Sony Checking out an RX1Rm2

Morris,

Thanks very much for the kind words. I don't think some of the technical aspects of the cameras are all that important in terms of the finished products you actually see - I wouldn't expect you to see a big difference in my (or anyone's) best shots from m43 or APS or full frame. There are differences and you'd see them if you looked closely enough, but I'm never gonna publicly present anything that I'm not reasonably satisfied with, regardless of what I'm shooting with.

To me the primary benefit is that some gear increases my chances for getting a workable or better shot in various different challenging circumstances. For example, I might have a shot you'd like from my DF or RX1 that was taken in conditions (I'm thinking of low light, but it might be a high DR situation too) that it would have been much more difficult, if even possible, to get a workable shot from some of the other gear I've used. Similarly for street shooting, I've used a variety of different equipment for street shooting (going back to a Pentax K1000 and Tri-X in the 1970s) and had shots I've liked from all of it, but I have very specific preferences for features and technical standards that greatly (VASTLY!) increase my number of keepers when I'm out shooting. I'd never show you a terrible shot from my m43 gear, so you'd rightly say that my m43 stuff looks fine, but I might have a LOT of shots, particularly from the street, that I'd get with a Coolpix A or now with the new RX1 that I simply wouldn't have gotten with my EM5 in 2012, let alone my EP2 in 2010 or my K1000 in 1976.

To me there's a big difference and a meaningful difference between different bits of gear for different types of shooting. I'll never show you my worst work, so you could assume there's not that much difference in the finished product. But rest assured I'm getting more good results in more difficult circumstances with some of the higher end gear than I did with some of the lesser gear I've used.

-Ray

I get it. I feel the same way. And before I buy a camera, I haven't bought a lot, I want to hold it in hand and make sure it 'fits' well. I will also want to try it, see how easy or not it is to use. All this as important to me as file quality.

Some of the color images you've posted here look like hdr. Is that right? Maybe it's just my screen being off and needing a calibration.

My own latest purchase was an olympus m5v2. I use it mostly with longer lenses, 50mm to 120mm. I keep the ricoh gr with me all the time for wide. I love this little ricoh. Was waiting, hoping ricoh might release something for the longer focal lengths but I got tired of waiting. I actually wanted the e-pl7, but tried it in hand, the feel wasn't right and wanted 'more'. Tried the m10v2 and that left me wanting 'more' as well. In hand only the m5v2 felt 'right'. For my own needs, street mostly, and the small sizes I like to print at it is perfect.

I wish sometimes I could afford the sony you're playing with or the leica Q but it just isn't in the budget. I keep hoping that maybe ricoh will release a full frame version of their gr. Maybe someday. But honest, this 16mp aps-c gr is so good on so many levels I should not want anything else.

Ok. Good luck to you with your decision. Me. I'm hanging on a bit. Want to see what Nikon might release this year. See if I will upgrade my D700 or not. I have been enjoying this d700 with primes for years. Would only like smaller, lighter, and more pixels for image quality and cropping.

kind regards
M

short ps. sorry for tardy reply but a day after i wrote the proverbial shit hit the fan and I was gone for a week with family stuff...


 
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I get it. I feel the same way. And before I buy a camera, I haven't bought a lot, I want to hold it in hand and make sure it 'fits' well. I will also want to try it, see how easy or not it is to use. All this as important to me as file quality.

Some of the color images you've posted here look like hdr. Is that right? Maybe it's just my screen being off and needing a calibration.

My own latest purchase was an olympus m5v2. I use it mostly with longer lenses, 50mm to 120mm. I keep the ricoh gr with me all the time for wide. I love this little ricoh. Was waiting, hoping ricoh might release something for the longer focal lengths but I got tired of waiting. I actually wanted the e-pl7, but tried it in hand, the feel wasn't right and wanted 'more'. Tried the m10v2 and that left me wanting 'more' as well. In hand only the m5v2 felt 'right'. For my own needs, street mostly, and the small sizes I like to print at it is perfect.

I wish sometimes I could afford the sony you're playing with or the leica Q but it just isn't in the budget. I keep hoping that maybe ricoh will release a full frame version of their gr. Maybe someday. But honest, this 16mp aps-c gr is so good on so many levels I should not want anything else.

Ok. Good luck to you with your decision. Me. I'm hanging on a bit. Want to see what Nikon might release this year. See if I will upgrade my D700 or not. I have been enjoying this d700 with primes for years. Would only like smaller, lighter, and more pixels for image quality and cropping.

kind regards
M

short ps. sorry for tardy reply but a day after i wrote the proverbial shit hit the fan and I was gone for a week with family stuff...
I had the first RX1 so I knew I liked how the new camera would handle and shoot, and with the improvements in the MKII I knew it was all upside except for the sensor, which for me isn't, but it's not like it's a bad thing. And battery life, which sucked with the first one and sucks a bit more with the new one.

