Sony RX10 M2 - first part of my review and a mini-comparison with the A7S and Canon 1D C

[dafreaking]

Yes man. i got it for 75k [1146$] from sony dealer.

That's superb. Is it easily available or through dealer contacts?

[DriftProductions]

ANOTHER AWESOME REVIEW THANKS ANDREW! WHEN IS PART 2 OF THE REVIEW COMING? CHEERS, JOEL.

[Ak Ns]

That's superb. Is it easily available or through dealer contacts?

I don't think sony has good market share in india. people here use a lot of panasonic cameras for videography and the rest is canon and little amount of nikon. Although i brought it from a dealer he said he sold the first one to me. But its down south, hyderabad i am talking about. mumbai, delhi, banglore, chennai might have been selling from a while now.I can say its easily available. 

[Oliver Daniel]

My RX10 II's are from DigitalRev and they are fine. 

Took one out for a quick spin as needed some pick up shots for a simple narrative in a music video. 

First Impressions: 

Good Stuff

- A lot of fun to shoot with! 

- Steady in the hand, even at 200mm.

- Easy to use and change settings quickly. 

- Lens is the best feature! 

- Slo mo is great upto 240fps. 

- Amazing "shot-getter", could be used as an A-cam on low budget stuff. 

- Not too difficult to get some nice shallow shots. 

- Very compact. 

- Motion cadence is better than expected. 

- Stills are good enough. 

 

Areas to Improve

- Peaking and zebras seem to need a bit of firmware tweaking for accuracy. 

- Zoom is slow when recording. And noisy. 

- Screen is very flimsy, needs looking after! 

- 2 seconds is not long enough for 240fps. 

- Video thumbnails are pixelated in preview mode. 

- Menu button placement is awkward. 

- Should be able to use shutter button as record. (come on Sony!!)

- Battery life is terrible. (Sony should do better here!!!)

- No MLUT for Slog2 (judging light is hard in this mode without MLUT). 

- Not good in low light. 

- Difficult to seperate subject from background on mid-shots. (cant have it all). 

- Can look sterile in 4k out the box (incredibly sharp!) 

 

For the money.... it's a fantastic litttle camera.  

[Amro Othman]

When I get the funds this will be my new A-camera, and a6000 will be the B-cam. Thanks for the feedback everybody 

[DriftProductions]

'Not good in low light.' 

 

Cheers for the specs Oliver. How does the low light compare to the GH4 (that is if you have any experience with the GH4)? Have you any low light test shots online? Obviously you could throw the new speedbooster 0.64XL and a sigma 18-35 f1.8 on the GH4 and it would beat the RX10 II's low light capabilities, just lack the 24-200mm focal length. However i'm interested in getting your feedback on this. Looks like a tempting purchase for many filmakers to utilise the "usable" 120fps & 240fps shots and 4K 24p as a B-cam for slow-motion. 

[hmcindie]

I bought the RX10 ii, used it in a music video recently. I used it way more on that shoot than my A7s, good for running and gunning. Lots of cars, lots of driving. The 100p mode on the RX10 ii has very little rolling shutter and a good sharp image so I used that mostly. Excellent action cam, explosions shot on the s-log mode with 250p looked great! The compression is finally getting good enough so that half the image isn't breaking up.

 

[Cinegain]

Anyone that went from the FZ1000 to RX10M2? I'm using the FZ1000 as a trip cam, but I could see me using the RX10M2 a whole lot more for different stuff as well.

[Mat Mayer]

Nice to hear the 5 minute thing was a typo mistake. Shame about the battery not being great but it is good that it can be charged in-camera. Just get a good usb charger and that should keep it topped up. They should work on the fast charging you can get on some phones now for the next one. I also agree that the 240 fps is too short at 2 seconds. Sounds like 100/120 is the way to go for regular slow mo.

 

[ntblowz]

Anyone that went from the FZ1000 to RX10M2? I'm using the FZ1000 as a trip cam, but I could see me using the RX10M2 a whole lot more for different stuff as well.

Well for trip the 400mm telephoto is really nice lol (the G3x with 600mm is even nicer), 200mm is definitely not long enough for me to capture some occasional wild life, I used to have FZ1000 back when I have GH4, they work nicely together since they both have cine d.

 

Now I got A7S so decide to go all Sony route (save hassle on colour matching), my RX10 II is coming soon (price in china is $1050, my friend will bring it to me when he comes back) which will be use as bcam and mainly slooowmo.

