H9 Build and Control Quality - Disappointing

Got it yesterday.

A little disappointing, compared to the H5.

The H5 had a nice, rubberized feel to the case. The H9 does not. It just feels like plastic.

The H5 battery/card hinge was relatively sturdy. The H9's leans more towards Cracket Jack quality.

The H5 had a convenient separate delete button. Very handy. Gone in the H9.

Izzy5 said:

Got it yesterday.

A little disappointing, compared to the H5.

The H5 had a nice, rubberized feel to the case. The H9 does not. It
just feels like plastic.

The H5 battery/card hinge was relatively sturdy. The H9's leans
more towards Cracket Jack quality.

The H5 had a convenient separate delete button. Very handy. Gone in
the H9.

Click to expand...

Sorry to hear that. I am still waiting to try one out in a store first. I hope I'm not disappointed too. i.j.

Thanks for your opinions. I'm sure many of us value such comparisons.

Hope to see your first H9 pics within the next hour or two! :O)

--
Clicky

Mind you, the pictures themselves may turn out to be a significant improvement to the H5. I will be shooting both with and without the telephoto. I'll let you know my subjective thoughts.

ijsmith said:

Izzy5 said:

Got it yesterday.

A little disappointing, compared to the H5.

The H5 had a nice, rubberized feel to the case. The H9 does not. It
just feels like plastic.

The H5 battery/card hinge was relatively sturdy. The H9's leans
more towards Cracket Jack quality.

The H5 had a convenient separate delete button. Very handy. Gone in
the H9.

Click to expand...

Sorry to hear that. I am still waiting to try one out in a store
first. I hope I'm not disappointed too. i.j.

Click to expand...

The proof is in the pudding. If it takes great images, hopefully the shortcomings will seem less important to you. From what I've seen, the price of the H7/9 is down substantially from the release price of the H2/5 last year. I could live with a slightly lower build quality if it meant as good or better IQ coupled with reliability. Something had to suffer, I guess, to get the price point where it is.
Good luck with the 9. Hope you learn to enjoy it.
Dwight

Not likely. It's night time here in NY, and I never gave much credence to H5 indoor pictures. I have the Canon Elph series (from S100 through SD900) for that.

Probably by this weekend I'll have my little thoughts.

A couple of things though. The external LCD moves out in nicer and more usable fashion than the H5's, and I think the external LCD is brighter. As for the viewfinder, it's much more usable the H5's. The H5's was such low resolution that for a long time I could not believe that such good pictures were coming from a camera when I was seeing such bad pics in the viewfinder. I could not tell if a subject was in focus with the H5.

MrClick said:

Thanks for your opinions. I'm sure many of us value such comparisons.

Hope to see your first H9 pics within the next hour or two! :O)

--
Clicky

Click to expand...

The H5 weighs 17.3 oz with only 12x zoom,

H9 is 15.2 oz with 15x

H7 is 14.1oz

Someone else said the same thing, that it felt light and cheep, but after some use liked the portability.

Please keep us posted of what you like and don't like. I like the non fan boy approach.

• The USB cover is flimsy, I hope I don't break it
• The USB cable is hard to unhook
• Camera doesn't warn you when the lens cap is on, just pops it off by itself
• My wife noticed it felt lighter than my previous H1, not a bad thing though I guess
• The screen attracts finger prints
• The lens adapter is mammothly huge! With the lens hood on it's probably as deep as the camera itself.

Just my .02

--
Former H1 Owner
Soon to be H9 Owner

--
JJ

HaroldC3 said:

• The USB cover is flimsy, I hope I don't break it
• The USB cable is hard to unhook
• Camera doesn't warn you when the lens cap is on, just pops it off

by itself

• My wife noticed it felt lighter than my previous H1, not a bad

thing though I guess

• The screen attracts finger prints
• The lens adapter is mammothly huge! With the lens hood on it's

probably as deep as the camera itself.

Click to expand...

Are you going to send it back?

HaroldC3 said:

• The USB cover is flimsy, I hope I don't break it
• The USB cable is hard to unhook
• Camera doesn't warn you when the lens cap is on, just pops it off

by itself

• My wife noticed it felt lighter than my previous H1, not a bad

thing though I guess

• The screen attracts finger prints
• The lens adapter is mammothly huge! With the lens hood on it's

probably as deep as the camera itself.

Just my .02

Click to expand...

