agolex

Hey all.
Been a lurker here for many years already and finally registered - mainly because of this little camera. I've been shooting with DSLR's since the beginning of 5Dmkii days (and started shooting with the venerable Sony VX1000 DV camera many years ago!), but have shot on every camera out there from BMPC to RED Dragon / Alexa. I wanted something small, light and non-obtrusive and the RX10 ii seemed to fit it all.
Mine arrived on Friday afternoon and I went out yesterday and filmed some random images - mainly to test the ability of the camera (the narrative is piss poor!) So I focused on DOF, Latitude, variable frame rates as well as looking for moire and other artefacting.
Here it is: https://vimeo.com/135201792
Everything you need to know is in the description of the video.
Overall, I'm incredibly impressed with the quality of the footage coming out of it and my only gripe is the built-in kit lens which feels a little toy like. The images it makes are great, but I keep wondering how long that servo motor will hold out...time will tell.
Any questions, ask away.
 

Hello dafreaking, thanks for your inquiry, I hope I can be of help to you.
I'm not really sure about this, but as there's always software involved and adjustments made, I think it's a thing you just have to learn individually. The sensor size helps immensely, though, just using focus peaking worked relatively well for me. Andrew can probably say more about this.
The zooming certainly is far from silent and will most likely end up on the audio track. Other than that I didn't find it too annoying, though. And since the lens isn't parfocal, anyway...
Battery life is OK (few hours with a bit of recording here and there) and since the things are cheap, I don't see it as much of an issue.
Best regards,
Your unofficial Sony support

The cheap Transcends U3 (95/65) work flawlessly. In terms of batteries I got cheap ones for 14 Euros from your island (Expro), no issues, either.

Thanks again. : ) I'd also love the e-shutter for timelapse, always felt bad for the Nikon when I heard it snap every 20 seconds.

@agolex You can download raw samples here: http://www.photographyblog.com/previews/sony_a7r_ii_photos/
Photoshop CC supports them. I tried a few and the dynamic range looks amazing - as we can expect from a Sony-sensor. I'm pretty sure it will be on par - at least - with the D800.

Yep I agree. If you look in the footage from my previous post around 3:18 you can see that motion is captured very well.

@agolex: in the description: Shutter Speeds: Various (Sometimes very High). Occasional use of ND Filter on the 50mm 1.4 to achieve 180 degree shutter (1/50).
So looks like all the other shots are shot without ND's with high shutter speeds - that's what makes motion look bad...

The Steady Shot is superb, so no problem in handholding.
That limit is for the RX100M4, not for the RX10 for which the limit is as stated before 29:59 or something like that. I've recorded over 22 minutes in 4K and no issues. 

Reviewed my stills again and you're right. Quite a few nice shots around 3200. The ones I complained about before, I've just noticed, just had fast shutter. I like the grain very much, too, looks nicely organic.

Reviewed my stills again and you're right. Quite a few nice shots around 3200. The ones I complained about before, I've just noticed, just had fast shutter. I like the grain very much, too, looks nicely organic.

I for one am keeping the RX10 II, it's a really impressive compact package.

I for one am keeping the RX10 II, it's a really impressive compact package.

Transcend SDXC UHS-I U3 64GB (95 MB/s Read, 60MB/s Write) e.g.

I read that as an honest answer. This has been said over and over on this forum... Canon cameras just work. If you have 4K and it's overheating within 5 minutes, then it's not working, and since Canon's Rebel line is for enthusiasts, who will film their kid's birthday parties or baseball games, and it starts overheating before Susie blows out her candles, or before Billy gets up to the plate, that becomes a problem and in the end would hurt their brand more than not having it in the first place.

Canon are famed for their JPG/video colour science, not their RAW colour science. I might be wrong, but I think manufacturers have little control of their RAW colour science? It's all up to the software to interpret the data.
For example I just switched to Capture One Pro from Lightroom and find it to be so much better. 
Lightroom:

Capture One Pro

Started with some colour curves to balance the NX1 shot more towards blue, getting rid of the green cast. Then I just shifted the cool end of the blue spectrum further toward blue with a hue shift, and the warmer end of the green spectrum I shifted towards red with the same method. There were a few other tweaks to the saturation of different hues, but that was pretty much it. Could probably get it closer if I had access to the original files, but it's not bad.
 
I guess it would be possible to make a '1D C' colour profile preset that could be applied to NX1 (or any other camera) if you wanted that particular look. Will post a sony vegas preset if there's demand.