These aren't HDR images except in the sense that these modern Sony sensors have SO MUCH dynamic range, that by the time you pull the shadows and tamp down the highlights, the files often LOOK like HDR. This is frankly something I have to adjust for. I really prefer the more natural look of the 16mp non-Sony sensor in my Nikon DF and if Sony had put that in this camera, I'd like it even more. A lot of my shots with the original RX1 had a bit of an HDR look to them and with this one, even more so. For some shots I like it well enough. But for others I don't, and yet when the latitude is there, I tend to use it. I need to train myself not to do that, or at least less often...

The Sony was beyond my pocketbook at this point too, but once I realized I had a lot of money tied up in Nikon glass that I wasn't using, I decided to sell off the lenses that hadn't earned their place (through actual USE!), at which point this camera became a possibility. If the Leica Q had a better sensor than it does, and maybe was a bit smaller, I'd have probably stretched a bit more and gone for that. But given the sweet spot of the DF sensor for my taste, I had to choose between quantitatively better (RX1) or worse (Q) and went with the RX1.

If it was primarily for street, I wouldn't have bothered - I like the Nikon Coolpix A at least as much, probably a bit more, as a street camera - so I thoroughly understand your attachment to the GR! But as an all-around, do anything with it, single camera, the RX1 mII is pretty overwhelmingly good. The decision was made shortly after the initial post here - I own the RX1R II now. It does everything extremely well at it's focal length and is good enough as a street camera that I won't feel the need to bring the Coolpix A along just for street opportunities...

-Ray
 
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Wish I could be so decisive.... have a lot invested in both the A7RII and the Leica M240 and I would find it hard to part with either one. After all my travels last year I've come to realise that lugging a bagful of stuff around is getting ridiculous. I should have one camera and concentrate of getting a nice shot and not be forever swapping and changing. Serious thought is needed for this coming year.
 
Wish I could be so decisive.... have a lot invested in both the A7RII and the Leica M240 and I would find it hard to part with either one. After all my travels last year I've come to realise that lugging a bagful of stuff around is getting ridiculous. I should have one camera and concentrate of getting a nice shot and not be forever swapping and changing. Serious thought is needed for this coming year.
My thing is just to take an honest look at what I actually USE. Not when I grab something just because I bought it and feel like I SHOULD use it, but what I grab for the vast majority of my shooting. I have some really nice lenses I use a LOT - the Zeiss 21 and 25, both f2.8 come to mind, and some far less expensive glass that I use a fair amount, like the Nikon 135 f2.8 AI, the 24-120 f4, etc. But if I have expensive glass that I rarely grab, and mostly then only to justify having bought it in the first place, I eventually get honest with myself and sell it. I had quite a bit of stuff like that sitting on my shelf, like the 58 f1.4G, 105 f2 DC, and 35 f1.8G - these are all WONDERFUL lenses, but lenses I very rarely actually used. Selling it serves two purposes - it gets it off the shelf so it can't torment me anymore for not using it enough; and it contributes to the ability to get something else I'll actually use!

The Nikon Coolpix A isn't going anywhere - it's been my most used single piece of gear for almost four years now and it wouldn't bring much $$ anyway. But the Canon G7X is gone in the purge - it's a fine little camera that I very very rarely used, and when I did it was just to justify it's existence. I'll try very hard to resist the urge to pick up a Nikon DL 18-50 if it finally appears, because I strongly suspect it would meet the same fate in time. Or I won't resist strongly enough and it probably will meet that fate eventually. I suspect the RX1B II will be a keeper because the first version was a keeper and this one fills in a couple of key gaps that kept that one from STILL being part of my rotation.

I'd never want a camera like the RX1 to be my ONLY camera - I've always had and likely always WILL have some sort of system setup. But I've never been able to stay with having multiple systems for very long - the couple of times I did I eventually got rid of one of them...

Good luck - with a Leica M240 and a Sony A7RII I expect I'd also have a tough time selling either.

-Ray
 
I think I may head in the same direction Ray. My current malaise with photography cannot justify the room taken up by the Canon 7d Mk11, the 100-400L, the 17-40L, the 50mm, the Fuji X-T1 with 35mm and 10-24mm and the GR. The shooting I did with the canon is not really important to me now and, to an extent nor the Fuji. I have come to the conclusion that the less I have the more likely I am to go out....rather than dither over which one to take and end up not taking anything at all.

