Just Posted: Our hands-on Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1 preview article with video preview. You may well have already heard about Sony's full frame compact camera with a fixed 35mm F2 Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* lens. We've had a chance to play with a pre-production RX1, delve through the menus and discuss its technologies with Sony. We've prepared a four-page preview detailing the RX1's features and capabilities and discussing whether we think the world is ready for a $2800 full frame, fixed-lens camera.
Canon should have had the foresight to have produced something along these lines that I could have put my L lenses on . The EOS M that they have produced is totally embarrassed by this Sony. I can't honestly see the EOS M selling in any great numbers at all, and they implied already that there will be updated and improved versions. They should have not released it until they were beyond the stage that they have reached with it. It almost makes them look a bit desperate to have had to get something on the market.
Was pretty excited about the possibility of a FF sensor in a point and shoot sized body. If the IQ of my RX100 is anything to go by it should be great. But great enough to warrant that price? I don't think so. At half the price I may have jumped, but at that price, sorry but no. Even if I used the OVF from my Leica X1.
If, as some people think the price will fall when few buyers come forward, I'll re-assess, but as of now, sorry Sony. I have NEX-7 and RX100, but it looks like no RX1.
2800$ is expensive, expect a street price around 2499$, and don't forget, it comes with an integrated state of the art 35mm F2 with Leaf shutter, which could cost easily around 1000$ alone.
That's one of the problems for me, actually. I like this camera. I think it's a great idea, it looks like a great implementation, and let's face it it is wildly attractive.
Personally, though, if I'm going to pay for an extraordinary Zeiss lens, I want to use it for 50 years. This one will last the life of the camera and not one second more.
That said, I would feel bad about that fact but would still be delighted to own the machine. I just would never be able to justify the cost considering the entire machine is, in our digital camera world, destined for a trash can in ten years whereas at least with a DSLR/NEX I can invest in sensor/lenses separately.
Kudos to Sony, no matter how many they sell, for lighting up the camera world today with something entirely new, and without anyone really aware it was coming.
Let's see. If you pay $2800 for the camera and use it for 10 years, that means that it cost you $280/year. Is that such a bad deal? I think the problem with that kind of thinking is that in the digital age, few people use cameras for more than 5 years. Technological advances are too seductive for us to keep using cameras that are "outdated."
seeing the price, i will just pass this. way out of budget. i will wait for Sony to release another RX with APS-C sensor and a 30mm F1.4 at aound 1000$ :)
Closest thing to it in my opinion is the Leica X2, which I've found to be a simply amazing little camera. If the RX1 matches the X2 on ergonomics, performance and image quality, it is an undoubtedly a very fine piece of equipment.
Sure, sure: the price is high. I don't care about that. Price is the last thing I worry about. Not that I'm made of money, but I'm willing to wait and save for what I think does the job right.
For all that what it offers, this camera is really cheap. An aperture ring, dof scale, I guess buttery manual focus and gorgeous overall quality. For those who know what they get with it, this may be a camera of a lifetime, for a lifetime. Excellent work Sony.
Let's hope this would be the first Sony product to actually last a lifetime from a quality perspective! Interesting oversized P&S concept for sure, pushes the envelope a tiny bit.
@ericWN My DSC-R1, still in constant use, still gets the best compliments for beach shots of anything I've ever owned....... Six years -- define lifetime?
I think this camera is awesome, at least by the preview.
I love small full frame cameras, shoot with an M9/50 Summilux and this would be, IF, AF works well, be the first camera I would consider replacing my Leica with.
I guess price is in the eye of the beholder, BUT, from perch, selling my M9/Summilux, for this baby could put some legitimate change back in my pocket and give me some additional benefits.
this is just the beginning. now full frame has become part of the mirrorless type, soon exchangeable lens versions will follow. other manufacturers might take on this. this thing is the start for a new era in digital photography. cheap FF compacts only a few years ahead. YES I am totally excited about this. (having shot M6 35mm, olympus mju, rollei with tessar etc in the analogue age)
Cheap FF compacts are not on the horizon and the manufacturers know that people who want FF quality will pay a premium. But there will obviously be more FF choices , adapters, etc.
