Thread: Popular Photography posted their RX100 review

Tested: Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 Compact Camera | Popular Photography

Wow, those noise results surprise the hell out of me. Out here in the real world, away from the test lab, I find the noise acceptable up to 3200. Now I have to decide whether to believe their test results or my lyin' eyes...

-Ray

Originally Posted by Ray

Wow, those noise results surprise the hell out of me. Out here in the real world, away from the test lab, I find the noise acceptable up to 3200. Now I have to decide whether to believe their test results or my lyin' eyes...

Does the RX100 have a very low noise reduction by default?

"After shooting, we convert the RAW images into TIFF files using the software provided by the manufacturer, and with the manufacturer’s default noise-reduction settings. We then process the resulting image with the most recent version of DxO Analyzer software from DxO Labs. The software generates the average standard deviation, which we report."

Popular Photography: How We Test | Popular Photography

I had looked up their test methods when I noticed that their noise results for the OM-D looked really good at base ISO compared to the big dog FFs.

I was going to suggest it has to be RAW.

The pixel level noise has to be better than the S100 (just given the larger sensor) and worse than the larger sensored compacts. I'd be shocked if it wasn't. But you've got 20MP to play with, and the jpg output is OUTSTANDING. Detailed, with little to no smearing up to ISO3200, based on my tests to date. I haven't gone beyond 3200 (not even sure if it's goes higher) and haven't tested RAW.

Originally Posted by krugorg

Does the RX100 have a very low noise reduction by default?

I thought the usual critique of Sony was that they had too aggressive a level of noise reduction. Far be it from me to question the reviewer's competence but perhaps he's referring to the effects of noise suppression rather than the effects of noise. Certainly a 3200 ISO jpeg is ugly as a consequence of NR but I would imagine once we can work with RAW's things will improve.

I've gone to 6400 and I wouldn't use it unless I needed to, but I'd use it for B&W images that didn't need that much detail. But 3200 seems incredibly good, particularly in marginal light when you need it to keep the shutter speed up, rather than extremely low light. In extremely low light, its useable, but starts to fall apart a bit. I'm only shooting jpegs so far, with NR turned down as far as I can turn it, which is to low, but you can't turn it off. And then I sometimes re-apply just a touch in LR in post, but not a lot. Then again, here's a 6400 shot in very low light (much darker than the photo appears) and it doesn't suck. There are some artifacts at the pixel level, but even at full screen on a 27 inch monitor, its quite passable, let alone a small display like this:



Bottom line is I find this camera plenty clean at base ISO (although I've never really had a problem with any camera here, so I'm not terribly picky) and incredible at high ISO for a compact, and I AM picky about high ISO...

-Ray

If this is typical of what you can get at ISO 6400, then there is nothing wrong with the RX100. Some people get their jollies viewing at 100%. Personally, I don't have time for that. And, coming from the film era, a little grain won't upset me.

Originally Posted by Biro

If this is typical of what you can get at ISO 6400, then there is nothing wrong with the RX100. Some people get their jollies viewing at 100%. Personally, I don't have time for that. And, coming from the film era, a little grain won't upset me.

Right, I see so many reviews that tell me a particular camera is terrible in an area it looks quite good to me or great in an area I can't get decent results out of it at all. And I read them with interest, but I ultimately believe the images I'm able to make and my level of satisfaction with them. And this type of performance at ISO 6400 - up until a bit over a year ago with the X100 I'm not aware of ANY compact that could touch this performance at 6400, and that required an APS chip. I just think this level of low light capability is crazy good and is basically quite new in small-ish cameras, let alone TINY cameras. In the film days we'd push Tri-X to 800 and call it good, but it was grainy as hell. I liked it, but this is a different world...

-Ray

If I remember correctly, Popular photo does not use a sliding scale for IQ and sensor size. So the noise ratings are absolute. The same ratings apply to a tiny point and shoot and a full frame monster. If a $5,000 full frame body created shots like this you would call the performance poor. We can adjust our expectations accordingly, but having the ratings be absolute and measurable for comparison's sake is important.

Originally Posted by Luke

If I remember correctly, Popular photo does not use a sliding scale for IQ and sensor size. So the noise ratings are absolute. The same ratings apply to a tiny point and shoot and a full frame monster. If a $5,000 full frame body created shots like this you would call the performance poor. We can adjust our expectations accordingly, but having the ratings be absolute and measurable for comparison's sake is important.

Yeah, I get that. But its saying the RX100 has more noise at ISO 80 than the S100 does at ISO 400, which just seems questionable to me. The S100 didn't look more than marginally better than the S90/95 and those were pretty poor at 400. 80 isn't the native base ISO on the RX100 - 125 is. But still, it just doesn't sound right to me. Nonetheless, I don't really care - I know how I'm comfortable actually using it and that's my bottom line...

-Ray