Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX10 III


PROS

  • 1-inch image sensor.
  • 25x wide-aperture zoom lens.
  • Quick autofocus.
  • 4fps burst shooting.
  • Raw image capture.
  • Dust and splash resistant body.
  • EVF and tilting rear LCD.
  • Monochrome information LCD.
  • Wi-Fi with NFC.
  • 4K video capture.
  • High-def slow motion.

CONS

  • Very expensive.
  • Omits internal neutral density filter.
  • Lens hood blocks flash at wide angles.

BOTTOM LINE

  • The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX10 III marries an incredible 25x zoom lens to a large image sensor and delivers excellent images, 4K video, and fast autofocus. But it carries a premium price tag.

Design

Like its predecessors, the RX10 III$1,498.00 at Amazon mimics a compact SLR in styling and size. It measures 3.7 by 5.2 by 5 inches (HWD) and weighs a hefty 2.4 pounds. Compare this with an entry-level SLR, like the Canon EOS T6s$849.00 at Amazon, which measures 4 by 5.2 by 3.1 inches without a lens. You’d need to carry at least two zooms—the Sigma 17-70mm$499.00 at Amazon (1 pound) and Canon EF 100-400mm$2,099.00 at Amazon (3.6 pounds) for example—to cover the same range as the RX10 III. When you consider the cost (and weight) of a pair of good zoom lenses, the RX10 III’s price comes into perspective.

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An SLR and a pair of lenses do have some inherent advantages in image quality when compared with a superzoom. But the 1-inch sensor used by the RX10 III makes the gap between compact and SLR smaller—it’s about a third of the size of the APS-C format used by consumer SLRs. Pros will still want an interchangeable lens camera for paying gigs, but the RX10 III is a phenomenal all-around performer, capable of capturing wide-angle landscapes, wildlife at long telephoto distances, macro shots, and dimly lit street scenes, all in a package that’s not much bigger than an entry-level SLR with a starter zoom lens.

The versatility comes not just from the sensor, but from the lens. The 8.8-220mm f/2.4-4 zoom covers the same range as a 24-600mm lens on a full-frame camera. Of course, no 24-600mm full-frame zoom exists. The RX10 III doesn’t feature a fixed f/2.8 aperture like previous models in the series, but its f/2.4-4 zoom betters other long zoom 1-inch models, including the Panasonic FZ1000$797.99 at Amazon (25-400mm f/2.8-4) and Canon G3 X$899.00 at Amazon (24-600mm f/2.8-5.6) in terms of range and light-gathering capability.

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Close focus is a strong point. At its widest angle the RX10 III can focus to 1.2 inches, and it can lock on as close as 2.4 feet when zoomed all the way in. You’ll have no problems getting up close and personal with subjects at wider angles, and when zoomed all the way in you can capture images at about 1:2 magnification at the minimum focus distance. The lens is stabilized, with a 4.5-stop CIPA rating, so you can capture crisp images (and jitter-free video) when shooting handheld at longer shutter speeds.

The RX10 III is priced at a level that’s off-putting to casual photographers, but it does have have a fully Automatic mode, as well as Scene modes to tune settings to capture certain types of photographs—sports action, landscapes, moonlit shots, sunsets, and portraits, among others. To get a real grasp of its zoom power, take a look at the wide shot of the sky above, with the moon at the center of the frame, captured at 24mm. The image below is captured from the same position at 600mm, without any additional cropping.

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For those that like to take manual control over exposure, the RX offers ample manual controls, supplemented by a solid overlay menu system. There are three rings on the lens itself—manual focus, zoom, and aperture. The aperture can be set to turn at third-stop increments with click stops, or to turn freely for video use, with a range of f/2.4 through f/16. There’s an unmarked button on the left side of the lens barrel; it activates focus hold, which is useful for situations when you want to recompose a shot after focus has been locked.

