Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX10

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX10; 1", mirrorless, with a finder. Wow.

What first caught my eye was the sleek design of this SLR-like camera. And then, I looked a little deeper…


This is what appears to be a new breed of superzoom camera, and an evolutionary step in its development. It uses a 1" sensor; the same kind used in the Nikon 1 and Sony DSC-RX100. And because of this increased sensor size, if falls under the “Mirrorless” category.

The term “Mirrorless” is the latest buzz-word in photography to denote a premium digital camera that is not an SLR (Single-Lens Reflex, the reflex part being the mirror). With less mechanical parts, they are cheaper to produce, faster, cheaper to produce, smaller and lighter, cheaper to produce, more reliable and oh, by the way, cheaper to produce. With the exception of SLRs and TLRs, all cameras, film or digital, have pretty much been mirrorless all along. So, this is really all hype.

But all to often, the term mirrorless equates to fingerless, which is bad. If you’re going to shoot with a finderless camera, you might as well just shoot with a mobile phone camera, which between you and me, I feel is going to replace the digital compact point-and-shoot camera as we know it.

This camera does have a viewfinder, an EVF one, and a fairly usable one at that. It boasts a 1.14MP resolution, which is not great, but pretty darn good. And once they perfect these EVFs, the DSLR will slowly die. But this I fear will occur about the same time I can replace my wife a such a remarkably life-like android that I won’t know the difference, so I’m not going to hold my breath.

A Zeiss 24mm-200mm f/2.8 lens. A fixed 2.8 aperture mind you; that’s 200mm at f/2.8, and pretty remarkable in itself. 20MP and ISO up to 12,800. 62mm filter threads, so you can equip it will all number of filters and lens hoods, just like a pro. But wait, there’s more. A top-mounted LCD? On a camera like this? Outstanding.

The layout of the controls are minimalist; simple, but elegant. There aren’t a lot of the dedicated buttons and knobs, so you’re going to have to hunt through menus to find stuff, and not having taken one out for a test drive I can’t speak to how easy that will be. But this looks like a winner, and carrying this will make you look and shoot like a pro. It’s not cheap, but it will save you so much money not getting caught in the lens-buying game.

This is its little brother, the rangefinder-like RX100:

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100; 1", mirrorless and finderless.

If you like Leica rangefinders, this is a nice alternative. Faster lens, but not as much range (28-100mm), and not a fixed aperture. You’ll be shooting 100mm at f/4.9. Nothing great. It does go to f/11 though for wide depth of field with overall sharpness.

But…wait for it…NO VIEWFINDER! No problem, just attach an external one, like Leica owners do, right? WRONG. No hot shoe either. Which is why they’ve already released the RX100 II, with a hot shoe.

Honestly, how can you make cameras for so long, and forget to put a hot shoe on them? Really. Whoever engineered and signed off on the original model needs to have their walking papers handed to them. So, observe the bump…

The RX100 II sports a hot shoe. Oh boy.

That’s better. I can’t complain too much, Sony now seems to be getting it right with their line of thinking. The new Alpha a7R is a good example. That’s the route Nikon should have taken. We’ll just have to see if they fall in line, or miss the boat again.