Sony RX100 - pocket rocket

[kalniel]

Sorry, you'll have to wait for more pics and experience before I can say all that much about it... but my goodness is it capable in the right conditions.

20MP should not work in a compact camera this small, but the sensor seems to be quality. The lens almost keeps up too - certainly at the centre it's great - some deterioration towards the edges of course.

But take a look at this quick pic:



Yeah yeah you say... now look at it 1:1...



OK right, that's not the whole thing - 20MP is enormous. Imgur wouldn't let me upload it as a link either. But it is sharp across most of the whole thing.. I assumed I would need to be downsampling at this kind of sensor resolution by default. Turns out not. I've seen DSLRs with fewer pixels produce worse 1:1 images.

Higher ISO performance is great too - not DSLR like, but miles better than a compact should be. No qualms using up to ISO 800 for large prints. Much higher for web photos. Will do some more tests with examples some day.

Only negatives so far are the smallish (still 1") sensor not giving a great deal of d.o.f. creativity, but worse is the quality of the out of focus areas is not that nice - it's OK once resampled, but it looks much uglier than oof regions with a DSLR and good lens. Oh and only 100mm equivalent reach - but with this high a resolution I think cropping just became viable.

[GoNz0]

great little camera isn't it

[kalniel]

It's weird. I can't get my head around it yet. Aspects of it are so amazing that I then get really disappointed when something doesn't live up to DSLR standards and I have to remind myself it's a wee compact with a built in lens. Will definitely take a little time to get used to it.

[GoNz0]

I know, you forgot you have it sometimes, then remember, you would never have taken that shot with a DSLR as you wouldn't have taken it with you

then compare it to a point and shoot and LOL

can you see this ? Newquay in June..


DSC00244 by GoNz-, on Flickr

[TheAnimus]

I call shenanigans, its not nearly angry cloudy enough for newquay in summertime.

[Kumagoro]

I personally don't like arty farty dof but then I use it to take family pictures and want to see what's in the photo. Are there any settings that can be changed to make it less jeffing blurry.

[GoNz0]

higher F numbers will stop that.

[Kumagoro]

I see will it come at the expense of light being let in.

[kalniel]

I personally don't like arty farty dof but then I use it to take family pictures and want to see what's in the photo. Are there any settings that can be changed to make it less jeffing blurry.

Yes, aperture (increase F number, which is narrowing the aperture as it's a reciprocal), or move back and take the photo from further away so your focal length is longer. On a small sensor you don't need to narrow it that much at all - this camera has an unusually large sensor for a compact, but even so you can see everything's pretty much in focus at f/3.5 even. Move to a normal compact and as long as you're not at macro distances then you're going to have a huge depth of field.

Yes, narrowing the aperture lets less light in, so you need a longer shutter speed or to increase the gain on the sensor (ISO). In a d.o.f. mandated scene it all trades off remarkably equally - the larger the sensor the more you have to stop down the aperture for the same d.o.f., which for the same shutter speed means you have to boost the ISO by the same number of extra stops that you had to stop the aperture down. Luckily larger sensors tend to perform better at higher ISOs so it all balances out.

[kalniel]

Here's the OOC jpeg of roughly the same crop:



It's not too shabby either. The one I've processed from RAW (first post) has a bit more fine detail and I've recovered the shadows a bit more (actually just lowered the black clipping point). The colours are better on the processed file - OOC jpegs are a touch weak on yellows though there's probably room to adjust the jpeg version here as well.

[GoNz0]

I see will it come at the expense of light being let in.

you may notice some more noise as the ISO will go up or a longer exposure to compensate.

[kalniel]

Here we go. One thoroughly unremarkable dimly lit pub shot:



*cough*
ISO 3200
*cough*

[g8ina]

Hmmmm, I wanna see the original of that

[kalniel]

It's not all good. The lens is shockingly bad wide open - in focus regions aren't too bad, but the out of focus regions are really really ugly, and highlights show really bad focal depth chromatic aberrations (don't know what the term is - the green behind the focal plane, purple in front ones that are almost impossible to correct). Everything OOF glows with fringing too. It's shocking.

Stopping down a bit gets rid of the worst of it, but OOF regions look quite busy and highlight spots are pretty ugly, but by f/4 it starts to smooth out and look acceptable. But at that aperture you don't get many OOF regions in most shots, so it's a bit pointless!

[kalniel]

Hmmmm, I wanna see the original of that

Sure - what do you mean by original and I'll try and oblige. Can't provide full 100% as files are too big for hosting - can do OOC jpeg scaled, RAW with no NR scaled, RAW with some NR scaled, or anything else within reason.

[kalniel]

1:1 crop of OOC jpeg (NR set to lowest level in camera, still applying quite a bit however I expect).

Warning this is not pretty. It's a 1:1 crop from a 20MP compact camera, which you'd expect to be bad at the best of times, but at ISO 3200 it should be even worse than terrible.