RX100 my experience

Compared to my other camera (like the LX7).  Some of these may be minor, but wanted to mention everything that I came across.

Do not like:

* Cannot see histogram and level-gauge at same time.

* Cannot see histogram when adjusting EV compensation.

* Steady shot (Image Stabilization) effectiveness.  Lot of blurry shots even around 1/30.  The camera seems to like "1/30" and does not prefer to go faster than that but prefers to reduce the ISO instead.

* Lack of even a 1 EV AEB (exposure bracketing).  Allow only 0.7 EV.  VERY disappointing for HDR.  I hope they fix this in a firmware release.

* Built in HDR/DRO mode, I had some high hopes on the HDR mode as it lets you dial settings like EV ranges (upto 6 EV).  But even at the max 6 EV range, the results are not all that great.  On the DRO mode, it brings out shadows and darker regions, but bright regions remain bright/clipped (so you have to make sure there is no bright region in your composed frame).  This is one of my rather big complaint, a lot of pics tend to have blown highlights...

* Zooming in (review mode) starts all the way from zoomed-in, not a big deal but different from all other cameras and requires getting used to it.

* Low light shots are good/better than LX7, but the results from LX7 seem to yield themselves better to a bit of sharpening (in irfanview).

Well excperience will come with positive and negative things.......i only read the negatives. What are the positives?

I want to know because i dont own a RX100 yet. You will help forummembers a lot if you complete your experience.

Yes, this is my experience too and here is the Canon S95 much better...i have both.

At the end of the day, if my walk away summary matched yours the camera would be headed back to the seller. Is there anything you liked?

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Kirk

>Steady shot (Image Stabilization) effectiveness. Lot of blurry shots even around 1/30. The camera seems to like "1/30" and does not prefer to go faster than that but prefers to reduce the ISO instead.

I have had other cameras do this (most recently the Nikon P7100) and so I have 'S' set to 1/60 so I can just dip straight into it if I feel I can shoot faster than 1/30. I tend to be a bit of a sloppy shooter, being very reliant on stabilisation, so shooting at 1/60 instead of 1/30 is preferable to me.

Overall the RX100 is a great performer for its size.

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This is also my gripe with the rx100. We have both the Sony and the LX7, and we get a lot more keepers with the LX7 chasing after our small child. I find things get a little better with shutter priority, but it's still a little challenging. The LX7 is just faster.

Still like both cameras though!

All of these put together do not bother me much at all. I find the IQ (and OOC JPG's) in this small little camera to overwhelm all other considerations, though I don't think your list would affect me with any camera. I have the LX7 as well (couldn't pass up $299 for 24mm wide end, and perfect UI) and the IQ isn't in the same league as the RX100. To each his own.

Very true in my case as well, with my 3 year old.  Though the LX7 IQ is inferior, it has given more keepers.  I haven't owned the RX long enough, so let me see how it goes.  I will try the shutter priority, probably set it to 1/60-80 for the child indoors (I think the ISO will mostly get set to 3200 which is ok).  Thanks for the suggestion.

I would think that if you're trying to shoot moving objects you would always go into shutter priority. Capturing your subject becomes more important than controlling DOF. At least that's how I approach it....

I recently came back from a trip toIndiawhere I took more than 3000 shots, several indoors in low light. Have to disagree with you on the points below.

Are the blurry shots for static scenes or scenes with motion? Low light, I guess, with that shutter speed. If motion, you should probably be in S mode. For static scenes, the camera seems to pick 1/focal length. Of the several low light, I didn’t have a single blurry shot for static scenes.

I used Auto HDR for a lot of shots. I though it worked great. Kept sharpness at +2, contrast at +1, vivid mode. Only for a few did I have to go to manual HDR, when I thought the camera didn’t do enough.

Greta for instantly viewing at 100 percent and checking focus, details.

Overall I thought the camera was great. Great IQ in a small, light camera, perfect for travel.

Yes this is true, but our lights are not too strong, so at night the main focus is to get as much light in as possible so a wide aperture helps. In addition, with the tiny sensor on the lx7, controlling DOF is probably not that significant in a smaller indoor area (pretty much everything will be in focus no matter what).

