Gadgetory

I'm David at the verge and this is the sony rx10 it's hard to describe what this camera is on one hand it's a lot like a DSLR it looks like one with a big grip a big lens and a viewfinder at $1,299 it's priced like one two but it doesn't have interchangeable lenses or a big sensor or dials and buttons everywhere but it doesn't matter it's fantastic it has a carl zeiss lens with a 24 to 200 millimeter equivalent zoom at a bright f 2.8 the whole way I've never seen a lens quite like this and it's well-suited to shooting everything from portraits to sports the only trouble it ever caused me was trying to quickly zoom in and out since it's all done electronically it's a little slow to shift even if you use the manual zoom ring but it has really solid macro performance it's sharp across the entire image and it allows for a really spectacular range of shots it's become my go-to camera for letting people who don't know anything about photography the rx10 almost never takes a bad picture it occasionally over exposes shots but it has beautiful colors accurate lighting and metering and produces genuinely gorgeous photos nearly every time its ability to take shots in low-light with soft backgrounds and with high dynamic range is completely unlike any point-and-shoot I've ever used other than Sony's own rx 100 which actually has the same 1-inch 20.2 megapixel sensor as the rx 10 it's able to shoot comfortably up to ISO 3200 and even higher if you're putting your photos on Facebook and not a billboard there's some software noise reduction happening here and I wound up with some really soft photos in really terrible light but the fast by ons X processor mostly helps a lot I had to work hard to find a shot the RX 10 couldn't handle its autofocus is its only real problem most of the time it's really fast but it often hunts too much or just completely guesses wrong and takes a blurry shot it's especially bad when it's fully zoomed in and it did cost me a few great pictures but luckily only a few I should say that the RX 10 is really not comparable to even a mid-range DSLR the cheaper Canon t5i with the right lens will take sharper pictures and do better in low light and a camera like that gives you so much more room to grow into photography as well this camera is what it is but for some people that's a good thing for people who want that the size of the rx 10 is going to be its only real drawback the weatherized leathery magnesium body weighs almost two pounds and it's almost six inches thick with the huge lens retracted this camera is not fitting in your pocket that's what the rx100 is for but what you get in return is that you zoom range and enough manual control that you can definitely make the rx10 do exactly what you want there's a 3-inch LCD on the back which tilts up or down and lets you shoot from either above your head or below your waist an electronic viewfinder with all the same advantages you can see lots of information without taking your eye away and disadvantages it's just not as accurate as an optical viewfinder as any other but I'm coming around to evey F's and Sony's really is one of the best there's also a dedicated button for recording video which you can do with one tap from anywhere on the camera video looks great and sounds great too though it does take a slightly finer touch you can shoot 1080p up to 60 frames per second and everything is clear and sharp but the cameras noise cancellation and image stabilization can both be kind of rough the zoom is super smooth though and does a nice job of keeping focus as you go there are little nods to convenience everywhere Sony knows exactly who's going to buy this camera dr extend charges via micro USB and does so a little slower than I'd like but it means you'll never have trouble finding a charging cable for the camera there's a built-in flash an easily accessible SD card slot and a standard hotshoe even the interface is simple burying all but the most common settings where they can't possibly hurt you it turns on in less than three seconds has almost no shutter lag and shoots about two shots per second in standard mode many of the people upgrading to the rx 10 will be coming from cell phone cameras so Sony built Wi-Fi and NFC into the camera itself you can control the shutter share pictures and change settings right from your phone that's nice but the implementation here is rough Sony's PlayMemories app is ugly and overly simple and it just doesn't work that well but that doesn't really matter because everything else about the RX 10 works so well it takes great pictures whether you're insanely close up or incredibly far away it takes great video - and it does it all without you needing to do much of anything except point-and-shoot the really killer thing is that it's so expensive at twelve hundred nine dollars it's really only going to work for photographers looking for a versatile second camera or people who don't know or want to know anything about photography but have some money to burn but Sony knows that most people who buy DSLRs never take off the kit lens and many of those people would be much happier with in rx 10 and while point-and-shoot cameras may deserve to be dying cameras like the RX 10 first little shooters that take great pictures in auto and even better with some effort might just be the future you