HX300 - End word

Remember HX300? ok, I too thought I wont be coming up with yet another post talking about it.. Well, I had bought that camera on pretext of gift to Mom. I think you see the benefits straight away. I felt less guilty about indulging in expense I wasn’t 100 percent sure was justified, met a long standing demand to have a camera for her and I get a camera for what looks like free. and it seemed to work. She happily used it in fully automatic mode and I experimented with manual mode – results of which you saw earlier. but, just about a month of switching between Auto and Manual and.. Mode dial gave up..

All-Plastic broken and detached dial in my hand left me completely shocked. Can Sony product be like that? With detached mode dial if I put lots of efforts, I can still turn dial a full round in 10-15 minutes, which is as good as not usable. so I have put that in Auto mode which is most useful for Mom - whose camera it is after all. A drastic reduction in total usefulness of the camera and great disappointment for me. I am unable to decide if I was more disappointed to see all my accumulated camera budget go waste or seeing a brand I usually value highly come out with this build quality or was it disappointment with self that I made a wrong choice. either way, it is Very disappointing. and no, I am told that the broken dial is not covered under warranty. They want me to pay nearly 20 per cent of what I paid for the camera to fix a new piece of around one inch of plastic.

I am normally a good customer to have. I talk happily about a product if turns out good and keep quite when I find I selected wrong product. but this time, I have already talked so much about HX300, mostly positive things, that not saying now that it’s a great camera under right conditions but only if it stays usable. would not be fair play on my part just in case someone evaluating the camera takes some inputs from what I had written here.

Consolation prize to whole story is, per se a camera was not a bad gift. It was a wonderful Sunny day after many Sunless cold days and Mom went ahead to find some birds. and, luckily on this day, Auto mode was all that was needed.

A resident. This is a saved frame from video. It gives quite usable size. this is a good crop as well.

Power of 50x. Though Auto mode, 50x and a beginner doesn't make a good combination for most of the time. and beginner or not, not zooming in when you can is a very difficult thing to do.

Two shots I liked a lot. Specially the River Lapwing. It actually was better than my best shot till date.