Here is a quick one, got to play around with my sister's TX7 the other day and found out that the compact camera segment have been revamped so much that it proves that even a compact can produce decent image quality these days. Sporting a Exmor R CMOS Sensor and a 25mm wide angle Carl Zeiss® Vario-Tessar lens, the TX7 is a pretty impressive compact. If you want to know more about the rest of the nerdy specs go here for it. I like the Auto Intelligent mode which basically brings user friendliness to a whole new level. Just aim, press the shutter and the camera will figure out the rest on the scene by itself. I'm not an Auto guy, so I was pretty pleased at least Program mode made it into this camera. Basically this means the ISO can be changed, just a bit shame that aperture or shutter priority mode was no where to be found. It did have fairly interesting anti-blur mode whereby the camera take a succession of photo and merged into a non-blur photo of that particular scene and all this are done inside the camera itself. Pretty neat. Lastly, it's menu and most of the camera function is operated by touch. I guess everyone just want to ride on the whole touch screen bandwagon since you know what came out a few years ago. The menu is operation is pretty slick and intuitive, sony manage to make the canon compact menu looked ancient. The TX7 is pretty good compact to have around, it compliments DSLR well. It retails at RM 1588 and as usual, street price will be much much cheaper than this.
10.2 Mega Pixels ? More than enough for normal usage. All this mega pixel war is starting to bores me a lot. Nikon leads by example by maintaining a 12 Mega Pixel sensor on most of it's current DSLR range.
Dimensions (W x H x D) 97.8 x 59.5 x 17.5mm, Weight Approx. 133g (Body) - Light weight, I like.
Metal Body. Dropping these on the ground by accident, wouldn't be a problem. Feels rugged by compact standard.
Small profile allows easy on the pocket storage.
Well layout menu and large 3.5" (921K pixels) Touch Screen.
As advertised, this compact performs remarkably in low light.
The camera casing.
Here is the ISO performance.
Very usable, although it's a bit blotchy by the in camera noise reduction function. And here is the second part of the review. Remember I mention on the Glass Screen Protector awhile back ? Well this is how it looks like. Back to the TX7, the ISO is at 3200. Impressive isn't it ?
ISO 1600, very clean. As advertised.
ISO 800. Low light capabilities have becoming a staple feature for compact these days and I am happy compact camera manufacturers no longer rip off customer by promising function that never was.
Macro capabilities. Not a 1:1 ratio but quite decent enough.
And now for the last part of the review. I got myself a Tamron about few weeks ago off an internet camera store. Although the lens is a grey set but it does come with a pretty good 1 year warranty by the store. I don't normally buy grey stuff but the camera store reputation won my decision over. I was contemplating between the 24-105mm F4, 24-70mm F2.8 HSM, 17-50mm VC and finally the 28-75mm. After months of frustrating research, I finally settled on the 28-75mm. Reason being, the 24-105mm F4 is too expensive and only F4. The Sigma 24-70 HSM on the other hand is also out of budget. While the Tamron 17-50VC would have been a better choice for a crop camera but considering the fact that I have the 11-16mm already, I wanted to make sure there is a gap between the two lens in order to force me to continue to use all the lens at my disposal on a regular basis instead of just one. That's why I settled on the 28-75mm, being cheap and a constant F2.8 is a bonus. The lack of USM (or USD as what Tamron likes to call it) may be annoying at first but for general shooting, it's not a problem. It's also make an audible sound when focusing from minimum distance to infinity but so far I don't face any problem with it. At least I didn't see Joanna run away whenever I try to take her photograph with this lens. The lens does hunt for 2 second or more in extremely dim subject.
The full name of this lens is very long. Its so long that even I am lazy to type it all out.
A locking mechanism to prevent lens creep. But the copy I had, sport a pretty stiff zoom ring. The only function i can think of right now for the locking mechanism is probably when you want to remove the lens hood.
Ribbed hood.
This lens built quality is okay. Not even close to L series but it does produce fantastic sharp image even at wide open and achieved optimal sharpness onwards until F11.
The full name of this lens is very long. Its so long that even I am lazy to type it all out.
A locking mechanism to prevent lens creep. But the copy I had, sport a pretty stiff zoom ring. The only function i can think of right now for the locking mechanism is probably when you want to remove the lens hood.
Ribbed hood.
This lens built quality is okay. Not even close to L series but it does produce fantastic sharp image even at wide open and achieved optimal sharpness onwards until F11.
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