However, I am also interested in the Leica Q having read the reviews. So I will just dither over which one to go for.
 
The RX1R II will only be a dream for me, due to costs, but I do think it's an excellent choice as an only camera as it seems to have all bases covered (compact size, great IQ, versatile FL, EVF, flip screen, etc).

Ray does excellent work with any camera in his hands, so new members shouldn't be swayed this way thinking that this camera will make them a great photographer. It won't hurt though ;)

Peter, regarding you dilemma, you already have a great camera in the GR. Have you tried locking yourself to using it vs spending on that cash on a Q? This would allow you to see if you could get by with just the one camera.
 
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Don't get me wrong - I'm not advocating the RX1R II as an ONLY camera. I mean, if someone wants that kind of minimalist thing, go for it, but I'd never do that personally. I couldn't even do SIJ for one MONTH because I knew I'd also want to use my DF a lot this month and I have. I love longer focal lengths, mostly for shooting candids of friends and family (most of these shots don't show up here, but they're a big part of what I do and what I enjoy about photography). And I'm a wide guy at heart, so many days I'm gonna want to go out with the DF and just a 24 or 25 or 28 or something (although the RX1 is wider than advertised and not as much of a difference between it and a 28 as you'd think). And I LOVE shooting with a 20-21 also - I've got a little teeny tiny Voigtlander 20 and a big honking Zeiss 21 and wouldn't be without either. Hell, if I was gonna just have ONE camera, no question it would be the DF with even just a half dozen lenses - not the RX1...

But some days I just don't want to have to think about what focal length I'm shooting with and like having a very small silent camera to shoot with and not have to think about anything else. And even for some short travels it's nice to really simplify and not have to think about the gear. We're going down to Savannah in a couple of days and I'll probably just shoot with the RX1 there, but the DF and a few lenses will be in the car because then we're heading for Atlanta where my niece and her husband and two insanely adorable little girls live and I guaran-damn-TEE I'm gonna be using the DF then with some portrait length options. I could also easily do a long weekend in NYC or a few days in Philly with just the RX1, and probably will on any number of occasions. But one camera at one focal length for EVERYTHING and ALL THE TIME??? Nope, no way, not for me...

But as an option for some days, maybe even MANY days? Hell yeah!

Pete, I was torn about the Leica Q also - there are things it does better than the RX1, like zone focus. And I do prefer 28mm to 35, even when the 35 is really more like 32. But the Leica sensor is really limited both in terms of low light and DR and those things matter to me. And for everything other than zone focus, the RX1 controls and options are at least slightly preferable to me. And the slightly wide version of a 35 makes the RX1 focal length more palatable to me - I learned that with the first RX1. The Sony sensor is in most quantifiable ways better even than the one in my DF, although I kind of like the native results from the DF a bit more, but the Sony allows me to do ANYTHING I want to in post processing. The Leica would be much more limited than even the DF and that would frustrate the hell out of me with a camera costing that much... The lens is really nice, but so is the Zeiss on the RX1 - slightly different flavors of delicious, but both quite wonderful...

Good luck figuring it out,

-Ray
 
Sweet snaps.
Though it sometimes looks almost TOO sharp?
If that's possible?

Where did you rent the Rx1r2 with the option to buy?
If I may ask?
 
Sweet snaps.
Though it sometimes looks almost TOO sharp?
If that's possible?

Where did you rent the Rx1r2 with the option to buy?
If I may ask?
Well, I don't think it can be TOO sharp, because if you have detail, you can always soften it up, but if you don't have it, you can't get it. But I agree that the default look of the original was a bit more to my liking than the new model with soooo much resolution. And part of it is me just learning to process it more effectively. There's so damn much in these files, its a bit hard not to go overboard with it. Hopefully I'll get there.

I rented from Lens Rentals, which almost always gives you the option to buy, with the price depending on how much use the specific camera you get has on it. And they credit the cost of the rental toward the sale price, at least for the first seven days of renting it, which is all I'd ever do anyway. I got the new model for about what I paid for the original, brand new back in 2013. Which is still a lot, but a fine deal given what the retail price of the new was up to when I got it. I suspect BorrowLenses and maybe some other places allow you to but the rental models from them, but I'm not sure. I have a lot of faith in Lens Rentals, though - they take really good care of their gear and won't sell anything that's had problems. I actually prefer buying newer lenses for my DF from them - they weed out the bad samples so I always get a good one and the price is very good. That said, I don't really have any newer lenses for my Nikon at the moment...

-Ray
 
I should have seen your thread sooner, Ray. Informative thread! Thnx. Needless to say that I love the photos.
 
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