The Sony RX100 is one of the best compact cameras you can buy, a technical marvel that provides pretty good quality in a compact package, has good auto focus, a reasonably fast lens (one stop slower that a crop sensor camera with a kit lens for the 24-200 m7) that is surprisingly sharp, and can even get into macro range with a 1:2 magnification ratio. Hardware wise there is little to complain about, we are very close to what is physically possible in such a small package.
Unfortunately, it also has an interface that puts people off Sony cameras for life. Part of it is just a wrong priority on size at any cost:
- The tripod mount is not located beneath the optical axis, but off center and so close to the battery door that putting a plate will necessarily block it. Moving it below the axis would free the door, and make holding the camera with a plate attached more comfortable.
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There is so little space for controls, that they are all cramped, and make modifying settings less smooth than it can be. The Nikon 1 V3 was only marginally smaller, but it allowed for just enough additional controls to have two dials to modify settings in addition to focus and zoom rings on the lens.
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The body is slippery because it has no integrated grip. Everyone puts an extra grip on it, it would be so much better to integrate that, and use the extra space for a larger battery.
Making the body 1cm wider and 4mm higher, and adding an integrated grip would keep the camera pocketable, but allow enough space to rework the controls to be much easier and more fun to use. Also the touch screen has a pretty wide black margin on its left, so you could move that margin to the right, and add a few control buttons there to improve direct control, easily reachable from your right hand.
The control missing most on the camera is support for back button focus. It prevents us from setting the camera to AF-C, and simply keep using that mode if we want precision control for manual focus. The typical approach to taking manual focus image is to use auto focus to get an initial lock, zoom in to get critical focus, zoom out again to ensure the composition is correct, and then take the image. The RX100 has two drive modes for manual focus, DMF with auto focus which is mostly useless because you half press for auto focus, and then keep it half pressed, while adjusting focus, without a way to get back to check composition. Or use MF, which is fully manual focus. There is an option to set a control to toggle between AF/MF, which allows quick switching. But it comes with no indication in the viewfinder, and is still more work than needed with back button focus. Even though you can customize the control rings, focus is not one of the options.
Finally we have the disaster that is connectivity:
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WiFi speeds are too slow, and should be at least 800 Mbps
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Does not support importing raw images over WiFi, and we have no choice of the processed format that we want to import. It is fixed at 2MP images (actually 1616*1080, even smaller, and not even 3:2), or VGA thumbnails. No choice to define your own processing of the 5472 × 3648 pixels. I often find that a higher pixel count (e.g., 3000×2000) with more aggressive compressions yields an overall nicer image, and it would be nice to have more options. Also the app really needs to learn not to show superfluous pop ups every time I do something: Why interrupt me with a popup of my selected transfer quality, when this could be just a small indicator in the images list?
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Connection is not possible to initiate from a paired device. You must activate the Send to Smartphone function on the camera to start the WiFi network. Why can we not use Bluetooth to tell the camera that it should start its WiFi? A good Bluetooth chip that advertises maybe once every second (plenty fast to initiate contact) is able to run half a year on a CR2032. Even better would be if we could get Apple to support open protocols to achieve AirDrop performance, with the network all happening in the background.
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USB is still Micro-USB with 480 Mbps, this really needs to become USB C with at least 5 Gbps, preferably 10 Gbps, adding also power delivery that can charge and operate the camera at the same time.
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In support of this read speed, the next model should switch to CFExpress Type A cards. They are roughly the same size as SD Cards, are more durable, and have faster speeds. Or maybe even move on to internal flash. 128 GB would be enough for normal usage, you could add a 512 GB model for heavy users, and at Apple prices of $400 for 1TB it would still be cheaper than cards costing around $1500 per TB for capacities up to 256GB.