Sony RX1 images too 'sterile'???

totally get you bruce, and totally agree with you. this is an art form and you need the tool that best expresses your vision. i was solely commenting on a pictures 'background' being too detailed and competing with the subject. thats not a matter of taste or sensor character, but of DOF control. a 35mm on a FF m9 will have the same oof area at a given aperture as will the FF rx1 at that aperture. it can certainly be that one prefers the m9's oof rendering to the rx1. but the oof area itself--ie the lack of detail therein, should be substantially similar. sorry if i misinterpreted your original comment
 
As I only had my RX1 for a short while I don't consider myself qualified to pass any kind of judgement on the images it produces. But right from the start it never smacked me in the gob the way I thought it would. On the other hand the Sigma Merrill's grabbed my attention straight away and continue to amaze me.
As Lucille said about the sony,
For me the Merrill's have ruined all other cameras .

Yup, the Merrills win it hands done for pure resolution. Amazing resolution. But, kinda clunky to use in most circumstances. I'll love mine in the right setting, but the RX1 comes really close in terms of IQ and beats it hands down in every other way.
 
perhaps im alone in this, but i think the dp3 at 75mm would be a great complement to the 35mm rx1, and id love to try one. but the lack of any evf option is an absolute nonstarter for me.
 
I guess the RX1 (like an A7r with a 55/1.8) provides amazing amounts of detail and dynamic range, which can look a bit 'flat' sometimes. But that's something a tiny bit of curves tweaking and adjustment takes care of just fine. I like the amount of microcontrast I get from my Zeiss lenses a lot (honestly, I've never really warmed to my two Leica R lenses the way I do to my Zeiss and Contax/Zeiss lenses before, on any of the bodies I've mounted them on). They have a different sort of character, and some of what folks like is down to taste.

I rarely ever expect the camera to manage to 'see' what I did. But I hope it's able to capture as much of the light as possible so I can do so when I get home. I've grown up with digital, so I never 'miss' the 'film look'; if I want something with slightly more punch or dynamic range, I've got plugins for that :)
 
In terms of the lens, I'd say the Fuji 23mm is actually a pretty damn close match for the RX1. It's plenty sharp at all apertures and, at f1.4, is roughly a match for the RX1 in terms of shallow DOF, if that's what you mean by "depth". In terms of the sensor, the Fuji has its charms and it's also got drawbacks. You can break the files in processing, the "watercolor" effect with Adobe processing is well known and still visible if you pixel peep the files. It's real easy to get halos if you push the contrast or sharpening much at all. The RX1 files, OTOH, are the benchmark that I compare everything else to and everything else falls short in one way or another. Even the Nikon Df sensor, which was overwhelmingly good at high ISO, wasn't as overall flexible and malleable as the RX1 files.

Whether that equates to "depth" or "clinical" or "pristine" I don't know because those terms mean different things to different people. To me, the RX1 lens rendered beautifully and the sensor produced files I could do basically ANYTHING to in PP. Every other file has presented me with very real limits that I had to work around in processing. The RX1 files are just really hard to mess up.

The Fuji setup is more than adequate for me, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't have pangs of regret for selling the RX1, for which I blame the temptress Nikon Df - I take no personal responsibility! I'm gonna let the dust settle with all of the coming announcements and if the rumored RX2 with the curved sensor drives the price if used RX1's down enough, I may re-buy one. Or if more lenses are announced for the A7 maybe I'll wait around for that system to mature. I don't have any big shooting trips coming this year (remodeling part if our house with any travel funds), so I'm fine with what I have for the foreseeable future. But I was never happier shooting than last year with the RX1 and Nikon A handling the bulk of my shooting needs, with Fuji and Olympus filling in around the occasional wider and longer edges when needed. I could end up back there or someplace similar at some point.

-Ray

Thanks Ray! I actually haven't payed much attention to that camera in the past, but as I've said before that's more of a personal issue with Sony and doesn't have to mean anything for anyone else. It's only yesterday that after a long while I had some closer looks at what this little camera is capable of and I really liked what I saw. Even though it's hard to tell how much PP went into each of those images there are certain qualities that have wowed me - depth-clarity-transparency- whatever one might call them... that can't be faked, no matter what we throw at those images.
Regarding malleability, isn't the main aspect that the RX1 gives you 14bit RAWs ? That's something I really miss from my current cameras; sometimes 12 bit just don't cut it, especially in Silver Efex Pro 2. Those 14 bit RAWs and weather (dust!) sealing would be my main reasons to pull the trigger on an X-T1 one day, but that can wait. Regarding Fuji Xes I'm in the same boat as you and many others insofar as my X setup gives me pretty much all the IQ I need these days. The more I shoot my XP1 the more transparent it gets. It really took me some time and some thousand shots to really relax over some issues and realize how great this system really is.
X-Trans demosaicing seems to be still an issue here and there though, even with SOOC jpgs if you look close enough but it all depends on what we use the images for and most of the time (see below) even LR 4 does the job just fine.
I'm still in the process of moving stuff to my new home though and have processed the majority of my images on a small PC tablet during the last 5 or so months, most of them in LR, AcDSee and Nik and it doesn't make much sense to invest in further software as long as you're constantly on the road and stuck with a 12 inch screen with little more than 60% RGB coverage. I had some good laughs when I saw color images I posted here and elsewhere on more adequate screens. High time to unpack my main PC, check out some new software, PP a serious number of shots all over again and get back into serious printing.

