Sony's premium compact comes with a number of useful tweaks while retaining its small size.
Sony knows it has a good thing on its hands with the RX100 premium compact range — the company has updated it pretty regularly since the first one was introduced.
Now called the RX100 Mark 3, the latest incarnation of this model has had a much bigger update than the previous versions.
Sony RX100 Mark 3 keeps the compact size of its predecessors while tweaking an already successful design for the better.
In fact, it has been upgraded where it matters most. For one thing, the 24-70mm equivalent lens now has a much brighter f/1.8-2.8 maximum aperture. For another, it now comes integrated with a very nifty little pop-up electronic viewfinder (EVF).
In the previous model, the EVF was an optional (and very expensive) extra and having it completely integrated into the camera without sacrificing compactness is a welcome move.
So what’s performance like on this tiny premium compact? Not too shabby, as I found out.
Tiny shooter
The Mark 3 is a small camera — it’s actually no bigger than a compact camera and looks like it too, with all the controls familiar to users of compacts.
However, build quality is certainly a cut above most cameras, which hints at the equally premium price you pay for this level of fit and finish.
EVF UP: The Sony RX100 Mark 3 electronic viewfinder is well-integrated into the body of the camera.
The drawback, of course, is that the camera uses a 1in sensor (same as its predecessor). The sensor is bigger and better than most compact cameras with smaller sensors, but it’s certainly not as large as a full-frame sensor or Micro Four Thirds.
As mentioned before, Sony has opted to include a 24-70mm f/1.8-2.8 lens instead of the 28-100mm f/1.8-4.9 equivalent lens of the RX100 Mark 2. You lose some zoom range, but you gain nearly two stops at the telephoto end compared with the Mark 2.
That is a reasonable trade-off in my opinion, as the wider apertures let in more light, which consequently allows lower ISO settings in low-light situations.
The star of the show, of course, has to be the nifty little pop-up EVF. When not in use, it sits completely flush with the body of the camera, and pops up when you push a little slider switch on the side.
Once it pops up, however, you still need to pull the EVF’s eyepiece out before you can look through it, and push it back in before you put it back in its silo.
The EVF is very nice — it’s a 1.44mil-dot affair and while the magnification is not great, it really is very useful when you shoot outdoors under very bright sunlight.
BRIGHTER LENS: The Sony RX100 Mark 3 has a 24-70mm equivalent lens with a maximum aperture of f/1.8 at the wide end and f/2.8 at the telephoto end.
The built-in LCD screen is tiltable and selfie shooters can rejoice — Sony allows you to flip the screen all the way up till it faces forwards for easy shots.
The LCD is still not touch-sensitive, a feature that would have made not only selfies easier but menu navigation as well.
Last but not least, there’s a multifunction rotating ring around the lens that allows you to change aperture in aperture priority mode, or change shutter speeds in shutter priority mode, and so on. Suffice to say if you’re used to compact camera controls, the Mark 3 will be immediately familiar to you.
Remote functionality
In keeping with the current trend for most new cameras coming out these days, the Mark 3 comes with WiFi and NFC (near-field communication) for easy pairing with smartphones that do have NFC built-in.
Sony has the rather cumbersomely-named Play Memories app available for both iOS and Android devices which can be used to transfer images to the smartphone and remotely control the camera.
As a remote control, the Play Memories app is rather basic and gives you live view and remote shooting, but you have no control of ISO, aperture or shutter settings.
Other than being very basic, however, the app worked as expected.
Image quality
In bright light at low ISO settings, the Mark 3 was a great performer — it consistently produced well-exposed shots with lots of detail and autofocus was pretty fast in most situations except in very dim light.
As far as ISO performance goes, the Mark 3 produces very low noise from the base ISO all the way up to ISO 800.
At ISO 1600, image quality is still very good and the camera does a good job of applying noise reduction while still holding onto detail.
STANDARD CONTROLS: The Sony RX100 Mark 3 has all the standard compact camera button controls, although most of these buttons can be mapped to other functions.
From ISO 3200 and up, however, noise reduction kicks in really aggressively and while it remains controlled at these higher ISO settings, you see a significant loss of detail in images.
One feature worth mentioning is that the Mark 3 has a new XAVC S codec for video recording in addition to the usual MPEG4 and AVCHD options.
XAVC S also records at 1080p resolution but at a much higher 50Mbps (megabits per second) bitrate which should produce cleaner, higher-quality videos.
The only caveat here is that you must have a fast SDXC card installed in the camera — the Mark 3 detects the type of card you have installed and if it’s SDHC or lower you will not be allowed to record using the XAVC S codec.
Conclusion
The RX100 Mark 3 is certainly one of the best compacts on the market right now — image quality is very good and the pop-up EVF is actually a cool feature that is actually quite useful.
The EVF will also turn heads when you pop it up. I’ve had many friends comment on it the moment I slid the switch and it popped up.
My only concern is the price — at RM2,999, it’s really a lot of money to pay, especially when you consider that you can get a mid-range DSLR (or a mirrorless camera) for the same price.
So the question you need to ask yourself is, would you pay for true pocketability over the versatility of a DSLR or mirrorless camera system? That is something only you can decide.
Pros: Great image quality; very pocketable; pop-up EVF is impressive.
Cons: Pricey.
RX-100 Mark 3 (Sony Corp) Premium compact camera
Sensor: 20.1-megapixel Exmor R BSI-CMOS sensor
Viewfinder: Pop-up SVGA OLED electronic viewfinder, 3in tilting WhiteMagic LCD
Lens: 24 - 70mm (35mm equivalent) f/1.8-2.8 Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T lens
Shutter speed: 30sec - 1/2000sec
ISO range: 125 - 12,800
Shooting modes: P, S, A, M, Scene modes
Video format: Up to 1080p at 60fps using MPEG4, AVCHD, XAVC S
Battery: 1,240mAh lithium-ion
Storage: SDXC
Interface: USB 2.0, MicroHDMI
Other features: NFC, WiFi 802.11bgn
Dimensions (W x H x D): 102 x 58 x 41mm
Weight: 290g
Website: www.sony.com.my
Price: RM2,999
Rating: 4 stars
- Source: The Star Online
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