Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-H50 review

The H50 has a slightly lower megapixel rating than its competitors, but also provides the biggest screen, measuring three inches across the diagonal.

It's hinged to make it easier to shoot over other people's heads or from waist height, although, unlike Canon's, it can't swing around.

Other unusual features include an infra-red lamp for taking eerie black and white photos and videos in total darkness, and a Smile Shutter mode that captures a photo as soon as a smiling face is detected. It's not subtle or responsive enough to be of much practical use, but might keep friends and family entertained. More conventional manual exposure options are available too, but it's a shame that manual focus is absent. Performance was above average, capturing a photo every two seconds. The continuous mode increased this to 1.6fps, slowing to 1fps after 10 frames.

The 465mm maximum focal length isn't far behind the others, but the 31mm minimum means this camera isn't capable of true wide angle photography. However, while some of the longer lenses struggled to maintain sharp focus throughout their range, this one had no such problems, and the optical stabilisation was very effective.

Sadly, other aspects of image quality let the Sony down. Telephoto shots suffered badly from pincushion distortion, making subjects towards the edges appear skewed and enlarged. Chromatic aberrations were highly visible towards the edges at all zoom positions. As a result, fine details looked vague, and high contrast areas resembled something you'd need 3D glasses to see properly. Flash photography behaved very strangely: even at fast shutter speeds, it captured a weird double exposure. However, our biggest gripe was that even in bright lighting, heavy noise reduction obliterated subtle details. Colours took on a painted appearance, and low light photos looked messy.

We liked the H50's big articulated screen, solid performance and Li-ion battery, but its image quality flaws are too serious to put up with.