I considered myself an amateur photographer from way back when I got my first Kodak 110 instamatic camera.  Since then I progressed trough polaroid, 35mm and more recently the digital SLR age.  I’ve always been lugging camera equipment where ever I go.  Always swapping lenses and looking for just the right angle.  For some reason that has become a real drag, and I somehow sense another era is coming to an end.  Maybe it has something to do with age, or maybe it is the realization the everything gets old sooner these days.   I find myself using my daughter’s little pocket size Nikon a lot more then my Canon EOS digital SLR.  So I decided it’s time for a change.

I recently helped my mom pick a new digital camera I saw that it took pretty good HD movies.  At least much better then my old Sony Digital-8 camcorder.   I started wondering how a little camera like this could be mounted on my Bear Truth compound bow.  I made a list of the camera features that would make the perfect camera in my book .  It has to be light and small so I can fit it in my pocket or mount it on my bow.  It has to shoot real nice video, preferably in 1080p so I could enjoy it on my big screen TV.  It should have a decent zoom lens so I can take real close-up shots of those bucks that just won’t come into  range.  It has to have a wide angle lens, preferably 26mm or less, so I can fit a lot of real estate in one picture.   And if it’s not too much to ask, I want a built-in GPS so I can use Google Earth and Picasa to map out my scouting pictures.  That’s not too much to ask, is it?

Well, guess what.  It was too much to ask.  Although there are many cameras out there that fit most of my requirements, I had very little success finding one that fits all of my needs.  The Nikon P100 came close, but is still a little bulky.  Canon has some very nice cameras but they are all 720p.  Same with Kodak, 720p.  Casio has excellent 1080p cameras, but none of them come with a wide angle lens.   And so the story goes with all the other brands out there.   Let’s not even mention GPS capability.  Heck my two year old cellphone’s has a GPS tied into it’s camera.  Maybe it’s time these manufacturers begin thinking about the future of photography.

To trim a long story a little shorter – success at last.  I think i finally found the camera of my dreams.  Sony will soon release it’s new HX5V/B digital camera.  Not only does it have everything I was looking for in a camera, it even has more.  Let take a quick look.  It’s small (102.9mm x 57.7mm x 28.9mm), and light (just over 7 ounces). It shoots full-HD 1080i movies (60 frames interlaced) and 1440×1080p (30 frames progressive). It has a well balanced lens (25-250mm) with good zoom and one of the widest angles in it’s class. It also has an optical image stabilizer for those long zoom shots. Another very nice feature only found in newer high-end digital cameras is the High Dynamic Range (HDR) backlight correction. This improves the quality of high-contras scenes, typically what we see in the woods with penetrating sunlight and dark shaded areas. And last, the cherry on the cake, it comes with built-in GPS and a compass. It has a slew of other features which are a bonus.

To me the Sony HX5V/B is what I was waiting for. It fits my needs and won’t break the bank. It will replace my Canon EOS digital SLR, which will soon be available on ebay. More on my experience and how it measures up in a next post.

Here’s a few places to buy the Sony HX5V/B:

Buy the DSC-HX5V/B Digital Camera direct from Sony

Or get the Sony DSC-HX5V Camera from Amazon

You will also need a nice big memory card for all that HD video footage.

The first bucks appear around 2 mins into the video.