Sorry for the hijack - back OT.
 
I was only dreaming the other day of adding a DP3 to my DP2M / Ricoh GR combo.
I am seriously considering quitting my EM-5 with 45mm for the DP3.

Now I wonder what a GR / RX1 / DP3 combo would be like?

I guess someone must have done it

I've had the DP3 with the RX1, almost polar opposites in terms of speed and function. Oh but those DP3 files are glorious! I anxiously await the new Sigma DPs
 
I was only dreaming the other day of adding a DP3 to my DP2M / Ricoh GR combo.
I am seriously considering quitting my EM-5 with 45mm for the DP3.

Now I wonder what a GR / RX1 / DP3 combo would be like?

I guess someone must have done it

Not me! But in previous years, I've carried the GRD III and DP1, the Leica M9 and GRD III, the Canon 5D Mark II and DP1 and DP2, and more. These combos are fun and can be mixed and matched to meet many situations.

As for quitting the EM-5 with 45/1.8: you obviously know how much slower and less wieldy the DP3 would be by comparison, image quality notwithstanding. Is that something you really want to deal with?
 
Oooooooh, that's more like it! Most people on flickr either use some very standard processing, oversaturated glop, or disturbingly dark black and white processing. This is very cool, retow.

That's kind of the point - processing style is totally a matter of taste. One man's "over saturated glop" or "disturbingly dark B&W" may be another's Nirvana. The point is the RX1 files can handle anything you throw at them, regardless of your preference. And that lens, as Eliot and Luke have written so eloquently, is made of magic unicorn dust... Which I guess is another way if saying it's got soul...

-Ray
 
Not me! But in previous years, I've carried the GRD III and DP1, the Leica M9 and GRD III, the Canon 5D Mark II and DP1 and DP2, and more. These combos are fun and can be mixed and matched to meet many situations.

As for quitting the EM-5 with 45/1.8: you obviously know how much slower and less wieldy the DP3 would be by comparison, image quality notwithstanding. Is that something you really want to deal with?

I love the Zuiko 45, I think not withstanding the longish minimum focus, it is one of the bargain lenses out there. Sharp, cheap, light, nice contrast, sharp.
I've been struggling with the EM-5 though. The OS just does not gel with me. My GR or DP2M I can return to after a few weeks and I can find settings quickly and almost without having to memorize where it is.
For some reason the EM-5 is not the same, I often reach for the wrong dials on the right deck for example. I've stuffed a few images because of it.
I could buy a DP3, try it, and keep the EM-5 with one destined to go. The 70mm of the DP3 is not exactly 90mm of the Zuiko though!

I have dreamt of selling the lot, buy a RX1 and just go with it for however long!
 
And that lens, as Luke has written so eloquently, is made of magic unicorn dust... Which I guess is another way if saying it's got soul...

-Ray


I want to properly credit that description. Our guy Eliot (Gubrz) was the first to describe the lens as being made from the dust of ground up unicorn horns.

He also recently made me bust up by saying "The lens is more full of creamy goodness than a Twinkie factory in the late 80's."

He's like a younger, funnier, handsomer version of me.
 
Hey folks. I know this would be a tricky question to ask, but I'm doing it in this forum, which is one of the nicest forums I know of, so I hope I'm safe. :D

I've been looking through a lot of RX1 and RX1r photos on flickr, and while the technical rendering of the images looks darn impressive, I can't shake the impression that they also have a very sterile, clinical kind of look. I'm not sure if I can describe it much better. Some people complain that digital images look too clean and clinical compared with film; to me, many RX1 images are like the next level up of cleanness, if that makes sense. They make 'normal' digital images have the imperfection normally ascribed to film by comparison.

Does anyone else see it this way? Do you 'dirty up' your RX1 images to give them some more texture? I'm seeing this in many Sony A7 and A7r images, too.
Mate funny you should say this, as it was the exact reason I sold on my RX100 - and didn't like the RX100ii nor A7 that I test-ran. I found the files plastic yet not elastic…if that makes sense. I didn't warm to Sony outputs and so now discount their digicams wholesale. Harsh I know, but I will inevitably try them again down the track.
 
I want to properly credit that description. Our guy Eliot (Gubrz) was the first to describe the lens as being made from the dust of ground up unicorn horns.

He also recently made me bust up by saying "The lens is more full of creamy goodness than a Twinkie factory in the late 80's."

He's like a younger, funnier, handsomer version of me.

Luke's my big photo brother, noogies n all!
 
I want to properly credit that description. Our guy Eliot (Gubrz) was the first to describe the lens as being made from the dust of ground up unicorn horns.

He also recently made me bust up by saying "The lens is more full of creamy goodness than a Twinkie factory in the late 80's."

He's like a younger, funnier, handsomer version of me.
OK, credit expanded above. And as they say, you can't be too young, too funny, or too handsome.... Or was that rich and thin?

-Ray
 
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