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Sony's $450 HX99 camera packs 30X zoom into an ultra-compact
How do you make a point-and-shoot camera appealing when the smartphone in your pocket can already take great photos? By stuffing a ton of features into a design that's almost as easy to carry as that phone, apparently. That's the principal behind Sony's Cyber-shot HX99 going on sale in November 2018 in the US. It crams a 24-720mm equivalent (30X) f/3.5-6.4 zoom lens, a retractable OLED viewfinder and a flip-up touchscreen into a small 4-by-2.5-inch body you'd associate with standard-zoom cameras.
Sony's new HX99 compact camera does things your smartphone can't
At a time when everyone is carrying around a generally capable camera inside their smartphone, compact cameras have struggled to stay relevant. Barring Sony's own wonderful RX100 series and Fujifilm's X100F family, the world of point-and-shoots is usually an unremarkable one. Sony's only camera announcements at IFA 2018 were intriguing, at least. It revealed two cameras, the Cybershot HX99 and HX95, which cram a technically impressive 30x, 24-720mm f/3.5-6 equivalent zoom lens into a 1.5-inch wide camera frame that feels very similar to the premium RX100 series. Both compacts join the Cybershot camera family, meaning they are cheaper than Sony's aforementioned premium compact camera series. The HX99 -- the one I tested -- is priced at €520 (around $610), making it pretty much half the price of the latest RX100 models.
