Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX10 Mark II - Reviews

(4.5)

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25.9.2015

[Initial observations having used the camera for about 3 weeks - I will update with further observations as I come across them]Pro's====- Great build quality, weather sealed- 1000fps High Frame Rate video- 4K video- Countless functions + downloadable in-camera apps- Many customisable buttons along with Saved Setting Banks (3)- Ability to take 17 Mpixel stills whilst recording video (not in 4K though)- Superb constant aperture f/2.8 lens, great bokeh (blurry background quality)- Superb performance at 14fps Burst Mode- Ultra high shutter speeds- Excellent low-light / High ISO performanceCon's====- No separate charger for charging a spare battery- Long battery charge (6hrs)- Aperture control isdifficult to use,especially with eye to viewfinder- Zoom is fixed once you depress the shutter - can't focus track a subject whilst changing zoom level- Too easy to catch the exposure compensation dial accidentally - one to watch out for!- No HDMI cable (you’ll need a Micro HDMI one)- Flimsy printed manual - but you can download the full one and other things from the Sony website (https://www.sony.co.uk/support/en/product/DSC-RX10M2)Summary=======The RX10 Mk2 is a ground-breaking bridge camera with a new sensor that integrates fast memory onto the sensor itself. This gives the RX10 superb performance allowing Sony to pack in additional features over its predecessor such as:- an astonishing 1000fps High Frame Rate (HFR) Video capability- 14fps burst mode when taking stills (JPEG - this drops to about 8fps for RAW)Note that you need an SDXC Class 10 or UHS-I compatible card of at least 64GB capacity to use the 4K video recording or HFR recording features. If you use lower spec cards then these features won’t work.It has a bucket load of features as well as offering great quality photos and video thanks to the sensor and the excellent Carl-Zeiss f/2.8 lens. This camera makes it easy to take good quality video and stills without thinking too hard about it, and for more serious photographers or videographers that want more control you can adjust everything yourself.The functions of this camera are too numerous to cover in one review so I’ve concentrated on some of the more interesting ones below. It has many features normally only found on high end DSLRs. I don't think you’ll be disappointed with this camera but some of the niggles I list above mean it loses a star in my book.Lens & Image Quality================The lens is excellent and having a constant f/2.8 aperture throughout the zoom range is really well worth having. This allows you to take great portraits at 200mm with a wide f/2.8 aperture, throwing objects in the near background out of focus so that your subject stands out. On lesser lenses you risk the background interfering with your subject. Don’t underestimate the difference that this will make to your photos if you’re comparing with other bridge cameras that do not have a constant aperture f/2.8 lens - it’s well worth having. And of course having a wide f/2.8 aperture can help no end in low light situations, depending on your subject. You don’t always need a small aperture (higher f number) to get decent depth of field in your shots - it all depends on your focus point (if interested you can read up about hyperfocal distance here: http://digital-photography-school.com/getting-landscapes-sharp-hyperfocal-distances-and-aperture-selection/).Ergonomics=========In use the camera is fairly weighty but nice to use and you get a real feeling that this is a solid, well built, robust camera that will take knocks and scrapes without any problem at all. The weather sealing is reassuring just in case the heavens open up whilst you’re out and about.The camera has multiple customisation options, with 2 custom buttons and a quick menu of 8 items (available from the Fn button) which can all be customised. The left/right/up/down pressed on the control wheel on the back are also customisable, so you’ve got ample options for setting things up the way you like and avoiding having to hunt through the menus, which is the normal bane of compact cameras.Added to this the RX10 provides three memory banks allowing you to set up the camera in the way you want for a given shot, save it and recall the settings later. For example, the settings you use on a tripod may differ from hand-held use, so you can dedicate a memory bank to each and recall them quickly. My only quibble is that you can’t give each memory bank a name so that you can remember what each is for, but that’s a minor point.The rear display screen hinges out from the bottom and can be angled both upwards (for low level shots) and downwards (for shots taken over crowds etc.). It doesn’t swing left or right, but I don’t see a need for this anyway - most of my shots are taken using the viewfinder anyway.One let down for me though is the aperture ring which I find annoying. The grips on the ring are at the left and right hand side of the lens and don’t extend to the top and bottom. Ergonomically this doesn’t work for me - the fingers on my left hand naturally want to grip the ring on the top/bottom, but there’s no grip there so you end up having to twist your hand around to change it. This wouldn’t