SONY RX100 V :: WOW!

This is the Sony RX100 Mark V, which came out on Friday, and mine shipped a day early, so I got it on the release date, and I've had about four days to play with this now, which is definitely not enough time for any kind of in-depth extensive review, but I do want to share my first impressions on this camera, because I am really, really impressed so far. The first thing I want to talk about is autofocus, and autofocus has had a pretty major overhaul in the RX100 V, and I want to show you a couple things with this. Now, right now we're filming with the RX100 IV, so I need to switch out to this camera so I can show you. So this is the old camera, this is the new. We're going to switch over. You're going to be looking at the new camera filming right here. So now we are filming on the RX100 V, and one of the biggest differences in the RX100 V is the previous models of the RX100 series did not use phase detection autofocus. They were contrast detection based only, and in some ways it's been a little bit of an Achilles heel with these cameras, and the only complaint that I really ever had about the RX100 IV, and I've said this on the show before, is that it's just a little slow sometimes. Sometimes the focus will drift. It was pretty decent, especially when you consider it's contrast based. It was very accurate when it did get into focus, but it just kind of hunted and seeked a little bit, and it just wasn't perfect. Now, if you consider what Canon did a few years ago when they introduced the 70D and they started using phase detection autofocus, and when you have the 70D, the 80D, and then the 5D Mark IV, those cameras in many ways have really set the bar high and really set a standard for autofocus in digital photography. And so, it's really good enough to use when you're doing video. If you have facial recognition turned on, it'll track. Now, what Sony have done in the RX100 V is they have incorporated a hybrid system of contrast based and phase detection based autofocus. There are 315 phase detection autofocus points, and they take up most of the frame. They're missing on the sides a little bit, but it is actually very accurate and very good. Now, one test I want to show you here is if I step out of frame, one thing you're going to notice is the focus is going to snap onto the background. And when I come back into frame, you will notice that very quickly, it goes right back to my face. Now, this is something that you would not have been able to do on the Mark IV at all. This makes it very easy to do with video. Just the applications are really solid with this. Now, I've only had this camera for four days, so I'm not going to make this great proclamation that it's the best ever just yet, but I will say this. In the brief amount of time that I've used this and just tested a few things on, this is really impressive. And I think it's probably up in that tier with what Canon has done on the 70D, 80D, and 5D Mark IV. I also want to talk about high-speed continuous shooting on the RX100 V. Now, the RX100 IV will do burst shooting, but it's about five frames a second or so. So Sony went from five frames a second to 24 frames a second on the RX100 V. That's like shooting video, but you're shooting raw stills. Now, you do get about 150 shots before the buffer fills up, but it's pretty incredible. So I want to do a little test to show you how cool this is. There's not a lot of fast-moving stuff in my studio, so I'm going to need two cats and a laser pointer. Okay. So we have action brewing here. This is Zeter and Judy, if you're not familiar with these two. Now, don't fight with each other. Play with the laser. Can you not see it? As promised, the RX100 Mark V does high-speed continuous shooting, and you do get about 24 frames a second. And so to do this, you just set it up in the menu, and I'm going to go ahead and invoke the high-speed shooting here. Hey, you're supposed to move. Chase the thing. You guys are lame. Well, apparently we're not used to playing with the laser pointer, so I thought this would be a lot of high-speed action here with the cats. Come on, guys. Don't stare at it. Play with it. You guys are bozos. Okay. So I guess the laser pointer isn't cool, so we're going to have to manually do this here. But anyway, I can press down and get my 24 frames a second. Where are you going? And eventually, it will buffer out here after a couple seconds. That little demonstration did not go nearly as smooth as I wanted. My cats had no idea what to do with the laser pointer. I had to move to a tape measure. But anyway, I think you get the idea, and you can see how useful high-speed continuous shooting actually is. The one drawback to this is that once you fill up the buffer, and to their credit, Sony have redesigned this camera with a really large buffer in it, you get about 150 shots, which is a couple seconds of shooting, and then you have to stop while it writes everything into the card and clears itself out. And if you're not used to that, and you're just trying to spray and pray and do your thing, and all of a sudden it stops, you could be missing action. So I think it's a matter of learning how to use this and kind of choosing your decisive moments properly. But anyway, the fact that it does it at all, and this is a higher frame rate than I've seen on any camera, point and shoot or not, and the fact that Sony have put this into a point and shoot is pretty outstanding. The other really cool thing about this is when you're shooting silently, so in other words, you've turned off all your audio signals and you've moved it over to the electronic shutter, you can still use the high speed continuous shooting, which is amazing. So if you're a photographer who needs to shoot in kind of sensitive situations, sometimes as far as sound goes, this doesn't make a noise, it is amazing. And now the big question, is this the perfect camera? I think it's important to step back and look at what Sony are trying to do. I don't think that they're trying to replace other cameras with a compact. I think what they are trying to do is design the ultimate compact, which they've come very close to doing, and provide features on here that rival what you see on bigger cameras. In fact, sometimes they even surpass what you see on other cameras as well. Now this does come with a pretty heavy set of limitations, and a lot of people have complained about still the lack of a touch screen. The biggest thing is being able to just touch to focus, and Sony have done that on a few cameras, but really not across their lineup. You see it on the A5100, which may or may not be made anymore, and then also on the A6500, which isn't out for another couple weeks. But honestly, I've used Sony's quite a bit, and their autofocus system is very good. You do have to learn how to do it their way. But once you learn it, it is pretty intuitive, and it is pretty accurate, and it's really not that frustrating. But if you go at it from a DSLR standpoint, and just want to select an autofocus point or touch to autofocus, I think you're going to be frustrated pretty quickly. I don't really see that as a drawback. Some of the things that really are drawbacks, though, and we saw this in the Sony RX100 Mark IV, was when you're recording at 4K, you do have a five-minute limit on recording time, and you do have overheating problems if you try to continue past that. And that's kind of been an issue across Sony's lineup, and I don't think that that's going to be resolved until we see another generation of processors that come out that are able to do it faster. I mean, there are size problems with the camera, and just what it's being asked to do with 4K video and overheating, and so I think we're a little ways away from that. And then the other issue on this that I haven't mentioned yet, if you are going to get this camera to do high-speed continuous shooting, you're going to need more than one battery. You're going to need a lot of extra batteries. In fact, when you're sitting there and spraying and machine-gunning it, you can pretty much watch that battery meter just go down. It just really exhausts the battery. Now, battery life is generally a problem with mirrorless cameras anyway, mainly because the screen is on and everything in the camera is electronic, and you're asking it to do a lot. So it'll be interesting to see in future iterations of the RX100 series if they actually go to a different battery design, but then the problem there is if you go to a larger battery, then what does that do to the size, and is it still a compact at that point? So there are a few things you do need to learn how to work around, but all in all, the thing that I love about this camera and what I'm really excited about with the Mark V, I had the Mark III, and I used that a lot, and when I got the Mark IV, I used that all the time. It's always with me. It's something I carry everywhere, and there are limitations on it, but it is an excellent camera that I have with me, and the fact that it all fits into a point-and-shoot, and that you can get really amazing quality 4K video out of it, I recorded this whole video between the RX100 Mark IV, which I'm filming with right now, and the Mark V, and I really didn't have a problem with that. Of course, I segmented it all. I wouldn't use this for an interview or something like that, but you can work around these things. Anyway, I'd be interested to know what you guys think, so if you have any questions or comments, please leave them below, and if you enjoyed this video, please remember to like it, share it, and as always, subscribe to The Art of Photography. If you're watching us on YouTube, there's this cool new button over here you can hit to subscribe, and until the next video, I'll see you guys then. Later.