I have, for more years than I care to remember, been a Canon DSLR user. Spent a small fortune on bodies and lenses as have many others. I still have a 1DX and various allegedly top quality and expensive lenses but I am now reaching a point where I find lugging all the bits around to be a pain, literally. Therefore I have been looking into, researching and now trying out the Sony RX10 bridge camera. Not the mk 2, 3, or 4 but the 1st one. The fixed aperture of 2.8 on the 24-200 is quite an attraction for me, something which is lost on the newer models I believe but I expect there are other added attractions with regard to the upgraded cameras.
Anyway I have now added the RX10 to my kitbag and have spent a week playing with it. For what it cost me if I find it to be not to my liking then I can sell it on and not make a huge loss and put it down to experience.
So far I am quite impressed. IQ is good to pretty good, no better than that IMO. Noise is apparent but that's to be expected from ISO 400 upwards with a sensor such as is found in this camera, which reminds me...why is it described as a 1" sensor when its 13mm x 8mm?
The RX10 camera is light in weight and now that I have fought my way through the menus and options I find it fairly user-friendly. The RX10 is never going to provide images of the same class as a fully-fledged DSLR but I knew that before I bought it and the results so far have been surprisingly quite good for the money (sub £400).
I do think the new mk 4 is expensive and I'm not sure it's worth the price but hopefully others who actually have one can advise me on this. The 600mm zoom is, to my mind, too much and unfortunately the f2.8 aperture drops off quite quickly at 100mm I believe.
I have had previous experience of using high magnification optics and in general they are poor unless they are of top quality yet priced out of the reach of 'normal' ie non professional photographers. Additionally I cannot believe that you can hold a 600mm bridge camera optic steady, with or without IS, without a tripod and I don't want to start carrying one around now as my aim is to travel light.
If users could help me with their experiences, likes/dislikes etc of the newer versions of this camera then I would be very appreciative.
I'll be keeping the 1DX and a couple of lenses for a while yet.