I can't believe it ! Is the phrase "full frame compact" alone sufficient to excite so many people so much ? Given all the downsides (price, odd VF, 35mm lens) ?
I guess fullframed NEX with EVF & lens interchangeability will be much more useful.
I have to agree that the EVF is off-putting, to say the least. Once we get to this size it would seem that a useful, integrated view finder would be worth the increase in height.
Crop zoom the sensor size down to APS-C, and it plays double duty as a 50mm.
Crop zoom to m43 size and it's a 70mm.
I think that's the real advantage of FF small cameras. You make it with the widest angle lens you need, and the big sensor gives you lots of options for cropping.
You probably don't want to crop down to less than 1" sensor size.
28mm FF -> 1" = 76mm
35mm FF -> 1" = 96mm
35mm appears to be the sweet spot, at least for now, with real DOF control at the long end.
I don't understand why Sony that bought Konica Minolta Camera branch never brought a digital Hexar on the market. Great camera, great lens, great aperture, great settings... They could have done it for a less ridiculous price than what we'll have to pay for this one...
But it isn't a full frame. However, even a full frame seems to have some disadvantages... I might wait for the new Fuji X-E1 and start with a 23mm f/2 lens (hope it will come soon....)
Again, interesting, but as I said in a comment about the NEX5-R:
I bought a Nokia 808 with GPS, and the convenience of GPS tagging has really sold me on this feature: No more "Where was this picture taken".... And, displaying the pictures on a Map adds a new dimension to the joy of photography
Thus, I am amazed at all the new gear with all kinds of bells and whistles, but NO GPS ???
I will NOT buy any camera in the future that does NOT include a GPS !
Bluetooth GPS loggers are $50 or so if you shop around, and software for Windows or Mac is readily available that will compare the time stamp of the GPS logging to the time stamp of your RAW or JPG files and log coordinates. I have one hanging on my camera bag almost all the time.
Full frame shooters are usually concerned with details e.g. studios, landscapes etc. I don't see the weight penalty of EV, gps, battery life etc. being such a big issue there. Travelers yes, but then they'd want interchangeable lenses too. So I'm really confused about the target market for this camera.
I'm the opposite - a camera is a tool for taking pictures. Less features is a plus.
Besides if you can't remember where you took a picture, perhaps you should spend more time composing and less time just snapping whatever comes into your field of view....
I agree, they may have just mis calculated what people will be prepared to pay for this. I think heavy discounts may start not long after availability increases
Baxter...you're clueless. This camera is not aimed at the NEX crowed, it's aimed squarely at the Leica crowd. Newsflash...the Zeiss 35mm f2 ZM (Leica mount) sells for $1100 just for the lens. The people who are prepared to drop $1100 on a Zeiss lens will happily drop $2800 for the lens, full frame body and form factor.
There will be waiting lists to buy this thing, mark my words.
maybe this is the beginnin of the end for the reflex market? certainly could be the definitive camera for some users (at least untill the batteries will be avalible for sale) like old leica. but to me a mirrorless without interchangable lens doesn't make much sense.
Why full frame is still so expensive is a mystery to me.7 years ago Canon came with the 5d and the prices are still very high for a 35mm sensor. The world was photographing with 35mm for near a century already before
It's somewhat due to the yield when making the sensor. The best fabs currently make 300mm diameter silicon wafers, which are then sliced up into sensor-sized chips. Full-frame sensors are 36mm x 24mm, whereas APS-C sensors are 23mm x 15mm.
Obviously, the larger the sensor, the lower the amount of sensors you can make on any one wafer, and it's made worse by the fact that a certain percentage of the chips have defects. Since the cost of producing each wafer is roughly the same, the cost per sensor goes up pretty dramatically as sensor size grows.
Then there is the whole business of building electronics to process the huge amount of data coming from the sensor, which means more powerful and more expensive processing engines.