I am following on FB a French Pro photographer. Cool guy, 100% independent (no sponsor whatsoever). Of course his work is top, you can check a few of his pics here: https://500px.com/BeboyPhotographies
Yesterday he posted a funny post on FB so I am going to translate and summarize it here:
So this guy had a 5DIII since day one. Then he tried the A7R thanks to a friend and liked the quality, compared (pixel peep) with 5DIII and was blown away by : 
1- Dynamic Range (I saw his tests and when getting back the shadow informations and so on it was indeed crazy: clean on A7R, horrible on 5DIII)
2- sharpness (36mpx vs 20ish and lack of AA filter)
 
So he was shocked and was like "cool I don't need to bracket anymore, ... .." so he just bought the A7R and used it with his Canon lenses. Almost sold the 5D but never did it. 
He realized at the beginning that when he edited pictures, he got wired colors and "flat" image in the way not really pleasant like it was on the Canon, even after 2 hours of photoshop on it. But he thought that it was because of the learning curve of being on a new system. And then he was just used to it, and 10 months passed. 
And then, he checked back his very old pictures and was like wow... There were looking really nice on the 5DIII! and he remembered those wired colors and lack of nice contrast. 
So he decided to do some test with the old 5DIII again but in "real world" instead of pixel peeping. And the conclusion was easy: the 5DIII produces way better RAWs than the A7R. The result he can get on Photoshop is just better, better colors, better contrasts.... 
And looking at the past ten months: horrible A7R ergonomics, tons of problem (died because of non weather sealing) bad handling due to small body, ...., .... 

So he his now going back on the 5D !!!!
Well.... I got the 5DIII myself. I am super angry like Andrew about Canon and their shits (NO FEATURES on canon: they have the color science and lenses and thats it). Sony is completely focused on specs and features... Look at this awesome AR7II. But at the end of the day, what do we see ? Best results with 5DIII. 
In video, same with A7S and 1DC !!! what a surprise! A7S has specs (120fps, 4K, 23427490284294782048 ISO....) 1DC has nothing but the image is just miles ahead. 
 
So whatever do we say about canon, even if we split on them. 
If Canon does a 4K 5DIV or a 5DC because they choose to segment (and I think they will do one or the other) then it's gonna be a hell of a camera. 
 
I decided to post this stories because of the similarities with the video world (canon colors, sony colors...). 

I was sold with the A7R II, and now I just don't know anymore. 
I am still waiting for a good FF camera that does photo/video WELL... 

What do you think guys? 
 
 

​Here are some graded versions of this footage. A compressed version is available to download from vimeo. Just playing around, but it looks very nice.

Been shooting again and I have to say: the RX10M2 handles motion much better than the NX1, it just doesn't look as fragile and rolling-shutterish. This must be the integrated DRAM (possibly the stabilization, too). Really impressed. You can just film a bird on-the-fly (haha) on 200 mm and it never looks crappy. I'm probably keeping the Sony, even though it's possibly going to be 1-300 Euros less in a few months.
If they manage to build larger sensors with that architecture, we're probably in for an even bigger treat than the A7RM2.

Just installed Capture One (which is pretty nice btw, might replace Lightroom for me) so I could give the RX10M2's RAWs a spin and I wouldn't be surprised if it's the 14 bit uncompressed people are talking about (http://blog.esgi.co.uk/2015/06/sony-7r-ii-rx10-ii-rx100-iv-still-lossy.html). The images grade extremely well (you can recover ridiculous amounts of detail via Capture One's High Dynamic Range feature (especially in the highlights) and except the poor high ISO performance (usable up to about 2500 ISO, I'd say), which is to be expected from such a small sensor, the quality is unlike anything I've seen from a camera this size. I'd even go as far as saying that it trumps the a7s (which I didn't like too much stills-wise) except regarding DoF and low light of course. Can't even say the Nikon D800 is much better all of the time (except high ISO again, the RX10M2 pretty much sucks here with color noise and whathaveyou), this little Sony sensor really seems to have some magic going on. If only it wasn't Sony with their idiotic policies, abysmal support and retarded software limitations.
First still as shot, second with stupendous amounts of whatnot. :p

