April 28, 2014
Feedback submitted!Unable to submit feedback! I really wanted to love this little Sony camera with the great Zeiss lens. I found a very good deal on an open box item at a local big box store. It is extremely small and has an impressive lens; however, the minute you move from the widest setting, it loses speed rapidly, and to keep size down, it doesn't zoom very far. My first set of images, shot mostly in one of the automatic modes, just didn't blow me away. After I started setting ISO levels, using aperture and shutter priority, as I do with my DSLRs, my results got better, but were they visibly better than some of my other small digital cameras? My reference cameras for my very unscientific IQ test were a Sony Nex-F3, a Lumix GX-1, and a Lumix LS-7, all shooting in RAW mode. Because the RX100 has the most pixels on its sensor, it produced images that were larger than the rest, as I expected. My other cameras, however, produced comparable, though slightly smaller images. It would probably be impossible to pick which camera took which picture on any reasonably sized enlargement. I did like the size of the RX100. The only other camera in my set that is even slightly as pocket-able as the RX100 is the Lumix LS-7 and it's lens does not collapse as much as on the RX100. I also have a "retired" Lumix LX-3 which, although not quite as small as the RX100, fits easily into my pocket. I found the various "creative" menu choices on the RX100 to be excessive and many of them novel but really unnecessary for the majority of photographers. I liked the built in flash and found it worked quite well for direct, bounce or fill flash. I did not like the rotating ring on the lens as a device to change settings, depending on how the mode dial is set. I also had a problem with the shutter release button. If you were to slide your finger along the top of the camera, the shutter release button is almost flat on the top of the camera and seems even slightly recessed. I am used to pressing half way on the shutter release to lock focus before I make an exposure. Apparently, the focus on this little Sony is so fast that the half way press is not needed and there is very little travel in the shutter release before it takes the picture. As a result, I kept making exposures which I really didn't mean to make. Had I kept the camera, I would have looked for a "soft release" button. I would also encourage everyone to use a wrist strap. This is a very compact camera and it doesn't have much to hold on to. Having just paid a good price for the RX100, I now read that Sony has blasted through the RX100 II with it's tilting LCD and is about to release the RX100 M3 with a tilting LCD and a much faster lens at all lengths! WOW! Two generations old already! It turned out that I really didn't love the little Sony RX100, as much as I wanted to, so I returned it for a refund. I think the most important thing I learned from my time with the RX100, is that I need to get over pixel peeping and back to photography. Any camera, even the RX 100 M3, is still going to be a secondary factor in what makes a great photo. Some of my best shots were taken with a Canon 10D some years ago. The most important factor in what makes a great photograph will always be the creative vision of the person pressing the shutter release.