The focus mode toggle switch, with settings for Single, Continuous, Direct Manual Focus (DMF), and Manual Focus, is situated on the bottom corner of the faceplate, accessible using your left hand. Save for DMF, which allows you to override autofocus at any time using the manual focus ring, the modes are self-explanatory.

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The Mode dial sits on the top plate, to the left of the pop-up flash and hot shoe. The flash itself is raised using a mechanical release. If you’re using it, you’ll want to remove the lens hood for shots at 40mm or wider, as it will cast a shadow. With the hood removed the flash has no problem covering the 24mm wide-angle frame.

To the right of the shoe you’ll find a monochrome information LCD. It shows aperture, shutter speed, white balance setting, drive mode, the number of shots remaining on the memory card, and the battery life. Its orange backlight is toggled by a button just above it. Other top controls include customizable C1 (by default, ISO) and C2 (Drive Mode) buttons, and a dial to set Exposure Value compensation (from -3 to +3 in third-stop increments). The shutter release, which is threaded so that it can accept a mechanical release cable, sits atop the front handgrip, surrounded by a zoom control lever and the power switch.

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The Menu button is nestled into a corner to the left of the EVF and above the rear LCD. To the right of the eyecup you’ll find the Movie button and the rear control dial. Below it you’ll find AEL (Autoexposure Lock) and Fn buttons, a flat control wheel that supports push-button input at the cardinal directions and center, Delete/C3, and Play buttons. Most of the buttons can be reprogrammed.

The Fn button launches an on-screen overlay menu. It supplements the physical controls, providing quick access to set the Drive Mode, flash output settings, focus area, ISO, metering pattern, white balance, and JPG output parameters by default. Like the physical buttons, the bank of 12 total settings can be customized to suit your needs.

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The rear LCD is mounted on a hinge. It can tilt up or down, but doesn’t face all the way forward, a downer for the selfie crowd. It’s crisp, with 1,228k dots packed into its 3-inch frame. One quarter of those dots is there to increase luminance, so the LCD is visible on bright days. The only real complaint is that touch input isn’t supported. Tap to focus is a very useful feature on competing models with touch screens, including the Panasonic FZ1000, and it’s missed here.

An eye-level viewfinder is also included in the design. It uses OLED technology and sports a 2,359k-dot resolution, matching the excellent EVF found in the RX10 II. When zoomed to the 50mm position, the EVF is rated at 0.7x magnification, equivalent to a pro-grade full-frame camera like the Nikon D810$3,296.95 at Dell. An eye sensor automatically selects the EVF or rear display; it’s less sensitive than similar sensors on earlier RX10 models, and that’s a good thing, since the RX10 and RX10 II have a tendency to switch the feed to the EVF too early and black out the rear LCD unexpectedly.

Wi-Fi and Physical Connections

The RX10 III includes Wi-Fi with NFC. It works with a companion app, available for Android and iOS, to transfer images to your smartphone for easy sharing on social networks. Remote control is also available. The RX10 III ships with a very basic remote app installed—it only allows you to adjust EV compensation, zoom the lens, and take a picture. However, can connect the camera to Sony’s PlayMemories Camera App store and install a free update that expands the remote, giving you full control over exposure along with tap-to-focus through your smartphone. It’s unfortunate that Sony doesn’t include the more robust remote app out of the box. Requiring owners to create an account and download it helps to promote its own app store, which includes several other applications that expand the functionality of the RX10 III—some free, but many priced at $5 and up.

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The RX10 III has several interfaces for accessories. The multi-interface hot shoe can accommodate an external flash or a balanced XLR microphone. There are also standard 3.5mm microphone and headphone jacks for analog audio input and monitoring. The micro HDMI port outputs a clean, uncompressed signal, so you can use a field recorder for video if desired. It’s joined by a micro USB port, which is used to connect to a PC or to charge the RX10 III’s battery. The memory card slot supports SD, SDHC, SDXC, and Memory Stick Duo media.

