The RX100 series has pretty much impressed every member on our team at one point or the other. Truly pocketable, the lineup has redefined what the term ‘premium compact’ means in a market category continually under assault by improving smartphone cameras.
The last edition, the RX100 IV which came out last year, even helped inspire a ton of slow motion videos that we released on DRTV.
The RX100 IV, lest you have forgotten, could shoot up to 1000fps, had 20MP, a 24-70mm equivalent f/1. 8-2. 8 zoom lens, 4K video, a powerful burst mode, an electronic shutter that could go up to 1/32000, a pop-up EVF, and a implementing a 180° tilting LCD.
It was indeed, quite a camera, with few peers in the market. So what could Sony possibly add in their annual upgrade cycle?
This time around the camera is even faster, and has a new autofocus system with phase-detection. In practice, all was as advertised, and phase-detection system was a marked improvement over the old contrast-detection one.
Like many Sony cameras nowadays, it’s all about mind-blowing numbers – the humble RX100 V has 314 AF points and the new processing chip allows it to shoot 24fps. With a fast card we were able to capture 65 RAW and JPEG images before filling the buffer, which is something many larger cameras can’t do. It was ridiculously fast in testing, although we do wonder what’s the necessity of all this firepower in such a small camera, since ultimately image quality will be limited due to the sensor size and lens.
That’s not to say that we aren’t impressed once again, and we are sure many professionals will find a use for the capabilities – it’s just a little odd to expect an enthusiast to use 24fps burst for their child’s football match.
In terms of ergonomics, not much has changed. Disappointingly it still has the old menu system, while the A6500 has an updated one that is cleaner and more simplified. And while they’ve obviously spent a lot of effort upgrading the specs of the camera, they neglected to make the pop-up viewfinder like RX1R, which is ready automatically. For the RX100 IV and still in the RX100 V, you have to pull out the viewfinder after it pops up. It’s not the end of the world obviously, but it’s an oversight that demonstrates as usual Sony haven’t given much thought to the end user.
For more thoughts and tests of the camera, as well as test results, check out Kai’s first impressions below.
. digitalrev.com
2016-10-27 03:00