In "Sony Time" it seem like we're getting close to a refresh of the RX10 series. What would I like to see?

The Sony RX10iii in a Camvate cage topped with a Zoom H5 audio recorder equipped with an SSH-6 stereo/shotgun microphone. 

I'm a huge fan of the Sony RX10 series of cameras but I am not blind to their shortcomings. I get a sense that we'll be seeing another RX10 (or two) in the next few months and I'm hoping that Sony makes a few tweaks to the RX10iii product to make it even better. At the same time I'm hoping they introduce a new, more niche-y variant which I'll flesh out below.

The original Sony RX10 was a breakthrough product; a highly capable video camera, wrapped up in a high performance, one inch sensor photography camera. The two things that made the original such an important camera (for me) were the introduction of a really good sensor, at an interesting size, as well as a remarkably good zoom lens with a range I found to be just about perfect.

The original camera had a mediocre video codec but this was remedied in a firmware update which elevated the camera from having an AVCHD video file system that capped out at 28 mbs to a more advanced XAVC-S video file system that delivered 50 mbs; which delivered more detailed video images.

The next generation; the RX10ii kept the lens and body pretty much the same but delivered UHD 4K video and a much improved (higher resolution) EVF. Along with the UHD implementation the camera also offered faster fps settings in 1080p.

The current generation; the RX10iii, more of less blew the lid off

Today I stood on a wall and took a photograph of a building a mile away. It worked out.

The Texas State Capitol. Shot handheld from the "Graffiti Wall" nearly a mile away. 

I had no agenda this afternoon; no project whining to be finished. I've spent the last three days editing video in order to get a "rough cut" ready to deliver on Tuesday morning. I put my finishing touches on the Final Cut Pro X project around three p.m. and couldn't wait to get out of the studio and into the first afternoon of warm, fresh sunlight that we've had in what seems like weeks. My editor will come in tomorrow morning and polish the rough cut, fix some of the awkward transitions, fine tune the audio a bit and make me look more detail oriented than I really am. 

I grabbed the same camera I've been using non-stop for the last two weeks and headed out the door to recalibrate my eyes from the 24-36 inch range back to the 10 ft. to infinity range. My general cure for sitting too long, staring at a computer screen, is to get out and walk and take a lot of time to look at things off in the distance. That's how I came to be standing on the high wall of the Graffiti Park ( The Hope Outdoor Gallery )  aiming the long end of my point-and-shoot camera's zoom lens at the domed edifice. I brought down the exposure here and tossed in a bit of the ole "enhance" slider. I also dodged the Capitol Building to taste...

I'm no expert, having only done this for a living for nearly thirty years and having owned every major camera system on the market, along with my share of premium long glass....but....I think the technical quality of the image is remarkably good. Sadly, though I adore nostalgia and the rose colored glasses of reminiscence, I must confess that never in the history of my career in photography have I had the ability or capability to make a photograph with this sort of magnification without relying on several stout tripods (one for the camera and second for the lens). You may have a resting heart rate of 10, have never touched a cup of coffee and are able to hold a car over your head for a good amount of time but the rest of us never had a prayer of doing a shot like this, handheld, teetering on the top of a wall, nearly a mile away. I promise. 

And this is one more reason why I say that the Sony RX10iii, and cameras like it (none yet exist) are going to change the whole paradigm of working man's cameras ----  instead of being just another impulse purchase that found it's way into Tuck's bag. 

You don't need to buy one if you don't want one or need one but the lens alone is worth the price of admission to the people who crave long focal lengths. Whether or not you should buy one has nothing to do with understanding the benefits of a novel combination of features which make the end product more than the sum of the parts. 

I also took other photographs this afternoon but this one (and the idea behind it) were asking for their own blog entry.

My careful, overdue review of the Sony RX10ii. It's a pretty amazing camera...

The real Sony "cult" camera of our time.

This is a review of two cameras. The original Sony RX10 and it's updated self, the RX10ii. I bought the original RX10 when it first came out in 2013 and bought a slightly used RX10ii right after the start of this year. There are many similarities between the two cameras but there are also a few differences between them and, if you do various kinds of work, you'll want to know what those differences are and how they might apply to the kinds of projects or assignments you might use one of these two cameras for.

I'll start with the usual disclaimer. I bought both of these cameras with my own funds, out of my own pocket. I am not a Sony explorer or visionary or an exploder of light. I am not a member of their professional club; I don't even know if they have one. I bought the first camera from Precision Camera and Video in Austin, Texas and, other than having shopped there for nearly 30 years, I have no connection, obligation, quid pro quo or other relationship with them and, as both these products have been on the market for a while, no one is kicking down my door trying to motivate me to type faster or say nice things about the cameras.

I am writing about them because I think they are powerful tools that work well for many of the professional, commercial assignments I use them on, and I think if more people knew more about these cameras they might find that they have far more choices in the tools they can use for successful photography and video than they might currently think. In some ways I am writing this to shift the collective idea of what constitutes a "professional" camera a bit.