Sony opts not to include an external charger, which is a shame, especially when you consider the price point. If you want to charge a battery and continue to have use of the camera, you’ll want to invest in an external charger as well as a spare battery. CIPA rates the RX10 III for 370 images using the EVF and 420 using the rear LCD, but video recording—especially in slow motion—eats away at the battery more quickly than shooting stills. We recommend picking up an extra battery and an external charger, especially if you’re looking at the RX10 III as a traveling companion. That will allow you to charge one battery in-camera and a second in a charger simultaneously, which is a common situation after a long day of shooting vacation pictures and video.

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Performance and Image Quality

The RX10 III may not support interchangeable lenses, but it’s as speedy as an SLR in many respects. Its startup speed (2.3 seconds) is on the slow side, as the power zoom lens must extend before a shot is fired. Autofocus is extremely quick, locking in less than 0.05-second both at the 24mm and 600mm positions. The latter is a feat for any superzoom.

Burst shooting with locked focus is possible at 14fps when shooting JPGs or at 8fps when the camera is set to Raw or Raw+JPG capture and the Drive is set to Speed Priority. When paired with a fast SanDisk 280MBps memory card you can expect to capture 45 JPGs, 28 Raw+JPG, or 27 Raw images before the rate slows. You can also set the focus to continuous and the Drive to the standard high-speed mode, which slows the rate to 5fps but reacquires focus between each shot. In our standard continuous focus test, which photographs an object moving toward and then away from the camera at a steady rate, the RX10 III nailed almost every shot with those settings.

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That test mostly fills the frame with a single plane on which to focus. In the real world you’re going to face more erratic objects, often against difficult backgrounds. I was pretty happy with the RX10 III’s focus system set to its wide coverage area in field tests, especially when combined with the tools it offers to identify and track subjects.

One of those is Lock-on AF, tracks a specific target. If the wide focus area is having a hard time identifying the right subject for focus, or if you want to track a moving subject as it moves, locking onto a target is a good idea. The RX10 III does a solid job keeping track of moving targets, although it can get confused if you allow them to exit the frame. It tends to reacquire subjects with similar color palettes, which can require you to start the tracking process anew.

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The RX10 III also supports Eye AF, which is a useful tool for portraiture. It looks for human eyes, drawing a small green dot around the eye when it finds one, to ensure that they enjoy the sharpest point of focus in a portrait. It’s especially helpful as the RX10’s lens can manage quite a shallow depth of field, especially when shooting a headshot or head-and-shoulders portrait, where locking focus on the eyes is essential.

I used Imatest to evaluate the image quality delivered by the RX10 III and its 20MP image sensor. At 24mm f/2.4 it delivers excellent performance, scoring 2,536 lines per picture height on a center-weighted sharpness test. That’s better than the 1,800 lines we want to see in a photo. Edge quality sometimes suffers, and while the edges of the frame lag behind the center, they score 1,922 lines, still crisp enough to show fine detail.

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Stopping down to f/2.8 doesn’t effect image quality, but there’s a jump at f/4. The overall score improves to 2,810 lines, with edges that hit 2,436 lines. Peak performance is at f/5.6 (2,857 lines), and there’s a slight hit in image quality at f/8 due to diffraction—the lens scores 2,694 lines there. We don’t recommend shooting at f/11 or f/16, as image quality takes a more serious hit there, and f/8 will deliver ample depth of field for most shots that require it.

At 50mm the maximum aperture narrows to f/3.2. Overall image quality is excellent, with Imatest showing a 2,768-line result here, with edges that are just as sharp as the center of the frame. There’s a bump at f/4 (2,829 lines), with a slight drop at f/5.6 (2,779 lines) and f/8 (2,606 lines).

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At 100mm the maximum f-stop narrows to f/4. Performance remains extremely strong, the average score across the frae is 2,837 lines, and edges are just as sharp as the center. Image quality stays steady at f/5.6 (2,801 lines), and starts to drop at f/8 (2,595 lines). The story is the same at 200mm, with strong results at f/4 (2,715 lines), f/5.6 (2,825 lines) and f/8 (2,609 lines).

