Posted 23 July 2012 - 12:30 AM
andrew, the sony rx100 is not a large sensor compact. its sensor is only about 30% bigger than an s100 sensor. and it does not in any way deliver dslr like quality. dr, colors, sharpness, dof are completely in small sensor territory. even at base iso it looks soft. your test video looks exactly like what it is, an enthusiast point and shoot. i can see nothing game changing about it. it is a j1 with a fixed zoom lens and a sony badge. any m43 sensor beats this in every image parameter except high iso noise.
also your wish for a compact camera with dslr image quality will not come true. you should know that this is impossible.
concerning your rant about the eos-m, what do you want canon to do? make you a gh3? will not happen. they are not willing to give up their slr legacy and why should they? there is a good reason to not abandon the prism and the mirror for photography. there is nothing more immediate than looking at your scene or subject just through some glass and not to look at a video representation of it, no matter how high resolved it might be. you will not be looking at the thing itself but at a representation of it. but this representation you should first create in your head, then make an image out of it by capturing it. in the prism box there is no delay, no ghosting, no color shift, no shutter effect, it is just light through an optical system. an unbeatable advantage.
i hope that the mirrorless systems stay for a long time what they are now, consumer products. and i hope that for a long time professional photographic products will have a prism and a mirror to divert the light from the lens to my eye.
in addition it would be unfair to deny canon the right to also make consumer products like panasonic, olympus and sony. canon is in no obligation to you or anyone to give you a 1DX in a s100 body for 50 dollars. they would be out of business very soon and you couldn´t even complain about them any more. and since the nex system is so successful why shouldn´t canon make one too, they even already have lenses for it unlike sony.
i think the eos-m system is promising. it will never be as pocketable as the rx100 because its sensor is aps-c. you can not seriously hold this against it if you want dslr image quality. nex with 18-55 is not a small camera either.
by the way, in your photo the canon pancake looks smaller than the nikon e 50. and the nikon e series is notorious for softness and low resolution. i would never buy one again.
canons aps-c sensor they used in the 7d and downwards is very good in photographic terms. i think it is pretty amazing that with the 600d you can produce the same quality for half your money. that is actually quite a democratic move.
most of the cameras you review are first and foremost photographic equipment. if you want to shoot high quality video get a dedicated video camera. small or large sensor. they exist. you own some obviously. and don´t tell me now: but the gh2! resolution doesn´t make over sharpened, over saturated and low dr go away.