Rooftop Sunrise With the Sony RX100ii (Mendoza, Argentina)

Rooftop Dawn, #3, Mendoza, Argentina, 2020

A Nice Little Package

I have been using a Sony RX100ii for some time now as my “throw-in-the-pocket” camera.

It makes much better images than my iPhone and isn’t much bigger.

A view of the machine in question:

Sony RX100ii

Here is why I like it:

–It’s small–it fits easily in the pocket of my cargo pants, or in my jacket pocket.

–It’s light and doesn’t feel like an anvil when I use the strap to hang it around my neck or over the shoulder

–With it’s 20 megapixels, the files out of the camera measure 18″ x 12″ at 300ppi, which is a nice-sized print. Or, you have some extra pixels with which to crop if all you need is something sized for the web.

–You can shoot in raw as well as JPEG. This gives you some flexibility to fix things (exposure, shadows, highlights, etc.) in post.

–It has a reasonable zoom lens, roughly a 28-100mm equivalent in my version (the II). Other models/versions have different ranges, for example 24-70mm (the III, IV, and V versions) and 24-200mm in the latest versions (VI and VII)

–It has very effective image stabilization (Steady Shot) which allows you to shoot down to some slow shutter speeds. Handheld shots at 1/6 or 1/10 sec, for example, are fairly easy to achieve. (Of course, zoomed out, you’ll need to speed things up to avoid blur.)

–It has a built-in pop-up flash (for fill and other uses).

Here is what I think are its deficiencies:

–It is expensive. The newer VII model retails for around $1200! Even an older used version like the one I use (II) will cost you somewhere between $250 to $400. That’s a pile of dough and won’t be worth it for a whole lot of folks–especially as cell phone cameras continue to improve. For those kinds o’ bucks you can get a much more capable DSLR from Canon or Nikon.

–Image quality is pretty good for a small package–but nowhere near what you might be used to with a full-frame DSLR. Even in raw files, the flexibility to bring up shadows and drop the highlights is limited in comparison.

–In my version (the II), as you zoom out, the lens goes from f/1.8 (at 28mm) to a f/4.9 max aperture (at 100mm), which can be too slow for low-light conditions. If low-light is a concern, you should choose one of the versions with the 24-70mm equivalent lens as its wider f/1.8-2.8 range would be very useful.

–I try to use the base ISO if possible–in my version of the camera, that’s ISO 160. Noise using ISOs up to 400 is not bad, acceptable to OK at 800, and too-noisy-for-my-taste at 1600. From 800 and up you’ll definitely want to do some noise reduction in post.

After a cold front moved through the area a couple of days ago, I went up to the rooftop of our high-rise (our Mendoza COVID-19 headquarters for the time being…argh!) to take in the early morning, post-storm, view. Here are some sample Sony RX100 shots from the session…

This one was handheld at 100mm equivalent, f/9 and 1/15 sec at ISO 400. I used f/9 with the idea of getting both foreground and background in focus. It’s obvious that I had the zoom at max telephoto–and I cropped the image a bit… so the image quality suffered accordingly. Oh, how I was wishing for my big DSLR, a tripod, and my 70-200mm lens!

Rooftop Dawn, #5, Mendoza, Argentina, 2020

This one is cropped in even farther and so you can really see the drop in sharpness. Handheld at 100mm equivalent, f/5.6, 1/20sec, and ISO 400. Maybe if I had bumped the ISO up to 800 or 1600 to get a faster shutter speed the blur would have been less???

Rooftop Dawn, #6, Mendoza, Argentina, 2020

With these kinds of wide panorama’s, with plenty of light, the camera does well–handheld, 28mm equivalent, f/5.6, 1/30sec, ISO 200. On the far left, if you look closely, you can just see the snowy cone of the Cerro Tupungato sandwiched between the dark brown ridge and the dark clouds. Tupungato’s summit sits at somewhere around 21,555 to 21,768 feet above mean sea level whereas the brown mountains in the foreground that are lightly dusted with snow are mere arid pre-cordillera “foothills” reaching only to around 7-8,000 feet :

Rooftop Dawn, #12, Mendoza, Argentina, 2020

This handheld shot at max telephoto, with a higher shutter speed, turned out a bit better than the examples above–perhaps much of the blur in those first two images came from my own trembling hands? Looking south from our Torres Palmares building. 100mm equivalent, F/5.6, 1/80sec, ISO 200:

Rooftop Dawn, #13, Mendoza, Argentina, 2020

Looking north. The high brown hill on the left is Cerro Arco (5,380 feet MSL). The tree-covered lump down and to the right of Cerro Arco is Cerro de la Gloria, a popular stop on city tours. Mendoza City center (2,450 feet MSL) is just out of view to the right. 86mm equivalent, F/5.6, 1/50sec, ISO 200:

Rooftop Dawn, #14, Mendoza, Argentina, 2020

This was shot at ISO 100 (handheld, 28mm equivalent, f/5.6 and 1/160sec), which gave me a bit more leeway in camera raw to fix highlights and shadows. The scene was somewhat high contrast. In post, I also fixed some of the lens distortion. Scroll down one more pic to see what the jpeg looked like as it came out of the camera with no adjustments or post-processing.