Sony RX100 ISO Test Sample Photos

When looking at the RX100, having the the aperture capability of f1.8 at 28mm, with it's small size meaning that you can always have it with you just in case and when the time comes not putting people off as much as sticking a dslr or a mirror-less in their faces, the words "Night Street Photography" just popped right in my head. The next thing that popped into my head was "how good is it's high iso performance?"...let's find out :)

Since Adobe Camera Raw does not yet support the RX100 RAW files, I used sony data image converter ver 4.1 just to open the files and saving the photos as is, turning off any noise reduction.

And since there is pretty much zero noise at iso 400 and below, I will only show photo samples from iso 800 upwards to iso 6400.

Test 1

the grass is always greener on the other side of the lens

Sony RX100 ISO 800 100% Crop

Sony RX100 ISO 1600 100% Crop

Sony RX100 ISO 3200 100% Crop

Sony RX100 ISO 6400 100% Crop

Test 2

let's try some wildlife photography, another place where high iso is sometimes needed

Sony RX100 ISO 800 100% Crop

Sony RX100 ISO 1600 100% Crop

Sony RX100 ISO 3200 100% Crop

Sony RX100 ISO 6400 100% Crop

Verdict


Wow, I am impressed, the results are much better than I was expecting both in terms of the noise performance and the quality of the files. In fact the noise performance is...dare I say it...just as good as the a900!!! Some of you might be saying "is it really that good, there still seems to be a lot of noise", but you have got to keep in mind that these files are with ZERO noise reduction, and the level of detail relative to noise is really good. With these image files you could just apply some noise reduction to get really low noise photos at pretty high iso, as can be seen below

Sony RX100 ISO 3200 100% Crop with some noise reduction

Above is a photo at iso 3200 at 100% crop with some simple noise reduction applied in Adobe Camera Raw (don't use the one in Sony data image converter, it's horrible), that took about 5 seconds. You have also got to keep in mind that the files are 20 Megapixels, so the 100% crops are zoomed in much more than other cameras in the same class, if you were to look at the photos normally they will have even less noise.

Having seen these test results I can't wait to try the RX100 out in the field.