Jump to content

Sony RX100 - low light and long exposures.


Recommended Posts

<p>How good is the RX100 for these situations:<br /> Mainly handheld at ISO 1600-3200 widish aperture of say street photography at night with neon lights ie - Asia.<br />And occasionally by itself - Tripod and long exposures at lowish ISO.</p>

<p>With its larger sensor but not quite as larger as a crop sensor SLR. I figured this might be a nice camea paired with a film camera as I enjoy shooting slide film but slide film is too slow for color night street photography. It might be a nice camera when I am with friends at a dinner or at a cafe etc. than lugging my dSLR.</p>

<p>How is the focus like, there is no manual focus ring I suppose. So I am relying on the electronic focus point? Can I frame and recompose as well? How is with lens flare and long exposure grain etc... We still have a Canon A510, I know not on the same class but at low ISO it was terrible. But in bright light it was quite OK for casual snaps.</p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>A 9 year old P&S camera is probably not a very useful frame of reference for the performance of digital cameras. If the reviews of the RX100 don't answer your questions, then I would suggest going to flicker and doing a search on Sony RX100 and the ISO of interest. You can review 100's, if not 1000's, of actual images taken with the camera.</p>
Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>the RX100 II and RX100 III are both better at high-ISO than the RX100, which is already pretty good for a compact. in general, ISO performance is similar to crop sensor DSLRs about 5 years ago. 3200 is probably the upper limit but you should be able to get a usable 1600 even with the RX100 I. the RX100 III has a fast aperture throughout the range so you can keep the ISO lower. the slow aperture at the long end is one of the downsides of the original RX100 for nighttime street photography. if you plan on doing a lot of this shooting, the mk III would be the way to go. if you can forgo the zoom and are comfortable with the 35mm focal length, you might also want to consider the Fuji x100s, which is very clean at 6400 and has shallower DoF than the RX1000 can muster.</p>
Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>I took my daughter's RX100 to Disneyland (actually Disney California Adventure) to try one evening. I took a number of shots in the Cars Land area which emulates the old Route 66 and has a number of "classic" neon signs. As it was twilight and I still had a fair amount of ambient light for the most part, I had isos from 125 to 800. It did fine. You also have a couple of jpg scene modes that take multiple shots and stack them to reduce noise, etc. I think I had a couple of higher iso shots that evening but even later in the evening, there was enough generic light to not need to go higher. No flare or glare type problems that I noticed. It can be set for manual focus but I didn't try that. The II is somewhat better than the first model but I'd think the faster lens on the III should be a substantial advantage in general terms and I'd appreciate the wider 24mm equivalent focal length as well. Although it's going to take getting deliveries and user reports to see how the lens performs, etc.</p>
Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>First off, I am very impressed with the RX100 as a low-light camera. For any given print size, it will give you a cleaner / less noisy and sharper / more-detailed picture than pretty much any similarly-sized camera.</p>

<p>But doing things like evaluating or comparing cameras at an arbitrary ISO 1600 or whatever strikes me as somewhat artificial and limited. The relevant consideration is image quality at a given light level, which takes into account noise at higher sensitivities, maximum aperture, required depth-of-field, and (for reasonably static subjects) the presence and effectiveness of any image stabilization system. In these regards, with f/1.8 at the wide end (which is what I mostly used) and decently-effective image stabilization, I rarely needed ISO 1600 much less 3200. I rented an RX100 to chaperone a school trip last year. Overall, day and night, mostly indoors but some outdoors, in dim museums and some bright places, of the 36 pictures I put in my 'permanent' archive, only 7 were taken at ISO 1600-2500 and 7 at ISO 3200. Many indoor shots were ISO 100-200, and many outdoor dusk shots were ISO 400-1000. Nevertheless, IMO the RX100 is <em>relatively</em> clean at ISO 1600. Also, with 20 MP to start with, you can do major downscaling for normal print sizes, which further effectively reduces noise.</p>

<p>In-camera JPEG's are rarely the answer for critical use, so for illustrative purposes, I've taken one of my shots (from inside a museum), taken at ISO 3200, and processed it as I normally would for typical use of a shot I cared much about: raw conversion in DxO Optics Pro (using the default settings of its "prime" noise reduction), use GIMP 2.8's cubic scaling to 8x12 inches @ 300 ppi, and then giving you a 100% crop from the 2400 x 3600 pixel image, plus a full image scaled to display in the thread (700 pixel maximum width). Note that this was shot at f/6.3 for high depth-of-field, which likely meant less than ideal sharpness.</p>

<div>00ccBN-548690384.jpg.357e0842606b0bb60a06f98e17c8b86a.jpg</div>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>And here's the full image, scaled to fit inline in the thread. Again, this is ISO 3200. Also, Craig is correct that the RX100 Mk. II tests out slightly better in low light than the original RX100's does, and of course both of them have 28-100mm (equivalent) f/1.8-4.9 lenses, while the new RX100 Mk. III has a 24-70mm (equivalent) f/1.8-2.8 lens (and a pop-up viewfinder, but no hot shoe).</p>

<div>00ccBO-548690484.jpg.d33fe05e2ab57b484f2c4737d95c3cee.jpg</div>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...