Greg Padgett

Here's what I think. I think the quest to make everything tiny is making for too many compromises. I'd rather lug around a bigger camera that does what I want without fuss.

Andrew, a great review! Previously, I owned a GH4. With the Vario 12-35, and the Metabones for my Nikkors, I had over $3000 US unjustifiably tied up in that system. For me, the RX10m2 is a better fit for my uses, at least until the Nikon D8XX with 4K and a high bitrate codec becomes available. Then I'll have my do everything, all in one camera. It is funny though how people see things differently. I've found that video and stills from the RX10m2 are quite sharp and measure up well against the GH4 and 12-35 combo. I have also found the AFC in video to be useful. It hunts a bit at first but then seems to lock on and stay there on moving targets. I've done plenty of pans out to 200mm on moving targets all while keeping the subject in good focus. All I need it to do really. I would however say that if I needed to be sure, I'd probably just use the manual focus option. I would like to see a firmware upgrade to make the focus peeking more exact. The GH4 was definitely better in that regard. Lowlight isn't so great in my opinion but I suppose I've only really stress tested it there. With proper handling and good post work I wouldn't be at all surprised in your findings up to 6400. So that's good to know and I'll try to get better exposure when shooting low light. All in all and again, a great review and I much appreciate your time in not only doing it but for the forum to discuss these things!

Hi Kaylee, Just a follow up on this post as I've been using these settings since you first posted them. Seemed I could never get the right look with sgamut and was looking for some help. This has been extremely helpful to me. Just like you said, add a tone curve, adjust the saturation to taste and for the most part, exactly the image I want. At the moment I'm -2 yellow, -1 magenta but have left the overall saturation alone. I may experiment with -3 yellow as I like to warm up my image without going too yellow. Also, the slog2 to rec709 lut built into resolve handles these settings beautifully. Simply pull down the gain, add a touch of contrast and the colors are as true to my eye as I've been able to get. So thanks again for the great advice! This forum and all of the participants here are the best!

I get that content designated for youtube or Vimeo will be limited by the bitrate those services stream at. Even the 4k streaming looks only marginally better than 1080p when viewed on a 60" 4k flatscreen. I just haven't found a youtube video that holds up well on the big screen. But what about content destined for Blueray? Wouldn't blueray benefit from a 4k pipeline throughout? At least until the final rendering? I'm sure wedding professionals could answer this. This video seems to be saying that if you're using anything less than professional gear that you might as well just shoot in 1080p and then render to 4k to get youtube's highest bitrate. Makes sense if all you're doing is making youtube content. Makes you wonder if youtube's 4k is even really 4k or only 1080 at a higher bitrate. Sometimes I ramble too much.

I purchased a set of the Wasabi batteries and charger from Amazon when I bought the camera. One of the two batteries fits a bit "snug" and I have to use a pointy object to pry it out of the camera. I still plan on using it as it works fine otherwise but just keep that in mind when purchasing them. I've heard others report the same issue of the Wasabi batteries fitting too tightly. Battery life with this camera has so far been decent but nothing to brag about. If I knew I were going to be using the camera for video all day, I might want four or five batteries to feel safe.

Thanks agolex and tosvus for the replies. I'm going to try to explain what's happening and maybe I can get this figured out. I had a GH4 before the Rx10 2 so I'm familiar with 4k files. I've been using Power Director to edit all of my videos up to this point and have been able to produce quality videos in 4k with it. I don't get clean playback while editing but the final product runs smoothly on this machine. With Davinci Resolve, I not only don't get smooth playback while editing 4k, the final product is also choppy while watching on this machine directly from my hard drive. Imagine when watching a satellite television and a big storm moves in over head. The way the tv signal breaks up into blocks. Thats what I'm seeing in fully rendered files. If I edit 1080p with Davinci, the playback whilst editing is still somewhat choppy but the final product plays smooth. I've checked and double checked my timeline settings to make sure they match the frame rate of the footage being edited. I've rendered to Mpeg4 which is what I render to in Power Director without issue. I just suspected that Davinci doesn't like my video card when rendering 4k for whatever reason. It is my understanding that some editors are more hardware intensive than others. I tried to upload some clips to youtube to demonstrate but youtube is crawling this morning. like 45 minutes to upload 20 seconds at the moment. This evening, when I get back home I may try a file sharing site so that you may download and watch some 4k clips edited from this machine. If they play smoothly on your machine then I'll know the problem is on my end. I very much appreciate your time. Edit... I also wanted to add that I did un install, and then re install Davinci as I thought I may have had a bad install on first try. It did not help.

So the card will be good for the editing but not so much for the rendering? The rendering is my biggest concern. Not so much about speed but quality. Everything I've tried to render in 4k has turned out extremely choppy. 1080p is much better but still.... I bought the camera for the 4k!! Maybe I should look around some more before making a decision. Thank you for your thoughts agolex!

Hi Inazuma! Yes, those were webs. I'm not sure what lived in them but I think it may be caterpillars of some sort. :D

Hey guys a question. My current desktop is a Dell XPS, I7 3.4ghz, 32GB ram and an older Radeon graphics card. The way the computer is built, it can only hold smaller graphics cards which limits my choices to upgrade. I've been looking at this one Nvidia quadro k2200. What do you guys think? Will this run Resolve? My guess is yes but before I drop the coin I'd like a second or even third opinion. Thanks!