Results remain steady at 300mm f/4 (2,723 lines), f/5.6 (2,726 lines) and f/8 (2,553 lines). At 400mm there’s a slight drop—2,670 lines at f/4, 2,679 lines at f/5.6, and 2,513 lines at f/8. This is the first zoom setting where we’re sampling fewer data points on the test chart, as space constraints in our testing lab don’t allow the chart to be framed from edge to edge at with this level of zoom engaged.

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There are fewer data points analyzed at 500mm, so take the drop-off in score with a grain of salt, it appears to be more dramatic in the lab than it was in real-world testing. At 500mm the lens scores 2,199 lines at f/4, 2,450 lines at f/5.6, and 2,244 lines at f/8. The same is true at 600mm, where our tests show the lens delivering its weakest performance (1,990 lines at f/4, 2,525 lines at f/5.6, and 2,329 lines at f/8).

The RX10 III’s only competition in the 1-inch space as far as zoom range goes is the Canon G3 X. The G3 X is less expensive and smaller, but it doesn’t include a built-in EVF, is a little slow to focus, and its zoom lens has an f/2.8-5.6 variable aperture—it captures less light than the RX10 III. The Canon’s lens also lags behind in sharpness. Its center-weighted resolution never hits the same level as the Sony, and its edge performance leaves us wanting.

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Imatest also checks images for noise, which can detract from detail and add an unwanted grainy quality to photos at high ISO settings. The RX10 III has a native ISO range of 100 through 12800, with ISO 64 and 80 available as low extended settings. When shooting JPGs at default settings the RX10 III controls noise through ISO 6400, where it shows about 1.4 percent. At the top ISO 12800 setting noise jumps to about 2 percent. We look at all of our test images on a calibrated LCD, and include pixel-level crops in the slideshow that goes along with this review so you can peruse them yourself.

When shooting JPGs, detail is strong through IS0 800, with very little evidence of smudging or noise. At ISO 1600 there is a little bit of smudging of the finest lines in our test scene, but overall quality remains strong. Image quality starts to get dicey at ISO 3200, as a more noticeable drop in clarity sets in. There’s an additional, but not substantial, drop in quality at ISO 6400. At the top ISO, 12800, the loss in image quality is more evident. You should avoid pushing the RX10 III that far when shooting JPGs.

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The camera is also capable of Raw image capture. Raw images don’t have any in-camera noise reduction applied, and also retain more data so you can make adjustments to exposure or color balance without detriment when using a software developer, like the popular Adobe Lightroom CC that we use as a Raw converter. With default settings applied, the RX10’s images show very strong detail through ISO 1600. Grain becomes evident at ISO 3200, and does detract slightly from photos, but Raw shooters should still feel comfortable pushing the camera that far. Noise is more of an issue at ISO 6400 and 12800, but Raw output is much stronger than JPG at those extreme ISOs. You’ll notice that the Raw images from our test scene don’t have quite the same punchy contrast as JPGs. That’s the way Lightroom renders them without making any adjustments; you can always tune development settings to give images the look that you desire.

Distortion and uneven illumination are two other things we look at when testing lenses. The RX10 III’s zoom doesn’t show any noticeable distortion when shooting in JPG or Raw format. There is undoubtedly some in-camera correction going on, but we’re more interested in the finished dish, not the recipe or cooking technique. The same goes for illumination—it’s acceptably even throughout the frame, even at the corners of wide-angle images.

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Video

As strong as the RX10 III is as a still camera, it’s equally as formidable when capturing moving images. It can roll footage at 4K resolution, at 24 or 30fps, compressed using XAVC S 4K at a 100Mbps bit rate. You can also record HD video at 24, 30, 60, or 120fps, also using XAVC at 50Mbps for the three more modest frame rates and your choice of 60 or 100Mbps when recording at 120fps.

