithium battery pack. It will be available by March 2010 and cost around $350.