It's the best compact of our times

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 is an advanced compact digital camera with good performance and excellent image quality in a sleek and sturdy aluminium body.

It features 20.2-megapixel resolution, a one-inch Exmor CMOS sensor, a bright F1.8 CarlZeiss Vario-Sonar T lens with 3.6x zoom and an equally bright three-inch LCD monitor.

EISA (European Imaging and Sound) has dubbed the RX100 the “best Advanced Compact Camera for 2012-2013”.

Small and lightweight, it can sit comfortably in a shirt or trouser pocket and still be ready to capture exciting moments any time. This could become your new everyday camera. It is fun and a pleasure to use, with intuitive controls and functions.

It captures sharp, clear photos in most lighting conditions, even dim light. Beginners should be able to easily capture beautiful shots in the iAuto and iAuto Plus modes, while more experienced photographers will be happy with the full range of controls. You get SLR-style Program, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority and Manual operations.

The secret behind the great performance and image quality is that big Exmor CMOS sensor, a full inch across, compared to the half- or third-of-an-inch sensor that most compact cameras carry. The 20.2 MP sensor pulls in more light to reproduce stunning detail, even in low light.

The Carl Zeiss lens is of course outstanding. The wide angle is 28-100mm focal length in 35mm photography, very bright with an F1.8 aperture dropping to 4.9 at 100mm focal length. At F1.8 you can get terrific selective-focus effects, blurring the background for drama or mood.

A test in The Nation newsroom produced sharp portraits with the background out of focus if the subjects was far enough out front.

Spin the lens control ring to select the shooting parameters available in your current shooting mode or browse to see the other options. 

In Scene Mode you can spin from Portrait to Landscape, Sunset, Night Scene and Hand-held Twilight. In Aperture Priority you can move the control ring to circle any aperture value without having to reach for the control dial at the back of the camera.

All the setting values are displayed on the LCD screen too, along with the selected function. These you can read on the 1,229k-dot-resolution screen even in bright sunlight, because Sony has added white pixels to the standard red, green and blue dots.

Then there’s the customisable Function button. Up to seven functions can be assigned to it from a list of 17 possibilities. Press the button once to view the list, again to circle through it, and use the control ring to select the value and options.

As to performance, it took all of 2.2 seconds for the camera to be ready for the first shot once it was switched on. The speedy auto focus eliminates shutter lag.

I tested the camera with Sony’s fast SDHC UHS-I memory card and it grabbed 10 shots in one second and hit 2.5 frames per second in continuous-drive mode.

Among the amusing options, portraits with Soft Skin Effect set to mid-level are a treat. No one’s going to complain when they see their skin smoothed and brightened so they look considerably younger. Auto Portrait Framing automatically crops the portrait to make it look more professional and maintains the same number of pixels.

You can get great landscape shots outdoors with the “auto high dynamic range” option. The blue sky comes up in high contrast behind tree shadows, for example. The bright lens and big sensor also make it possible to shoot indoors with no flash.

The RX100’s sensitivity ranges from ISO125 to 6400, selected automatically depending on the light. I found that it uses the high ISO sensitivity in conjunction with the bright lens and sensitive sensor to get clear night shots in Hand-held Twilight mode.

At Asiatique, the big riverfront mall, I managed some truly remarkable shots of the beautiful lighting with hardly any noise in Hand-held Twilight mode. The ISO climbed to 1,600 and the camera fired six shots to superimpose into one sharp image.

Also made for landscapes is HDR Painting, an option in Creative Style mode. The RX100 takes three shots at different exposures and superimposes them in one, manipulating the details to create a “painting”. And there are more creative styles like this.

If you know your cameras, you’ll like the Memory Recall option on the mode dial, which allows you to select from three custom-setting slots.

The camera also shoots Full HD video with good quality. The battery is good for more than 300 shots per charge and you can recharge it from a USB port.

You can get all of the above and loads of fun for Bt22,990.

 

Key specs

 

_ Image sensor: Exmor R CMOS sensor with 20.2-megapixel resolution

_ Lens: Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T with F1.8-4.9 28-100mm focal length

_ Shutter speed: 30 to 1/2000 seconds 

_ ISO sensitivity setting: Auto, 125, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400, 12800

_ Metering modes: Multi-segment, Centre-weighted, Spot

_ Exposure compensation: Plus or minus 3.0EV, 1/3EV step

_ Exposure mode: iAuto, iAuto Plus, Program Auto, Manual, Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority, Memory Recall, Sweeping Panorama, and Scene Selection.

_ LCD display: Three-inch 4:3 Xtra Fine, TruBlack, TFT LCD with 1,229k dots

_ Battery type: Lithium ion NP-BX1, 330 shots per charge

_ Dimensions: 101.6x58.1x35.9mm

_ Weight: 240 grams

 

Card tricks

 

A fast memory card boosts the performance of a digital camera by letting it “write” the image fast and get ready for the next shot.

The Sony SF-8UX/T1 is a speedy memory card in SDHC format that uses the UHS-I interface. It can record an image file at 45 megabits per second and share it with a computer or camera at 94MB/s.

The SF-8UHS has eight gigabytes, of which about 7.2GB is usable. UHS stands for ultra-high speed. The letter “I” indicates the speed class for SDHC and SXDC memory cards. UHS-I is the fastest category of card available today, with a bus interface speed of up to 104MB/s.

An SDHC UHS-I card will work in any SDHC-compatible device, but at lower speeds. To get quicker, the camera or card-reader must also use the UHS-I interface.

I tested Sony’s SDHC UHS-I with the DSC-RX100 under review and the camera never faltered thanks to the fast writing speed.

You can get the SF-8UX card for Bt1,290. A 16GB version costs Bt2,490 and the and 32GB model is Bt4,490. Users of Sony memory cards can also download free Memory Card File Rescue Software from www.Sony.net/MemoryCard.