Hungary by RX100

I'm in Hungary to practice my Hungarian BUT I strained my back before coming.

I decided not to carry around a heavy DSLR so I switched over to the RX100. This means that I am using the camera a lot in bright sunlight rather than indoors or at night which is what I usually do with the RX100. I really miss the optical viewfinder on the D300..


All pictures RAW converted in Lightroom:


1. The main square at Kesthely, straight out of the camera. Note for tech-heads: at 100% you can see every brick in the building with ease

Attachment 91958

2. The park between the hotel reception and the lake. Reworked in Lightroom to change the colour balance, bring back the sunlit part and increase the detail in the shadows

Attachment 91959

3. The woods along by the lake, the girl just held the pose for an instant but the RX100 is quick. I adjusted the colour balance and underexposed it in Lightroom to make it match what I saw

Attachment 91960

4. Sunset over Lake Balaton, straight out of the camera

Attachment 91961

5. Siofok portraitist. I used Lightroom highlights to bring back the detail in the drawing and brushed in the light on the couples faces

Attachment 91962

These look great, Charles. And I would expect no less from you. I especially like the last two. What ISO was that last one taken at?

I hope Sony will come out with a pocket camera with the RX100 sensor and a longer zoom. I'd happily give up a couple of stops on the lens for more zoom. But that sensor really is wonderful. Right now I'm looking at replacing my current pocket superzoom with either the Fujifilm F900EXR or the Panasonic LF1. I really love the pocket superzooms, even if I do give up some image quality. The Panasonic LF1 splits the difference, with an EVF and a larger sensor - although not as large as the Sony sensor.

Very nice! The RX100 (though I want the II with the flip out screen) really has my attention and you have shown it's capabilities well.

The inward lean on the first one would be a result of having to use a 10mm lens to get wide angle on the smaller 1" sensor, correct?

Terry

The lean on the first one is caused by pointing the camera slightly upwards at the "28mm" wide-angle setting. I haven't done a great deal of hardcore tourism so far (I'm at a holiday resort on Lake Balaton). But frankly I find that the LCD is putting me off in bright sunlight (which is all you get around here).

The picture of the couple was done at 1/30s f1.8 400 ISO (on auto ISO). If it had been a moving subject I would have switched to Shutter speed priority and chosen a higher shutter speed. The camera goes all the way up to 3200 ISO with RAW files that you can still manage.

The potential for work after dark is enormous - as long as you stick with the wide-angle setting and f1.8. At the tele setting the maximum aperture slips to f4.9 which is much less useful.

Here's an image where I had to switch to tele a bit and the camera chose 2500 ISO to keep a reasonable shutter speed (1/50s f3.2)

Attachment 91964

If we pixel peek on the violinist with the trousers you can see that there is still lots of detail visible.

Attachment 91965

The ISO 2500 doesn't look bad at all - especially not if you were shooting something closer, with less small details. Plus, there's plenty of room there for some noise reduction, if you want to use it.

By the way - I saw you're RX100 user review. Thanks a lot for writing it. Here's a link to that review if anyone wants to read it (or write their own RX100 review):

Sony Cybershot DSC-RX100 Reviews >>

Thanks, Charles!

Thanks! I'm now in a place with a decent Internet connection. Might have more pictures soon.

But my back is better so I've gone back to the D300 for serious picture-taking. A huge relief. As I said in my review the RX100 is a great camera - except for the lack of an optical viewfinder. But if it had one it wouldn't be so small.