[manbitesdog]

I don't find the batteries an issue at all as you can find compatible ones for very cheap on Amazon or EBay. I bought myself 4 extra batteries and a good dual charger and that's more than enough to get through a day's shooting. 

[Greg Padgett]

 

 

 

 

• as far as color goes, avoiding sgamut entirely may be a good idea. i used the "pro" color settings posted on the previous page as a starting point, and decided to dial down the saturation a tad, the yellow even more, and the magenta just a bit. this has easily produced naturalistic color which doesnt require a lut to make it look halfway normal –– just some curves and saturation to taste. what you want to do with the settings in PP7 (slog2) is up to you of course and depends on the aesthetic of your project~!

 

 

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!

[kaylee]

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!

omg thats awesome im so glad to hear that!!!!!!

the color science/settings of this camera have already made me question my sanity more than once lol, happy to see that youre doin well 

thanks for sharing the details of your settings. also good to know about resolve... im looking forward to getting deeper into it when i get some more ram for my imac

 

 

[Steve Green]

Has anyone had glitches when recording 100fps 1080P?

It only seems to happen within the first second of shooting, but it's like it misses a chunk of the middle vertical strip and stretches the remainder to compensate...

This is taking the 100fps MP4 into After Effects CS6, and interpreting it as 25.

Seems to do it when played via VLC as well though.

I've not seen it before today where I was shooting at a local comic con, card is a Lexar 64GB 1000x (150MB/Sec) Professional UHS-II SDXC Card, which is what I've been using before with no problems.

I've attached a rendered clip from after effects, but the source seems to have the same glitch.

Thanks,

Steve
 

C0002.mp4

[Emanuel]

 

[kaylee]

Has anyone had glitches when recording 100fps 1080P?

It only seems to happen within the first second of shooting, but it's like it misses a chunk of the middle vertical strip and stretches the remainder to compensate...

This is taking the 100fps MP4 into After Effects CS6, and interpreting it as 25.

Seems to do it when played via VLC as well though.

I've not seen it before today where I was shooting at a local comic con, card is a Lexar 64GB 1000x (150MB/Sec) Professional UHS-II SDXC Card, which is what I've been using before with no problems.

I've attached a rendered clip from after effects, but the source seems to have the same glitch.

Thanks,

Steve
 

C0002.mp4

steve, i downloaded your file and that is undoubtedly an appalling aberration. fwiw i havent come across anything like that with my rx10m2 shooting 120fps 100mbs, but thats the only mode besides 4k that ive spent some quality time shooting. id definitely be interested in knowing what the disconnect is here

[hmcindie]

Has anyone had glitches when recording 100fps 1080P?

It only seems to happen within the first second of shooting, but it's like it misses a chunk of the middle vertical strip and stretches the remainder to compensate...

This is taking the 100fps MP4 into After Effects CS6, and interpreting it as 25.

Seems to do it when played via VLC as well though.

I've not seen it before today where I was shooting at a local comic con, card is a Lexar 64GB 1000x (150MB/Sec) Professional UHS-II SDXC Card, which is what I've been using before with no problems.

I've attached a rendered clip from after effects, but the source seems to have the same glitch.

Yes! I've had that same glitch in some scenes. I thought I was going crazy or that something had gone wrong in the transfer. I had to delete frames to get rid of those things. It's not an AE/VLC thing, the bug can be seen in every software. In my case it happened with a 250fps file

[kaylee]

hmmm. so its happening at different frame rates. could the memory card be an issue? i doubt it but idk. im using these http://www.amazon.com/Transcend-Speed-UHS-3-Memory-TS64GSDU3/dp/B00J3KA814 w no problems so far

wth

lame

[Steve Green]

How strange

Yes! I've had that same glitch in some scenes. I thought I was going crazy or that something had gone wrong in the transfer. I had to delete frames to get rid of those things. It's not an AE/VLC thing, the bug can be seen in every software. In my case it happened with a 250fps file

Hi,

what card were you using?
I would have thought the Lexar I was using would be up to spec... maybe it's a brand thing.

Interesting that it's happening on 250 as well - only happened with my 100fps shots, and yesterday was indoors, and cooler than the previous day out in the sun, when I was shooting much more regularly.

If it only happens in the first second, I can plan ahead, anyone had it happen in the middle of a shot?

Thanks

Steve

[hmcindie]

Lexar too. I've had it on two clips and I've shot a lot so it's not too common but it is very ugly. Mine was in the middle of a shot.