If it is going to break, it will probably happen within warranty, to make sure, buy the extened warranty.

HaroldC3 said:

--
Former H1 Owner
Soon to be H9 Owner

Click to expand...

--
Picfanatic

Photography lets you freeze time and rewind life.

No, these are only minor. No camera is perfect.
--
Former H1 Owner
Soon to be H9 Owner

In comparing your H5 to your H9, what do you think of the "dial wheel" on the back that replaces the jog wheel on the front. As you know, on the H5 you press the jog wheel and rotate it to select what variable you want to adjust (aperture, shutter speed, or EV). Does the new dial wheel make this easier or more difficult, or about the same?

Also I note on the H9 the FOCUS mode button is gone. That sounds like a bad mistake to me. Any opinion?

This is what interests me the most as far as design issues, guess i'll find out when mine comes
--
KM Dimage Z2
http://www.pbase.com/diamond2a

I thought I'd miss the focus button, but I didn't.
Sony did something very, very right here.

There is a row of controls along the bottom of the display:

ISO Shutter Speed f/Stop EV Focus Mode

All of the things you might change while taking shots are all together and work the same way.

IMHO, it also elevated ISO to a co-equal partner with the rest of the exposure and focus settings. About time someone did that!

Personally, I find the new layout at the bottom of the screen brilliant!
It's one of my favorite things about the H9.

And you don't have to look all over the screen to find the stuff you change all the time. It's all in a row. And you use the wheel to roll from one to another. Click the center dot. Roll to change.

Very elegant, easy, and really, really well-organized.
--
=~ AAK - http://www.aakatz.com
=~ Author of The White Paper
=~ http://www.aakatz.com/whitepaper

An efficient layout that helps the shooter and doesnt cost sony anything (in terms of extra buttons). I'm glad some engineer did his homework
--
KM Dimage Z2
http://www.pbase.com/diamond2a

The only place a good camera has a "rubberized" feel is where you grip. And the grip -is- rubberized.

You can't possibly define the build quality of a camera by the texture they applied to the plastic!!! Tell me not, please.

I like the smooth plastic. It makes it easier to clean!

As for the -real- build quality, it's every bit as good, or bettter than the H5. The fit and finish are better, the camera is tighter. I would call it "more refined".

As for the battery door. You say it's flimsier than the H5? Are you sure you really have one?

The battery compartment door on the H5 is that double-hinged thing? If you didn't open it right, you only got the memory card, not the battery!. That always struck me as the flimsiest and most-likely-to-break part on the camera. The new one is one solid hinged piece (the compartment is much smaller) and seems to me to be infinitely sturdier.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

--
=~ AAK - http://www.aakatz.com
=~ Author of The White Paper
=~ http://www.aakatz.com/whitepaper

That sounds wonderful!!!

Is the histogram the same, improved, or worse?

Does the EVF look the same, improved, or worse?

Sorry if that's your feel, i have the h9 (silver), for 1 week now, and i love it!
Maybe you have to get used to it?

Kind regards,
Guy.

AAK said:

The only place a good camera has a "rubberized" feel is where you
grip. And the grip -is- rubberized.

Click to expand...

I think it would be kind of neat to have some rubber armoring around the body; maybe enough so that the camera would bounce if you dropped it . Maybe market it as skins so one could have a "hot pink" or "cool blue" H9. Oh, wait, that's not what they're talking about when they say "image quality", is it? Flashback to that "not a sexy camera" crack.

AAK said:

The battery compartment door on the H5 is that double-hinged
thing? If you didn't open it right, you only got the memory card,
not the battery!.

Click to expand...

Actually it was designed that way, so that if you ran out of memory you could change sticks without powering down the camera. Apparently dpreview thinks of this as a "pro" feature, so if the H9 doesn't have it that will undoubtedly be listed as a "con" in their review. In practice, it was pretty awkward to remove just the Memory Stick anyway, so I don't think it will be a big deal either way to most people. On my H1, I feel the compartment is pretty sturdy. It even survived my moment of stupidity when I filled up my 1GB card 3 days into a trip and couldn't get it out without using needlenose pliers. After going several months without messing with the compartment (I download via USB), I'd forgotten that you push down on the Memory Stick to release it. Duh! And it says so right on the inside of the compartment. Fortunately, neither camera nor Memory Stick suffered any ill effects.

--
Wes Stone
Chiloquin, OR
http://wesweb.homestead.com/birdpix.html