Sony RX100 - What do you love and hate about your camera?

Hi,

There is nothing I hate about this camera. Auto focus, shutter lag, and startup seem incredibly swift to me. Image quality is excellent. I wish the lens started at 24mm equivalent wide angle, but that really hasn't bothered me.

I've been using cameras with no viewfinders since 2006, and the RX100's viewfinder is quite good, even in bright sun (though I have yet to try it near the Equator!). But to some extent that's a subjective matter--if you absolutely want an optical viewfinder, your mileage may vary.

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Liz

Sounds like it ain't the camera for you.  Keep looking elsewhere.

The RX100 is a great camera regardless of size, but it is a marvel at this size.  I'm always blown away by what I get out of it.  Here are some downsides, though it doesn't make it any less of an incredible camera.

-The neutered steadyshot is not as effective as in other implementations.  For me, this means I have to keep the shutter speed a little higher since I don't have steady hands. I keep quite a few mini tripods with me also.

-Although this camera starts up lightning quick, and shoots 10 fps which comes in great for my mountain bike action shots, it sometimes takes 10-15 seconds to retract the lens.  I'm not sure why but hopefully it will be addressed in a firmware upgrade.

Even with these drawbacks, since the camera does very well at higher ISO and has 20MP to work with even if your pictures are not tack sharp at a pixel level they are still amazingly sharp printed out on a 4x6 or computer screen.  For the outdoors sports I do the image quality is amazing for something I can stuff easily into my camelback, pocket, ect.

The retracting lens makes it small, of course. Typical of a point-n-shoot. But using it can be a pain when you shoot a little, move on, shoot a little, move on again, then shoot a little more. That's the good thing about interchangeable lens cameras where you keep it powered on all of the time and just nudge it a bit to wake it up.

Sony's T series was nice in that you just slid the panel to reveal the lens and it was ready to go.

I'm not sure if the new RX1 will use the "always on" feature where you can just wake it up from sleep mode.

Other than that, the RX100 is beautiful camera, performs very well, convenient customization, and great IQ. Good for low light, and fast AF. Love face detection.

I love that the RX100 has the IQ of a big camera.
I love its size.

I miss a great viewfinder, but the camera would be much bigger.

Enrique

Mine is slower to shut down if I just got through taking a pano or if the lens was zoomed out. At 28mm it shuts down in about 3 seconds or so. This is related to what I wrote below.

My photo gallery:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/poison-dv/
http://500px.com/poison

It doesn't get any better as a pocketable camera with great IQ and high ISO capability.

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Kirk

Honestly, what I don't like about the camera:

- F4.9 at long end, means that I almost never use this focal length in low light, kinda breaks the creativity sometimes.

- I would have loved a bigger zoom for better DOF, or 24mm wide.

- No tilting screen, breaks the creativity as well.

- I just don't like the manual focus. I don't like the fact that you don't know in what direction you have to rotate the ring, and when you hit the minimal or maximal focus distance. The XZ-2 displays the distance when turning the ring, and it's great.

- Focus peaking completely useless when using magnification. It's one or the other, but I guess it's the same on every camera, it's just the first camera I own that has focus peaking and I maybe was expecting too much.

- Highlights clamp easily.

- Needs a grip, but I found a way to use the hands strap to easily hold the camera, so not such a big deal to me.

- Writing images on card message is a bit annoying but that's because I disabled the picture preview, and sometimes want to display it too fast. A second button press and that's ok. Maybe I need to buy a faster SD card, I don't know if everyone has that.

- F1.8 is really soft, I'd advise everyone to stop down to 2.8 when possible. It's not a real problem thanks to the 20mpix that allow you to size down the picture and get the details back though.

Other than that, I love the camera, because now I finally have a good camera that I can always carry with me. You can customize it to your liking, it's fast in operation, it has awesome IQ, noise pattern looks very good to me, low light capabilities are always surprising me, I'm not used to take hand held pictures at night (especially coming from a K10D CCD sensor that couldn't be used above ISO800). Video is smooth and the stabilization works really great while recording.

That is the best really pocketable camera out there, I'm really waiting to see what the concurrents will do.

It's like comparing a laptop vs desktop computer. Till this day I still refuse to use laptop despite the fact they are much powerful and lighter than use to be. It's the little things add up that annoy me (low-res screen, small keyboard, small and centre-placed track pad, slow hard drive, etc.). But if you don't mind all those limitation and value portability then a good laptop could be very good choice. RX100 is such a perfect example in camera word. You really get near-DSLR (kit lens) quality in tinny package.

love all the positive stuff people have already said here, remarkable features packed into a small package.