Video quality is simply outstanding. Details are crisp and the autofocus system smoothly adjusts focus as the scene changes. The internal mic pics up voices with clarity, but is also prone to recording background noise, including fans in a small room and wind outdoors. Serious videographers will want to invest in an external microphone. One downside to video recording is the lack of an in-lens neutral density (ND) filter. Both previous versions of the RX10 included one, which cut incoming light out so you can more easily shoot using proper shutter angles at wide apertures. Videographers will have to go back to old-school 72mm front filters to apply ND.

Image stabilization is key to steady handheld video. This is one area where the RX10 III doesn’t maximize its potential. When zoomed all the way in, handheld footage has a shaky quality to it. It can be minimized by bracing yourself against a wall (or sitting down while shooting), or using a camera support like a tripod or monopod. When you aren’t zoomed to the extreme, the in-camera stabilization system does a fine job keeping handheld footage steady.

The RX10 III also supports in-camera slow-motion video. Sony calls this High Frame Rate (HFR) and offers several different levels of slow-down, ranging from one-quarter speed playback (4x slow-motion) all the way to 40x slow-motion. You can vary the frame rate (240fps, 480fps, and 960fps are available) and playback rate (24, 30, and 60fps), as well as choose between Quality Priority and Shoot Time Priority—the former slows two seconds of footage and the latter four seconds.

Recording HFR isn’t a one-button process; it requires some care and attention to detail. When you engage the setting on the Mode dial you’ll want to find a subject and allow the camera to lock focus. Once that’s done, you can hit the center button on the rear dial to start buffering the slow-motion footage. When you’re ready to record a clip, simply press the Record button and it will capture the clip, and then convert it to slow-motion. The conversion process occurs in roughly real-time; 8-seconds for a quarter-speed clip and close to 1.5 minutes for one shot at 1/40th speed.

It can be tricky to capture the right moment, but the RX10 III gives you the option of starting the slow-motion recording when you hit record, or using the button press to go back in time and grab the last two or four seconds (depending on settings). The overall quality of the slowed down video is quite strong at 240fps and 480fps, but does lose some fidelity when pushed all the way to 960fps.

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Conclusions

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX10 III doesn’t have the longest zoom lens of any camera that we’ve tested, but it delivers the best image quality, focus speed, and video capabilities of any camera that covers its zoom range. You can opt for models with longer zooms and smaller sensors, like the Nikon Coolpix P900$596.95 at Amazon, which zooms to an insane 2,000mm, or the excellent Canon PowerShot SX60 HS$479.00 at Amazon with its 50x lens if your needs exceed that of a 600mm zoom.

But for most photographers, that’s not the case—the 600mm field of view is plenty long. Not only does the RX10 III achieve that level of telephoto reach, it does so with a lens that stays open to f/4, focuses quickly, and captures sharp images throughout the range. A tough body with a magnesium chassis and resistance to dust and splashes, along with Wi-Fi for easy image sharing, combined with its marvel of a lens, make it the perfect travel camera. You won’t need to reach into the bag to change lenses, and you can just as easily record 4K video as you can capture crisp still images.

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The only problem is the price. For many casual shooters—especially those who buy an entry-level SLR and never move beyond the included zoom lens—the RX10 III is a camera that would far better serve their needs. But those aren’t the folks who are going to spend $1,500 on a camera. The RX10 III is priced at a level where it’s likely going to be a secondary camera for SLR owners who want the convenience of a long zoom design, and don’t want to skimp on image quality. It’s a phenomenal camera, and one that earns our Editors’ Choice nod for premium superzooms.

If the price is too hard for you to swallow, consider the Panasonic FZ1000 as an alternative; its zoom is ample, reaching 400mm, and it shoots 4K video, but its build quality is not on the same level as the Sony. There’s also the original RX10, which sells for about half the price of the RX10 III, end earned an Editors’ Choice nod when it was released—but its zoom lens is a comparatively short 24-200mm design.

Source: pcmag.com

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