Hands on with the Sony RX100

On my lunch break last week I went into my local London Camera Exchange and got my hands on the new Sony RX100.

Small, compact but packing great ergonomics and a very large for a sensor for a compact camera, the same size as my Nikon V1 but with a resolution of 20MP.

As compacts go its possibly the best yet.  Would I have one, well as tempting as it is, I still love my viewfinders, add an optical viewfinder like a Fuji X100, or X10 or a great EVF like the the Sony NEX-7 or Nikon V1, but manage to keep its small size then its the perfect carry everywhere.

Thanks to LCE for letting me test out the camera, and also thanks to the staff for putting up with me taking photographs of them.

The camera shoots RAW as well as jpeg, I set the camera to both and popped a 8GB SD Card into it.  If you have ever used a Sony NEX then you will know what a mess they are.  Every time I have used a NEX-7 I have found the menu’s difficult to navigate.  The menu on the RX-100 is much clearer and easier to use.

With a simple mode dial on the top to choose auto, aperture or shutter priority, even manual if you wish, its easy to select the mode you want.  The function button on the back means you can quickly and easily change key functions such as ISO and like the Canon S100 compact a customisable ring round the lens can be set to be an aperture control, shutter or even ISO or exposure compensation control.

All together a great compact camera.  Until Adobe and the other major players update their RAW converts we will not know for sure about the image quality but with the size of the sensor, and from what I have seen from the jpegs it all looks good.

Whether it beats the Fuji X100 we will have to see, but for size, the fact it has a good zoom and the fast autofocus, its going to be close.  I suspect for image quality the Fuji X100 may have the edge, but for many the other advantages the Sony has over the Fuji will swing it, and for those that do want the better image quality Sony have the NEX-7 which rivals the Fuji X100 and the Fuji X-Pro 1; but of course they will not fit in your top pocket.

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