On the not-so-impressed side (migrating from a Canon s100 which had all these features, none of them essential, but taken in total shows that Canon did a much more thorough job making the camera more user friendly):

- flash doesn't retract automatically, you have to push it;

- can't adjust sounds or volume of sounds (shutter, self-timer, etc.);

- can't adjust time delay and number of self-timer shots;

- lens ring bumps against some tripod bases;

- only 28 wide (which is still plenty wide, but s100 is 24).

- no super-slow-mo movie mode

Are any of your photos taken with an RX 100?

likes:

small size (compact , pocketable)

excellent IQ

Fcn button for quick access

retractable lens

gorgeous and solid build

fun filters

noise control

pano / HDR features

control ring

bright LCD

like less

wish lens starts at 24mm

wish lens is a tad brighter at the long end

add faux leather for grip (no need for a protruding grip)(like Garitz leather skin)

longer lasting battery

include separate charger

builtin ND filter (a big miss for me)

flash could be more powerful

nothing to hate and lots to love

cheers,

I have both the rx100 and a DSLR.

Startup and shutdown times are very noticably slower for the rx100 because the lens needs time to extend and retract unlike a DSLR. So you need to anticipate situations and startup the rx100 much earlier. Missed a number of shots because of this.

Shutter lag is slower on the rx100 but not irritatingly so. Only a few missed shots because of this.

In the open on a sunny day, the screen will get washed out and be difficult to see like ALL P&S. At most marginally better than other P&S. There is no way of comparing this to a proper viewfinder in a DSLR.

However, with all being said and done, there is a place for the rx100 with its right balance (personal opinion) of image quality and size.

Do you think that Nikon V1 is closer to my expectations?

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My photo gallery:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/poison-dv/
http://500px.com/poison

I am recently returned from two months hiking across northern Spain on the Camino de Santiago, over 500 miles. Over 3000 pictures later I can say that the Sony RX100 is an excellent compact camera for my needs. The IQ was exceptional in a wide variety of interior and outside settings with landscapes and people. The camera primarily functioned in the Program+ and manual modes, was in and out of my pocket and turned on and off frequently. I did add a hand grip and used the wrist strap. Without these the camera wanted to slip our of my hand. In the future I will carry and use a monopod. On two occasions the RX100 froze up while shooting, would not close. I removed and reinstalled the battery and the camera returned to functioning properly. Movies are of good quality. Little post-processing in Lightroom is needed to cleanup images. Recently, I presented a 20 minute program of the photos to a group and received positive comments about the quality of the images. Originally, I purchased a Canon S100 to use on this trip but it soon developed focusing problems and was returned. Before I had used a number of the Canon G series, liked then but wanted something smaller and lighter. The RX100 served me well well under moderately adverse outdoor conditions of cold, heat, and rain. I agree with much said in the other posts and want Sony to upgrade its firmware to improve the RX100 functioning. It is an excellent camera imo.

Liz the rx100 has no viewfinder so i'll guess you're referring to the LCD

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*All my Post Processing is done with Capture NX2*
Flickr Photo's
Galleries on DPR

What i love about my RX100 -

* Great photo quality, even at high iso...at iso3200, i can get very alive photos that i can't get from Canon G15 at iso 400-800.This sensor shines from  80ISO to 3200ISO...

* Great FullHD video...

* It's stylish....very stylish indeed...Just looking at the camera pleasing me,,,no need to take photos

* Tons of features,,,,you can dig in menus and you'll see lots of features...effects, scenes etc...

* Great features, hand held hdr, multi frame noise reduction, sweep panorama etc...these are really great features once you get used to with.

* Very fast,,,it's a very responsive beast...

* The best LCD i've ever seen!

What i don't like about it,

* Handling is not that good, i feel like i'll drop it anytime,,however i found a particular solution for this.

* In very dim light, AF focus on entire frame not the point you want to focus on.Same behaviour of NEX cameras...

* Short battery life.I ordered a third party battery for backup.

Hello,

I like this camera a lot, but there are some negative points:

• Lid for battery and memory card opens up too easily
• Hunting for focus on night shots and distant objects, I come home with a lot of out-of-focus shots
• Hard to use manual focus
• Slippery, I'm afraid of dropping it although equipped with the Franiec grip
• A bit slow starting up
• Screen is hard to read in strong daylight
• Would've liked more pointed buttons, possibly made of rubber material
  

Regards,
Anders

Hi,

A suggestion that I found in another thread: you might want to disable the AF Assist Lamp on the RX100, strangely that will disable the Full Screen Green box as well. The camera will then only focus with the separate AF zones.

Just a disclaimer, this might produce longer focusing times, i.e. AF hunting in low light conditions!

rio