Finally, as others have pointed out, if you separate the lens, it would be $1500 on it's own, so the camera is in fact $1200, which is pretty cheap for a full-frame...
Sweet point and shooter. Totally wiffs with ridiculously weak top shutter speed and STILL no decent AEB range. Are you kidding me with the optical viewfinder price? Forget evf price...forgetaboutit!!!
Love Sony cameras but they continue to make it all it could be. That's my ass ache list, it's short but enough to keep me far away.
I think the camera has amazing specifications and that the focal length is ideal if it's going to be a fixed lens, although I'm sure that within a short space of time there will be an interchangeable version available, along with an internal viewfinder as opposed to paying a ridiculous amount for an accessory. As ever the price in the UK is ridiculous, as it seems to be selling for a suggested $2800 which should equate to about £1760 or there abouts, but I've seen it suggested that it will be in the region of £2600, so considerably more for no reason other than greed. I suggest people hold on, if they have managed to fit this full frame sensor into the body, interchangeable lenses will follow.
And just today I was in town searching for a nFD 35 f2 for my AE-1 and looky here a compact digital FF.... naw film is so much more fun and looks so good :)
It's a great camera that certainly will meet the demand of some people and will be a landmark on camera concepts. Maybe in a near future some company launches one of this with viewfinder and interchangeable lenses but more affordable than Leica.
Probably not without making the body a lot thicker, creating a totally new mount system or adapting an existing mount system. The NEX E-mount is not wide enough for full-frame and A-mount lenses have a 45mm lens to sensor distance. That's likely why Sony choose to use a fixed lens.
Well, I am a bit torn about this one. As a technical achievement, it's quite something. And history will certainly recall Sony for being the first non-Leica manufacturer that made this possible, ie a full frame in a compact camera. But from a purely practical point of view, I'm not sure. A camera with no viewfinder (the overpriced optical external thing showing no info is a joke, sorry), few manual controls, and a fixed 35mm lens...all this for 2800$ seems like craze to me! Also, I don't really see the point of a 24x36mm sensor in a compact camera like this. The new APS-C sized sensor give excellent image quality even at high ISO (6400 on a Fuji X-Pro 1 looks terrific). Also, with a lens like the Fuji 35 1.4, depth of field control is quite easy already. The full frame sensor will give approximately one stop advantage in noise compared to a APC-S, but at the expense of a much bigger lens and a much, much more expensive sensor to produce. Really, what's the point?
Hmm, because compact cameras with aps-c sensor or even the RX100 don't have good image quality? A new generation APS sensor gives better results than an one generation old full frame, by the way.
The point is breaking new ground and carving a niche. It's all about saying "we were first". People are constantly asking for bigger sensors, and this is Sony's answer. However, I can't help feeling there's going to be a full-frame interchangeable lens camera in the near future. This can get exciting...
The "overpriced external viewfinder joke" as you put it, looks like a standard Zeiss shoe-mount optical viewfinder as available in other focal lengths for their Zeiss Ikon rangefinder. It is expensive, but it's a beautiful viewfinder. For those who don't like the price, I'm sure a VC viewfinder will work just fine.
35mm f/1.4 on the X-PRO1 has an FOV of a 52mm lens. Not even close to being the same as the one on the RX1. For a lot of street shooters, as this camera is aimed at, that is a huge difference.
35mm FL in street photography is significantly more useful than 50mm.
Congratulations to Sony for making this camera. This is the camera Canon and Nikon SHOULD have made (for too long they have been making cameras for the market and exploiting the more megapixels is better myth). Way out of my budget. I think I would love to have one, or at least to try and use. From a long time Olympus user, this it going to be a breakthrough camera. A brave move! Well done Sony!
Kudos to Sony for making all the online "it-can't-be-done" pundits with their registration distances and laws of physics and all the parrot talk look clueless now! Learn from their example and beware, ye phony over-price defenders!
So right, they already had made a lot of people look very silly three years ago when they released the A900 with a full-frame stabilized sensor- something that had been proven impossible beyond any doubt by a bevy of 'experts' on these very pages. History does repeat itself after all!