The one thing that the Sony has that is quite good is the flash. I like how I can point it upwards and bounce it off the ceiling for nice diffuse light.

Own the S95, and the RX100, S95 is not even in the same class…the color depth and clean photos from the RX100 are much better, still use our S95 at times, but it is no match for RX100...

Love the UI on the RX100, add Franiec Grip and a Skin to the body and it's a different camera…have the Franiec grip on the S95 as well….

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--Really there is a God...and He loves you..
FlickR Photostream:
www.flickr.com/photos/46756347@N08/
Mr Ichiro Kitao, I support the call to upgrade the FZ50.
I will not only buy one but two no questions asked...

However, a 20 MP sensor will show motion blur (at pixel peeping level) more so than a 10MP sensor. I have had no issue shooting hand-held at 1/30. However, I am extremely near-sighted and shoot with my glasses off and my elbows against my ribs.
But this is just my experience comparing RX100 to my A700.

Bert

A priority is a poor choice for shooting kids. Try S around 1/100. Or SCN mode ISO high sensitivity. I use A priority to shoot still objects sometimes with very long exposures on a tripod.

I have a better suggestion: use Sports Scene.  I'm not really into the Auto/Scene modes, but recently my brother was using my RX100 to shoot out the window of a moving car (I was driving).  He was complaining that lots of the photos were blurry, focus was too sloooow, etc.

Instead of explaining to him how to change settings and so forth, I made him change to Sports Mode.  And to be honest with the exception of the White Balance, the resulting images were very good.  I worked out a comparison and in those conditions, A mode was only giving me ~15% keepers.  On the other hand, Sports Mode produced over 60%!

Hope this helps,

rio

Thanks for the tip.  Does the sport mode suggestion hold for indoor / low light shots?  The sports mode seems to put it in 1/125 (when I briefly tried it inside home at night).  I would think that would require a very high ISO (probably 3K-6K) night time indoors for correct exposure.

The other thing is how quickly the lens becomes dim with zoom.  The moment you touch the zoom lever, you start selling f-stops wholesale.

1.0x = F/1.8
1.1x = F/2.2
1.2x = F/2.8
1.5x = F/3.2
1.9x = F/3.5
2.3x = F/4.0

Not static subjects. But not that much of a motion either (say the Kid on sofa watching TV). I can clearly see the difference (in blur and number of keepers) since I am/was used to comfortably shooting at speeds quite slower than 1/30.

With the crippled 0.7 EV limit, I cannot imagine doing manual HDR on the RX100.  You need a tripod and have to dial in the EV for each shot.  Too much hassle.  For example on the LX7, you can shoot 3 shots (up to 6 EV apart) hand held in a fraction of a second and s/w can then take care of any small misalignment.

I agree. It is just that it is not the "norm".

Agreed. Would I pay $650 for it? Or do I feel like it is a must-keep, not a firm yes.

Come on... this is only a small camera not a full blown full frame DSLR.

I'm sure the Sports Mode will manage OK freezing the motion and reducing blur, but as you guessed it will push the ISO. Even though ISO3200 is not a problem on the RX100, there will be increasing noise in dark/underexposed areas.

rio

When I said manual HDR, I didn't mean bracketing and then PP. I meant using one of the in-camera manual HDR settings: 1,2,3, ...6. Under the HDR settings you have a choice of Auto HDR or 1 - 6. In Auto HDR, the camera automatically picks a setting. If you don't like what it does, you can switch to one of 1 - 6.

Another  couple of things you might want to try is using the AMB, MFNR modes. I’ve used the MFNR extensively, for static scenes, with excellent results.

In HDR mode, Sony seems to be doing a real good job of combining frames, even with motion. I shot several HDR scenes outdoors where there was motion (cars moving slowly, people walking) and couldn’t detect any blur. The shutter speed was faster there (1/125 – 1/250 range). You might want to try AMB/MFNR (higher ISO) and see what you get with motion.