Compact digital cameras haven’t been a huge deal in the market recently because of the convenience smartphone cameras present, but that doesn’t mean camera manufacturers are giving up. In fact, Sony’s not giving up the fight and has just released something it’s calling its new flagship compact camera, the Cyber-shot DSC-RX100.
It’s fairly unassuming with a small, all-black body that has no distinguishing features to set it aside from other cameras around, but it’s not the outside that’s important. This model has what the company is calling the world’s first-ever 1-inch Exmor CMOS sensor with 20.2MP. What does this mean? This means that the DSC-RX100 has the largest sensor any digital camera has to date, about four times larger than the standard, and because of this, the camera can take in more light, resulting in more details in images and HD videos without much noise. Throw in the fixed f/1.8 Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T 3.6x lens, and the camera has a lot of versatility as it can capture at f/2.8 in 50mm.
Sony also throws in a 3-inch 1229k-dot Xtra Fine LCD with something called WhiteMagic- a new technology that adds more white pixels to the display for more brightness and in turn helps the user see as much detail of their target as they can, even in the sun. In addition, there’s a BIONZ image processor on board, keeping the captured images clean despite the quick shooting response time and boosting sensitivity up to ISO 25600 with Multi-Frame Noise Reduction for images that are shot in low-lighted surroundings. The camera also has an interface much like a DSLR in that there are two modes for focusing- manual and auto-focus.
For those who care more about artistic features than the technical specs of the camera, the DSC-RX100 carries six creative styles and a range of picture effects like HDR Painting, and Partial Color that will edit the image accordingly once its been captured, eliminating the need for a third-party program like Photoshop for editing. There’s also the Auto Portrait Framing Feature, which takes images, defects the faces and crops accordingly to make a product reminiscent of professionally-taken portraits. Thankfully, the camera saves the original in case the finished image isn’t quite up to the user’s preference.
The DSC-RX100 will release next month and will be priced at about $ 650.