No one buys Leicas for their features, they buy it for the lens and picture quality and for the experience (unless you're talking about the Point-and-Shoots below the X1/X2, in that case they're just buying it because of a red dot)
It is time someone did this. Ideally it should be able to take various legacy lenses, nikon, canon, leica ect. I would then rush out and buy one right away.
Yeah!!!!! Now Sony makes an overpriced camera that looks like a Leica. Clearly the folks at Sony saw how many people would shell out buckets of cash for retrovision.
Well, I'm not going to buy this cam. But this camera is much cheaper than Leica's fullframe. I don't know why people here complain about everything! Just don't buy - you have this choice too.
Interesting that it should have a Sonnar lens, when Zeiss' own full frame 35mm f2 ZM (Leica fit) lens is a Biogon. Could it be that Sony only have the rights to make Sonnar and Tessar lenses, not Planar, Biogon and Distagon.
It took the R1 many years to go below MSRP. In fact, at one point they were sold at more than the MSRP, quite some time after launch. Now they are cheap, so yeah, give it 5 to 7 years? ;)
This one will always be smaller, ceteris (specs) paribus. They were able to make it smaller because it's a fixed lens design. Think tailored microlenses for the FL of this lens, think leaf shutter built into the lens, etc.
Thanks Thats what I was thinking so pretty much useless for use on anything but static subjects And for the bargain price 500 plus dollars! Who cares if if has Zeiss optics if you can only use it for framing
If you have $2800 to blow on a camera like this, then chances are you have $500 to blow on a Zeiss VF so you're not straining to see a LCD in bright sunlight. Its kind of like asking why accessories for Ferraris are so expensive.
With the VF, what you'll do is either use zone focusing or centerpoint focusing then recomposing.
Really, the Canon 24-70 is only $500 cheaper than this? I can't believe people are spending that much for it. To me the RX1 is going to be worth it, unless the 24-70 is the same size as this guy, I won't even pay $100 for a big honking 24-70.
1/2000s in a, as they say: ..."advanced, unique combination of size and performance that’s never before been realized in the world of digital cameras..." Even LX5 ages ago had 1/4000s
This should be a great little camera. The thing about focussing is that on most cameras it isn't accurate all the time. Along comes Sony with focus peaking and it is a new ball game. I take a lot of flower photos and in manual mode as soon as you start focussing it zooms in and when the subject is in focus yellow edges appear. If you press the shutter half way you see where the yellow areas of focus are and can either continue to fine tune it or move the camera in and out. Once you see the results you won't take photos any other way. For critical focus of important photos manual focus is a bonus and I would rely on it more than any auto focus system.
This might not be the do-it-all camera that many people wish for, but it has potential, and hopefully other camera manufacturers will follow suit and produce something in this new class of camera.
If this camera had been around when I bought a Canon 5D 5 years ago, I probably would have bought this one instead.
I think Sony's camera looks lovely, though. Perhaps I'll get one - or one of its successors - some day.
Dpreview, when can we expect to see the sample images? This little camera is so interesting and so attractive. It would be nice to see the sample images ASAP.
l love the cubic wart on the top. Hang on, it's an expensive add-on peep-hole... Just noticed the third-party cheapo lens hood - I've got one like it for my Panasonic 20mm m43 lens. Or it's an expensive Sony copy of a cheapo Chinese lens hood.
I often smile when I hear people complaining about auto focus speeds etc, I started photography in 1958 and I remember the impossible dream that would never happen, auto focus and auto exposure, we have them now which is obviously a wonder, but before that it was manual everything, a lot of famous pictures were taken before camera wonder hit us, I still retain my lovely Olympus OM2n with a bunch of primes, if some blast from the sun blew out all camera world electronics I could still use all functions manually, right, that's enough rabbiting on and I still fancy this FF compact.
If all electronics fails in that blast from the sun, you won't be able to use your manual cameras either. You won't have any working battery to use. :P
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