be so bad if you could assign one of the control wheels (in combination with a custom button press) to change Aperture, but you can’t. A minor annoyance, but something that does irritate me. I’d much prefer aperture to be controlled using a second spin-wheel on the body, similar to Nikon and other DSLRs - much easier to use and no doubt cheaper as well, so I don't understand why Sony couldn’t do so here.Another thing to watch is the exposure compensation dial on the top right of the camera. Its easy to catch this without realising, and only recently I ended up taking a batch of photo's which were 1 stop overexposed because I'd knocked the dial accidentally without realising. The pictures were of course brighter than normal but I put this down to the misty conditions at the time. Still, exposure compensation is not something you tend to use that often, so I would have liked this to work based on a button press + dial combination. Far more flexible (e.g. you can have a different button + same dial for aperture changes or other functions) and no real chance of changing it accidentally.Another slight annoyance (which sets it apart from DSLRs that I've used) is that if you lightly press the shutter button the zoom is fixed. This means that you can't focus track a subject which may be moving away or towards you and also change zoom. I will investigate further and update my review, but this seems like a serious limitation.HDR Video / 4K VIDEO=================As a video camera I really like the RX10. There are dedicated ports for an external mic and the powered zoom (controlled from a rocker switch in front of the shutter button) allows you to control the zoom in the same way as you would with a regular camcorder. In fact I prefer the RX10 to my dedicated Canon camcorder due to the viewfinder (which my canon doesn’t have) and the zoom function, which I find smoother/easier to control than on the Canon.As you’d expect the results are exceptionally good and the with image stabilization built in the RX10 makes it easy to shoot highly professional looking videos. Added to this you can take 17Mpixel still images whilst recording, which is an added bonus. I often video my partner in horse trials/competitions, so being able to take photo’s at the same time is a real bonus. However this feature does not work if you are recording 4K video or High Frame Rate (described further below).As noted above you will need an SDXC Class 10 or UHS-I compatible SD card if you want to record 4K or HFR videos.High Frame Rate Video=================The HFR videos that this camera can capture are stunning to look at, and you will find yourself capturing what would otherwise be mundane little clips which in super slo-mo take on a whole new meaning. The quality is good, but I have noticed that the resulting videos seem to have quite compressed dynamic range (range of lights and darks that can be captured) - what stood out for me was that the whites seemed to be blown out / over-exposed in some cases. Everything else looked fine exposure wise - it was just the whites, so I can only conclude that the dynamic range of the capture is quite limited. Also when you view the video full screen on your PC the upscaling to HD is apparent - they look noticeably softer than normal HD Videos. But that’s just me being picky - this is a groundbreaking feature for a bridge camera that you’ll have lots of fun with.High frame rate video is however limited to between 2 and 4 seconds of capture depending on the capture mode and frame rate that you select. As other reviewers have noted this is quite short. However you have to consider what the camera is having to store and process to achieve this - at the maximum 1000fps (at 1136 x 384) this equates to over 500MB per second of raw data that is being captured and processed in real time. In reality the raw data will be even greater of course because the native resolution of the sensor is much higher than the 1136x384 capture resolution. Clearly this kind of performance is only possible with the help of the fast memory that Sony have integrated into the sensor, which is of course limited. Technically this is an exceptional feat of engineering and whilst I’d love to see the recording time be less limiting I can also see that Sony have had to trade off what they can achieve technically with cost and size. To put this kind of HFR capability into a consumer bridge camera is still quite remarkable, despite the recording time limitation.If you set the camera into Quality Priority you get 2 seconds of recording time or 4 seconds if you use Shoot Time Priority. Quality Priority shoots at a slightly higher “native” resolution of 1136×384 (at the maximum 1000fps setting), compared to 800×270 for Shoot Time Priority. It’s then all upscaled to HD resolution in-camera.Clearly if you’ve only got 2 or 4 seconds to play with then you need to time your video capture accordingly. The RX10 captures video into a buffer and allows you to set whether the first or last 2 or 4 seconds of a capture will be recorded into a video. So if you know all the action will happen at the end you can be capturing for longer but only get the last 2 or 4 seconds. The procedure for doing this is not very intuitive but fine once you get used to it. Basically you have to press the centre of the control wheel on the