Woops, quoted myself.

Vaga, the image came from a raw file so I don't suppose we'll see quite that much dynamic range from the xvacs files. So far though, I've been extremely impressed with the slog2's ability to expose the entire scene well in high contrast situations. I haven't as yet used the camera for low light and I don't expect it to be A7s quality but for the way I intend to use the camera it should work perfectly. It seems to me that where the A7s can be overexposed 2 stops or even a little more, the RX10 tends to clip a lot sooner. I've been exposing to protect the highlights and have found plenty of room to lift the mids and shadows. What I need is a good plug in for Davinci to handle the bit of noise I'm seeing in the shadows. I do look forward to Andrew's review to gain some knowledge from him on exposure. PannySVHS, yes I agree that this camera will be at it's best in good light. I will be interested to see what more advanced users will be able to do in dark conditions with optimal exposure and professional post work. I'm betting this camera will get the job done. As far as the high frame rates, I haven't tried using them yet. I'm mainly interested in the slog2 at this point but I'll get around to the fancy stuff in due time. I do know the 120fps is supposed to be 1080p so it should look pretty good. TheRennaissanceMan, I think you make some great points and they are in line with what I'm seeing. Great shadow recovery but the highlights need to be guarded at least somewhat. When I said the files remind me of the D800E, I did not intend to say they rival them. The just seem to have great elasticity and excellent rendering of fine detail. Last year, I owned the D800E, the GH4 and the RX100m2. I purchased the GH4 in hopes that I could get rid of the very heavy D800 kit I take when backpacking. I wanted a lighter substitute that I could use for both stills and video. The video was outstanding but (and this is a subjective opinion) the stills just weren't what I hoped. They looked nice. They didn't however rival the D800 in any way. Looking at similar images in lightroom, I actually found that I preferred the RX100 images to those of the gh4. Perhaps the familiarity of the files and the way they behave in post reminded me of the D800 files. With familiarity comes a certain comfort factor. I just couldn't get the gh4 files to my liking. All that being said, I still don't think the stills from the RX10 will be enough to make me leave the D800 at home. They're very good and will do in most situations. They're not D800E good for that once in a lifetime shot you often get in the big wilderness. This is where the A7rII starts to look really interesting...

Did some testing today and yesterday at a state park near my home. Mainly video as I'm trying to learn how to grade the slog2 into something I like. I did take some pictures and at some point I took a shot that for whatever reason (I believe I had left the ND filter turned on ) it turned out way underexposed. I took this shot not for it's artistic value but more for a look at detail rendered. Well, thinking the shot was ruined I figured I might as well crank up some exposure in lightroom via the shadow recovery and exposure sliders. Wow. It's like someone turned the lights on and with almost no noise penalty. No color banding. Nothing. Just plenty of detail and my respect for this one inch sensore genius of a camera! As for a stills camera, this RX10 2 reminds me a lot more of my D800E than the gh4 ever did as far as the look and dynamic range of the image produced. This might not blow you away the way it did me, but I just didn't expect such a clean photo from something so drastically underexposed. Especially from such a small sensor camera. Have a look... I could have boosted this much further but I was going for natural.

After trying it for about a week I'm pretty sure I just don't have the hardware to run this. Playback is extremely choppy (which is ok, I can deal with that). Problem is that when I go to render the finished product is also choppy and full of artifacts. I almost certain I'm setting up my projects properly but for whatever reason, the renders are not working. My other editing program has choppy playback (with 4k video) but renders beautifully. I'll keep trying to fix it. Maybe even delete it and re upload as maybe there was a problem with the initial download of resolve. Beautiful program. I hope I can fix it.

agolex, TheRenaissanceMan, Thank you. I didn't realize the camera would automatically pick an iso when I chose PP7. I just manually set the camera to iso 800. 3200 did seem a bit high for such a small sensor but I thought I'd ask to be sure. Now the learning curve with Davinci resolve and maybe I'll be able to make some nice videos. Thank you again.

Hello everyone. A question if I may? I have been playing around with the slog function and was wondering if like the A7s, there is a base iso for log with the RX10? I tried iso 800 as a starting point with decent results but was wondering if like the A7s, I should be using 3200? Thanks in advance for any advice you may have.

An excellently written and very helpful guide. I will refer to it often!

Hello all. My first post here. Hello Andrew, I believe this is a wonderful idea. To me, the pricing seems fair if not a bargain for the buyer. That being said, I do have a suggestion although I'm not sure if it would be feasible or worth doing. I was thinking maybe a request area where one could describe (in detail if they want) the exact type of piece they are looking for. Musical artists could then browse these requests and decide if they'd be interested in composing such a request or maybe they'd already have something done that would meet those needs. For example, I searched in vain for an idea I had playing in my head just this morning. If I could articulate it to a musician, perhaps they could compose it for a negotiated fee. Regardless, I will use your service when it becomes available. Thanks for this great site as I'm learning from everyone here daily. Greg