RX100 and High ISO

Hello. First post in this forum — I am typically in the Fuji forum, relating to my X100 and XP1.

I gave my charming wife an RX100 for Christmas, replacing her S100. She is not a photographer, and would be happy enough with her iPhone 5 if not for me. I push her.

She left for her Missouri and her family (don't ask) right after our gift exchange, so I didn't have much time to get her ready for the RX100. I did set up a eyefi card with her iPad, though.

Anyway, I was alarmed by a comment at the front of this site, with the selection of the RX100 as one of the best small cameras. The comments claimed the camera had really lousy high ISO performance. Now I am not expecting XP1 performance, but I hope the camera is at least as good in poor light as her S100.

Any thoughts? Of course I will do some tests when she returns...

At high ISO, the RX100 blows away the S100... the cameras aren't in the same class, IMHO

VASTLY better.. simply VASTLY .. I've had excellent pics from my S95 when it was wrongly set at 2500 ISO..and thought it amazing at what that gave.. but the RX-100 is in another league..
Check the EXIFs.. and the biggest edit on any was downsizing for normal use..







My Town Museum - a very dimly lit room in old Vistorian days - no modern lighting then !!

These were specific tests I put my RX-100 through on the very first day I got it.. I'd done this before with a Pannie LX..just couldn't get a clean high ISO from that camera and always had to limit it to max of 800 or I just felt it disappointing.

--
/eric
Staffordshire, UK

Go to the RX100 review on this site and you can compare to the s100 images side-by-side at different ISO's. The RX100 wins at all ISO's, especially at higher ones.  I do not have the S100 but I do have two Canon S95's. As much as I love the S95, my new RX100 beats it hands down, especially in lower light.

Great advice Robert:). I wonder if the OP has done any research and read the many reviews of the RX100? The answer to his question is easy to fine.

--
Quote: Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes Oscar Wilde

"I gave my charming wife an RX100 for Christmas, replacing her S100. She is not a photographer, and would be happy enough with her iPhone 5 if not for me. I push her.--"

Did she really  want another camera for Christmas? Or was it your idea?

Anyway, the RX100 it's high ISO is fantastic as many posters here have demonstrated.

Hope she (and you) have fun with the RX100.

Regards.

I think it's better to go to imaging resource comparometer where you an really see just how much superior the RX100's IQ is comparted to any other premium compact, at any ISO.

In this site (DPReview) the RX100 test shots include the famous out of focus queen of hearts which has had many a people believing the RX100 is bad at resolving detail...(an even bigger fallacy than saying the the RX100 is lowsy at high ISOs compared to the S95:)

I'm assuming these high ISO pics were all taken using AMB mode (the non user selectable ISO4000 is a give-away)?  Obviously the RX100, like any other camera, wouldn't do as well in single frame mode, which is what most other cameras have to use. I think that the Sony multi-frame noise reduction means that even a small sensor camera like the RX100 can compete with a full-frame camera for very high ISO shots. Of course, it only works well for static images.

EricN2 (and Robert Anderson) your hands-on comments on the RX100 excellent stills IQ in high ISO are convincing. Have you had a chance to also shoot video in high ISO with the RX100. Was the video IQ as good. Would you by any chance have frames grab to illustrate it?

Sorry to disappoint you but these werre ALL shot in 'P' mode with ISO set to max at 6400.. I've never used that AMB mode you speak of..  it just came by the camera as it saw the pic at the time.. same with all...

--
/eric
Staffordshire, UK

Sorry to disappoint you on that but I've never ben one to enthuse with Vids on a basic stills camera....  used independant Vid cameras in earlier days - specialised for the purpose.. but actually have no interest really in shooting any Vids these days.

--
/eric
Staffordshire, UK

That's right, when you use AUTO ISO (in any mode that allows it, Auto, P, S, A, etc), all the non-user selectable ISOS can be selected by the camera.

Impressive. It would be good to see these full-size -- I see that you've only uploaded 1mp down-sized images.

I can tell you that the RX100 takes really good low light vids where you can select the ISO even while you're filming when you want to experiment with what is the lowest you can use without  underexposing the vid. There is no visible noise up to ISO800 and you can just barely see it at ISO1600. It's also crisp and smooth. Definitely the best video I have seen from a compact camera.

You can check out an example (relatively low light) video here (prepared to be amazed):

http://vimeo.com/50739007

These are all JPGs by the way - I hardly ever shoot otherwise simply because I know I get every bit as good as is practical from a well-shot JPG.  Merely downsizing that (in CS6) with best quality,  auto downsizes to that alone.

--
/eric
Staffordshire, UK

I have not shot any video yet with the RX100. I mainly shoot video with my Sony 3D Camcorder.

Amazing video indeed, but I guess that the video was not shot at really high ISO as they were using spotlights.

On the other hand, this video is said to have been shot in ISO 1600 and is also quite impressive.

http://vimeo.com/50503954

This one is said to be at ISO 3200 and shows very visible noise... which is probably normal for ISO 3200.

http://vimeo.com/50587334

The first two videos (and probably the third one too) seem to have been produced by professionals and probably went through pp image processing.

It would be nice to see RX100 high ISO regular-people-productions without any pp.

These videos you link are just test videos without any processing, that's the quality you should expect. I have shot some in the house in front of the fireplace and they are of that quality. Not really fit for making public though, haven't asked the family members if they mind showing a video of themselves being silly!

Seems like you have a hard time believing the RX100 is THAT good:)

Also check out this thread for pics taken by an amateur, check the IQ at full size.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/post/50529424

I've been doing some experiments and have discovered behaviour I hadn't noticed before. If I shoot in P mode in very low light in RAW or RAW+JPEG, it just takes a single shot at max allowed ISO, and there's no delay in seeing the review image.

But in Fine mode, it behaves differently: I can hear the shutter firing several times (3?) and then there's a delay of several seconds with a Processing image message, before the review image appears. This has less noise than I would have expected at high ISOs. So, is it just doing some intensive noise reduction, or is it running an undocumented multi-frame mode? I suspect the latter.

I don't think it's possible that it's doing that in P mode, it would be very weird.