Andrew Reid

Here at a camera store in Berlin we have the 3 musketeers. 2012 vintage RX1R OG, the one without the AA filter. It's very nice and I can't understand why it only goes for $900 used. Because it's got a much better lens than the Leica Q. No red dot though. RX1R II, the one with the tilt screen, phase-detect AF and pop-up EVF. It also shoots 120p, albeit no 4K. It also has a further innovation - the AA filter can be switched on and off. This was Sony when they felt they needed to catch up with Canon and Nikon by really pushing the boat out. 2014-2015 vintage Sony. The $2000 mint condition used RX1R II is reasonably rare but when you do find one, it's still cheaper than the Leica Q OG and closer to the Leica Q2 in terms of image quality. The pop-up EVF is mechanically a thing of beauty and offers a big field of view. Although without a rubberised eye cup, it isn't the most ergonomic or comfortable. So to the new one, the one with the 10 year gap. Sony have made sure to price it so that nobody buys one, which is good because they want you all to buy E mount lenses. Just to summarise the street prices: RX1R: $800-900 used RX1R II: $2k used RX1R III: $5100 / 4900 euro The lens is identical to the previous cameras. Which is fine to be honest, but I had more issues with the AF in macro mode on the RX1R III vs II. Weird. I also dislike the finish and build quality, doesn't feel as premium. It feels a bit like the A7CR. Not great and nowhere near a Leica and the RX1R II also feels more premium. I do prefer the buttons though on the new camera, they are raised for a more tactile feel. Gone is the pop-up EVF, in place of it a smaller standard one. The resolution of the live-view feed is better, but the overall optic is worse and more pokey. Gone is the articulated screen. Which is a really weird one. In comes a fatter battery - very welcome. 4K is there with no crop in 24p/25p... However, there's no IBIS or even OIS, which is a downer. The AEL button has changed to an AF-ON... Again a welcome change, because the first two models had no back-button AF at all. Well done Sony. So if you're looking for a full frame compact, the first two models are a steal. I got the RX1R II again. I regretted selling it the first time out!

I'd also argue that the conventional wisdom over high resolution sensors needing better glass is false unless you are heavily cropping the image. I've had soft 50 euro lenses look better and better, the larger and higher the resolution of the sensor. Same soft lens on a Micro Four Thirds camera or X-T5 looks terrible. Put it on a GFX 100 and it completely transforms and looks so much sharper when you're viewing the whole shot as intended, as long as you don't start pixel peeping it of course.

You can't compare a fast 35mm to a 50mm F8 macro lens or whatever it is they usually use on the DPR test scene. It's a fantastic lens, always was. Even wide open at F2.0 it's close in sharpness to F5.6 stopped down. Of course, only in the centre - but the DPR test scene is a sensor test scene, it isn't designed for wide angle lenses. The real-world performance of the lens is what matters. It's not as good as a Leica M APO 35mm F2 for 4 grand or the 35mm F2.0 lens on the Zeiss ZX1, but it's still very good. I have always treasured the shots from my RX1R and RX1R II That's what counts, not the pixel peeping at 2000% magnification. I think it does just fine... By far the most important thing with a lens is to go out and take real shots with it... The Panasonic 28-200mm on paper is a piece of garbage. Is not the sharpest, not the fastest, F7.1 at the telephoto end, and yet it shoots shots like this... Which look like they're shot with a high-end 135mm F2.0. The rendering is just superb at 200mm F7.1 Does it look like F7? Nah.

For the first time I got my hands on an S1 II yesterday, just in a shop. All my initial suspicions are correct, it's a second rate sensor in a very plasticky cheap feeling body. Not impressed at all with the way it feels in the hand given the lofty price tag.

Not too bad... RX1 OG: 700 euros used RX1R: 900 euros RX1R II: 2000+ euros The Mark II price is only going to stay high and may even go up as it has features the Mark III removes such as the articulated screen, oops. The old pop-up EVF is more premium and funky too. I think the hiatus was about protecting E-mount, as for some people a fast 35mm is all you need, and the return is about trying to out-Leica Leica on profit margins. Sony are a very numbers driven company. I have always liked the RX1 series as it was one of the very few options if you wanted a full frame sensor and beautiful fast 35mm Zeiss lens matched to the sensor, in an overall package that is smaller than even Micro Four Thirds. Hands down one of the best compact cameras ever made... the Contax T3 of our times. The successor was never going to be cheap, but the price escalation in the camera industry really makes me an unhappy customer. I haven't bought a camera "new" for years.

Same sensor as the Nikon D4. I had a play with the Sigma BF recently, and the controls are quite frankly batshit. I came away a bit underwhelmed and it's definitely not an intuitive camera when you first pick one up. Some very strange decisions by Sigma going on with it. It does look pretty though.

After all the social media shilling of the last 10 years maybe Sony want to see if they now have the brand power to pull off Leica level mark-up (without the German bits) and enter the luxury goods business.

The RX1R can be had for as little as 700 quid and has the same very good Zeiss lens. The Leica M Typ 240 remains the cheapest and most underrated Leica for 2 grand if that floats your boat. I regret selling mine. The Sigma Fp-L with EVF-11 has same sensor as the RX1R III, but like the a7rc isn't as pocketable with a 35mm F2 on the front. The attraction of the RX1R for me has always been the fun factor and size, plus that Zeiss lens is one of the best you can get, perfectly optimised for the sensor and it sits right up against it, without the optical compromises of E-mount. But in some ways the Mark III goes backwards from the RX1R II, which sells for around £2k second hand. No articulated screen any more, and the beautifully engineered pop-up EVF is replaced with a boring standard one for cost reasons. If you don't need 4K or 60MP, that 42MP Mark II does a lot of things right including phase-detect AF. One thing I am curious about with the new model is whether they have modernised the lens. As the original lens had a big heavy element that moves around and slows down the AF system. The RX1R III at £4200 in the UK bodes well for the used price in a couple of years, probably down around £2800 unless they are really scarce. The US price seems to have been Trump-fucked. One final thought is I wish Sony would do a camera this size with E-mount, to give us something other than the Fp-L and Panasonic S9 to play with.

Love the RX1R III. Hate the price. Then again, people will pay this much and more for a Q3, and they are defining the market at the moment. Rich idiots

The 28-200mm has quite a wide sample variation in terms of sharpness and uniformity. I had to buy two before I had a good one. What I like about it is the size and weight, for such a nice range in full frame it's tiny. The optical stabilisation is also very good, especially in video mode - which is super-useful for cameras like the Sigma Fp that lack IBIS. An alternative (although I haven't tried it personally) on Sony/Nikon is the Tamron 28-200mm F2.8-5.6. Faster, but heavier and longer. No OIS, but cheaper.

Has anyone noticed with some of the biggest tech reviewers on youtube like Hardware Unboxed or MKHB, there's a trend at the moment for deadpan anti-hype style reviews. Be careful with that as well, it's a style-change to counteract the falling viewing figures caused by them overhyping everything every day for the past god-knows how many years, as people catch onto it and get bored of it.

Surely the main point is that if you can afford to shoot ARRI Alexa 35 you are not quibbling over software licensing fees over the week(s) long duration of a shoot. Whereas with Adobe they scavenge £ from grandmothers and students for years and years.

I got it from the resident Berlin Leica Thief.

The book is highly recommended 🙂 Or as they call them in the Netherlands... Booooooooooooooooooooooooooooek

Does Android 6 have Camera API 2.0? I'll try it out