back which puts the camera into HFR mode and then press the MOVIE button. The function of the MOVIE button depends on how you set the trigger mode (in the menu) - if you set it to "Start Trigger", then the 2 (or 4) seconds of video will start as soon as you press MOVIE and the recording will end automatically once the time is up. If you've set it to "End Trigger" then the camera will start to buffer as soon as you put it into HFR mode and you then press the MOVIE button to designate the end of the movie. This is a slightly clumsy mechanism which gets very confusing if you've forgotten which mode you've put it in, but I can see why they’ve had to do it this way.One other limitation is that the zoom level and any exposure settings are fixed when you start recording - it seems that you can’t change them in mid capture. But as the capture time is so short its unlikely to be a big problem, but one to bear in mind depending on what subject you’re shooting.Low Light / ISO Performance=====================The camera features an automatic ISO setting which basically means that you can set it and forget it - the camera will adjust the ISO automatically if the shutter speed falls too low. This works on Program and Aperture priority mode. You can also set the camera to automatically adjust the ISO (and therefore shutter speed) based on the focal length of the lens - when you’re fully zoomed in you need a higher shutter speed to avoid blur due to camera shake. This is such a useful feature that has been on Nikon and other DSLRs for a number of years, so I pleasantly surprised to see it here.Added to this is a feature called Multi-Frame Noise Reduction - basically the camera will fire off multiple frames quickly and combine them to create a single image with less noise. This allows you to go above the stated highest ISO setting and create images with less noise. However it is not available if you shoot RAW images, only with JPEG, which is a shame as I prefer to shoot RAW as this gives the most latitude for image correction in post-processing. The results are however very good. I took two images in exactly the same conditions, one with auto ISO and the other with multiframe noise reduction and the resulting image was noticeably sharper and clearer. The sequence of shots took about a quarter of a second to fire off though so you have keep a steady hand.Sweep Panorama Mode=================Panorama mode allows you to take a wide field of view image in camera without having to stitch individual photos together afterwards. It’s a doddle to use - press the shutter and the camera guides you to sweep the camera from left to right and tells you when it has finished. By default panoramas are limited to about a 120deg field of view but you can change this in the settings to get wider panoramas. You can also select whether you want a horizonal (left/right) or vertical (up/down) panorama.However be aware that this function will give limited results in low light conditions - the resulting image may look good on the back of the camera but on a PC you may find that it's softer than expected - you are sweeping the camera from left to right, and camera movement is the enemy of image sharpness of course. So if you want the very best quality and definition, especially in low light, then you still need to use a tripod, take separate photo's and stitch them together afterwards in Photoshop or similar. But in bright / sunny conditions sweep panorama mode does a fine job.Battery Life========Battery life is ok for a bridge camera but not comparable to many DSLRs. The battery has to be charged inside the camera as there is no separate battery charger supplied, which for a camera at this price point is disappointing. So if you purchase a spare battery you can’t continue using the camera whilst your spare is charging up. A full charge takes 6 hours so this is quite a limitation in my book. You can of course buy a separate charger from Sony (and 3rd party manufacturers), but I’d expect them to include it as standard. In use I found that I was consuming about half of the charge in about 2 hours of video shooting, mostly HDR video with some HFR clips. However I was reviewing clips alot. On day's when I've shot less video (mostly stills with 3 or 4 HFR videos) the battery life was much better, lasting the full day. But if I were on holiday I'd be worried about taking the RX10 out without a spare battery.Wifi / Downloadable Apps===================Wifi setup was very straightforward and once connected the camera can connect to the Sony PlayMemories website where additional download apps are available to install in the camera. This is a really nice feature, however most Apps are not free, ranging from between £4 and £8.One of the more useful ones is SmartRemote, which is free and comes bundled with the camera. This allows you to control the camera remotely from your smartphone using Wifi. You have to download and install the PlayMemories app onto your smartphone as well. In use you get a viewfinder view projected onto your smartphone and can control basic settings, including zoom. Captured images are sent to the smartphone for you to review, but I expect these are low resolution previews. A nice feature, although it’s clearly limited by the need to have a Wifi connection, so could not be used whilst out and about.