Before we dive in let me write a quick summary of what these cameras are. For want of a better term, these are "bridge cameras." That designation was first coined to describe cameras that were more than point-and-shoots but somehow "less" than DSLRs. The basic formula is to make an all-in-one camera with a non-detachable lens that can, in many situations, take the place of bigger, traditional cameras. A substitute for a Canon Rebel or A Nikon D3x00 camera. For over a decade the cameras in this class came with long lenses and small sensors. The lenses could have a lot of magnification just because the sensor was smaller. But the lenses were not often great. Most sacrificed a bit of image quality performance for sheer range and sacrificed fast apertures (as the lenses zoomed out) for smaller package sizes.

The first model to shift the parameters, and shift our thinking about bridge cameras, was also a Sony. It was a model called the R1 and it was introduced around 2005, shipped mostly in 2006. It was a different beast in that it used a much bigger imaging sensor. Almost APS-C in size! And it combined that big sensor with a very, very high quality Zeiss zoom lens that was specifically designed to get the maximum in image quality from its matched sensor. That camera came with a decent EVF and a very useful (and movable) rear screen that could even be used as a waist level viewer.

The lens was a 24-120mm equivalent that started with f2.8 at the wide end and ended up with f4.8 at the longer end. Here's the review from the granddaddy of review sites: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sonydscr1

While it was a contrast detect AF system, in good light it was pretty fast and it also allowed for manual focusing with image magnification. The camera shot raw but in the raw mode the buffer was painfully slow. Two shot and a freeze up for a few seconds. I ended up shooting Jpegs with mine for everything but studio still life work.

The R1 was a very interesting camera but I think it never sold well. Certainly not at its introductory price of $1995. So, after a year or two on the market the camera got killed by Sony and nothing in that space came along that challenged the R1's camera technology high points or did much of anything interesting.

In 2013 Sony woke me up from my bridge camera slumber by introducing the original RX10 camera. It's based around a very, very good and very low noise, one inch sensor and a really well designed and  implemented Zeiss 24-200mm constant aperture, f2.8 lens. The first model has a really good EVF while the second model has a great one.  But the thing that made most of us who initially wanted one sit up and take notice was it's video capabilities. In some ways I suspect that both of the RX10 cameras are just great video cameras that also take wonderful, high resolution photographs.

I bought one of the first RX10s to hit Austin and started experimenting with it right away. I shot architecture for a magazine with it and also shot stage shows, concerts and even portraits with it and nearly always walked away a bit amazed. Of all the cameras I own, these are the ones I grab when I walk out the door not knowing what I'll want to end up shooting. And I rarely need more. So, let's dive in...

In the best of all worlds who do I think Sony designed these cameras for? When I think about these cameras I imagine that the following discussion took place among the top camera designers and photographic thinkers at Sony. I think they looked at the overall market for photography and, for a moment, focused on professional journalists. They knew that more and more writers were being asked to take photographs for their own articles. It's always cheaper to send one person who can write well and take passable images than it is to send two salaried professionals out on the same job. The Sony designers could point to examples of dedicated photographers around the world being tossed out the doors of newspapers and multi-media content producers while the writers at the same companies were being trained to become jacks of all trades.

At the same time there was also a strong shift in what had been tradition commercial (non-retail) and corporate photography. Younger photographers were blurring the lines between conventional photographic service and video production. After all the new photographers coming into the market had, in many cases, grown up comfortable with taking, and sharing, video. The designers at Sony imagined the pressures that the "new" journalist would be under. They would need a camera that could serve a one person crew. It would have to be relatively easy to operate, easy to handle and also have the capability to take video that would be good enough, technically, to be used on web channels and even local television broadcasts.

I believe that the RX10 represented Sony's vision of

Making robots and speaking Chinese. Sure is fun to be a student these days.

Part of the Robotics Team.

Now that I'm totally finished with my photography project at the school I wrote about I thought I'd spend a little time mulling the assignment over and thinking about what worked, what didn't work, and how to improve my odds the next time I embark on helping to create an image asset library for a company or institution. 

I'm an eternal optimist at the start of every job and an anxious pessimist when I'm packing up the cameras and lights and heading home to start the post processing. I see little reason to worry up front so I'm always a tad light on pre-production planning and making tight schedules. I see little reason for hope once I've snapped the last image and I bite my nails in post production, certain that everything I tried will fail.

The reality is that I spent three days of walking through and around the (pre-K to eighth grade) school relentlessly making photographs. I seem to have arrived at the right spots at the right times to catch well over 2,000 good images (edited down from 3800), but many of them are variations of a set-up. I could get to a higher percentage of keepers if I shot less but my philosophy when shooting in a documentary mode (we did no set-ups) is to keep shooting in the belief that no matter how great the shots you already got are there's bound to be something even better, if you give it all a chance to play out. So that means I shoot the hint of a smile and wait around for that hint to blossom into a full, genuine smile; shooting all the time. Same with action. I also find that the longer I shoot the less attention gets paid to me and the more authentic the expressions and actions of most groups become. I'm sure you can make a case for being a parsimonious shooter