ISO comparison
These are 100 percent crops from our test scene. When viewed at full size, you can see there's little difference from ISO 100 to ISO 400. The only real issue I have is that photos aren't very sharp even at the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX100V's lowest ISO. Noise reduction kicks in more at ISO 800, which softens details more and dulls color a bit. There's a noticeable increase in noise and noise reduction at ISO 1600 and ISO 3200, making colors more washed out and subjects appear painterly; you'll probably want to reserve these two highest sensitivities for emergencies when you need to shoot in low-light conditions or get a faster shutter speed regardless of the results. But, as with all of Sony's cameras with Exmor R sensors, there are shooting options for improving low-light/high-ISO shots, so what you see here isn't the whole story.
The 16-megapixel resolution is completely unnecessary and doesn't get you much more room to crop or enlarge. If you're looking at buying this instead of a high-resolution digital SLR or interchangeable lens compact, you'll be disappointed--especially at higher ISO sensitivities. That said, prints at 8x10 at ISO 800 with the lens fully extended still looked good, just soft. Overall, anyone looking for a full-size megazoom camera for regularly making 8x10 prints or smaller or for images to be viewed on a TV or computer screen should be more than satisfied with the HX100V.
Macro
Zoom range
Telephoto quality, take 1
Telephoto quality, take 2
ASM modes
Background Defocus mode
Color
Color modes
Lens distortion
Fringing
Backlight Correction HDR mode
Exposure Bracketing
Dual Rec
Intelligent Sweep Panorama
Note: This photo was taken with the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX9V. The HX100V produces similar results.
HR Panorama
But wait, there's more! Consumers must've been complaining that the regular panorama shots from Sony's cameras were too small. Sony answered with a high-resolution option that uses the full 16-megapixel camera resolution to produce a higher-quality panorama photo. As with the regular iSweep Panorama mode, you just sweep the camera horizontally across your scene, but this time the camera is turned vertically.
The results are better, but the final file is huge, with a resolution of 10,480x4,096 pixels and size of 14MB (and the more complicated the scene, the larger the file size). I reduced the file size so you can take a closer look.
Note: This photo was taken with the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX9V. The HX100V produces similar results.