In terms of the mic: The TAKSTAR SGC-598 I bought seems pretty decent to me, don't know if/by what name it goes in your region, but here's a link to German Amazon: http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B00E1CTFZY Just get a cheap boomstick/handle with it.
I couldn't bear to pay that much money for (imho) mediocre mics as the Rode Rycote Videomic/Videomic Pro, I returned them both because I couldn't find the value I had paid for in them. And the retarded 9V blocks...The TAKSTAR sensibly takes AA batteries.
And recorder-wise possibly try a decent Android/iPhone app? Dunno if this would do the trick. The Rode Smartlav/Android combo works nicely for me.
At least for iPhone it seems you need an adapter, though. Dunno about Android, I believe they don't have the complicated setup. If you want me to test this on Android with the Takstar, just give me shout. Here's an article about the adapter you need for iPhone: http://www.danmccomb.com/news/iphone-4-as-audio-recorder-with-external-mic-a-comparison/

​I don't think it has any weather sealing, there's nothing about that on the official pages. I kinda doubt any consumer Sony camera has weather sealing.  http://tobinators.com/blog/index.php/2014/04/everything-else/sony-a7r-in-not-weatherproof-shock/ Found this here.
Anyhow, I just got mine and it's really a nice All-in-one package, liking it very much thus far. Unfortunately, the otherwise great remote app (best picture quality of all the apps by far) doesn't allow you to use a Picture Profile. Filed a feature request in the beginning of 2015 when I got an a7s, but naturally nothing has happened, yet. Wanted to use the camera for Vlogging as well, but now I can see that the RX100 IV would have been a better choice due to the fully tiltable display. Otherwise, it handles really well, the stabilization goes a long way and I feel that the handling is getting better (I hated the a7s ergonomics, but this thing now I think is quite nice).
Lightroom doesn't support the new RAW format yet, so I'll have to wait to judge stills quality, but video sure is sweet. Perhaps they're working on uncompressed stills finally and that's why it's not working anymore.
Here's a little Slomo clip I've just shot (pimped it a bit in Premiere):
 

In terms of the mic: The TAKSTAR SGC-598 I bought seems pretty decent to me, don't know if/by what name it goes in your region, but here's a link to German Amazon: http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B00E1CTFZY Just get a cheap boomstick/handle with it.
I couldn't bear to pay that much money for (imho) mediocre mics as the Rode Rycote Videomic/Videomic Pro, I returned them both because I couldn't find the value I had paid for in them. And the retarded 9V blocks...The TAKSTAR sensibly takes AA batteries.
And recorder-wise possibly try a decent Android/iPhone app? Dunno if this would do the trick. The Rode Smartlav/Android combo works nicely for me.
At least for iPhone it seems you need an adapter, though. Dunno about Android, I believe they don't have the complicated setup. If you want me to test this on Android with the Takstar, just give me shout. Here's an article about the adapter you need for iPhone: http://www.danmccomb.com/news/iphone-4-as-audio-recorder-with-external-mic-a-comparison/

In terms of the mic: The TAKSTAR SGC-598 I bought seems pretty decent to me, don't know if/by what name it goes in your region, but here's a link to German Amazon: http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B00E1CTFZY Just get a cheap boomstick/handle with it.
I couldn't bear to pay that much money for (imho) mediocre mics as the Rode Rycote Videomic/Videomic Pro, I returned them both because I couldn't find the value I had paid for in them. And the retarded 9V blocks...The TAKSTAR sensibly takes AA batteries.
And recorder-wise possibly try a decent Android/iPhone app? Dunno if this would do the trick. The Rode Smartlav/Android combo works nicely for me.
At least for iPhone it seems you need an adapter, though. Dunno about Android, I believe they don't have the complicated setup. If you want me to test this on Android with the Takstar, just give me shout. Here's an article about the adapter you need for iPhone: http://www.danmccomb.com/news/iphone-4-as-audio-recorder-with-external-mic-a-comparison/

​Well, all I'm saying is regulation exists or not because of political clout.  Lots of things influence that clout.  Money, words, symbols, media metaphors, whatever.  FWIW, I personally don't mind if drones get regulated.  
Let's also consider this:  someone's going to die today because alcohol is a legal drug.  Another person is going to die today because of a legally permissive gun culture.   I'm not saying the way American govermnment works is right or wrong, just how I think it is. 
If you believe that you can organize a group of drone operators to influence, positively, future legislation then go for it.  That is how it's supposed to work, but I'm certainly more cynical and believe that would, realistically, be a lost cause for the reason stated above.