Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Hello. Dad here. I’m also someone who has enjoyed photography since long before I became a dad. I’ve owned more digital cameras I than I can remember, from the very first digital Rebel to the full frame Canon 6D, and now the Sony RX10 mark IV. I bought the Mark IV from B&H shortly after it became available in the U.S. Like many dad photographers, for years I’ve been the Captain Ahab of the camera world, always searching for that elusive white whale camera that can do everything I need it to do, all in one package. Among those needs are: * Excellent picture quality (this is #1) * Long zoom range (for when your kid is playing sports or is in the last row of the school sing-along) * Great video with auto-focus * Convenience (not messing around with a lot of different lenses) * Good at portraits *and* action shots Until now, there really hasn’t been anything out there that can do all of this. DSLRs are great at many of these things, but if you want long zoom range, you need to buy a number of different lenses. And if the action at your kid’s soccer game goes from the far end of the field to the near side, there’s no time to change the lens back to the wider angle. Also, many DSLRs are awful at autofocus during video, and manually focusing with the little screen in back is a nightmare. (The Canon cameras with Dual Pixel autofocus are actually very good at this, as are the Sony SLT cameras, but you’re still left with the multiple lens problem.) Bridge cameras of the past were tempting, and I tried one or two, but they suffered from poor image quality and tended to have very poor autofocus. With their tiny sensors, it was very difficult to get any kind of separation (when your subject is in focus and the background is blurry), and the quality above the lowest ISO levels was pretty bad. Enter the Sony RX10 line. I’ve owned the first, third, and now the fourth generation models. For my purposes, as a dad documenting my kids’ childhoods, I have finally found that one “do everything” camera I’ve always been looking for. The 1” sensor, combined with the wide aperture lens, allows for great portraits with (to my eye) very pleasing bokeh (blurry background). The later models, including the mark IV, have also greatly improved on high ISO performance. In my opinion, while of course you always want to shoot with an ISO as low as you can, ISO 3200 is perfectly usable on this camera. Yes, there is noise when you push it that high, but unless you’re zooming in 100%, it really isn’t an issue. And with a 600mm equivalent zoom, you don’t have to do as much cropping in post, you can get that shot in camera. (Also, when you’re indoors, you should always be using bounce flash anyway, when possible, so you don’t even have to go that high with ISO.) I upgraded from the first generation RX10 to the mark III to get the extra zoom range and video features like super slow motion. However, I still couldn’t bring myself to let go of my DSLR (the Canon 6D), because the RX10 mark III had a weak spot -- the autofocus, particularly at the long end of the zoom range, was just too slow and unpredictable to get any kind of action shots. So while it had the range to take it to those soccer games, that range didn’t do much good because it could not maintain focus when the kids started moving. This one weakness has been addressed in the RX10 mark IV. It uses a focus technology known as “phase detection,” which has been used in SLR cameras for decades, but which has only come to mirrorless cameras in recent years. This focus technology is vastly superior to the technology (known as “contrast detection”) that was used on the previous model. The RX10 IV tracks motion extremely well, and I’m happy to say with this improvement, I have happily sold my last DSLR and all those lenses, and the RX10 IV is that “do-it-all” camera I’ve been looking for. I’m attaching a couple sample shots here. One is from a soccer game I took the camera to on the first weekend I had it (it was freezing here in the midwest; hence the big coats). There is some motion blur on her feet, but that's because my shutter speed wasn't fast enough. The camera tracked her around the field perfectly. The other sample is a portrait taken with the camera. I’m providing this as a counter to the people who will tell you that you can’t take portraits with a 1” sensor. Not only can you take portraits, you can take great portraits. On the same day I took this one, I took some family portraits for a friend of mine, one of which he had printed on a 24x36 canvas, and it looks fantastic. This camera really does do it all. (Oh, and Sony added the ability to do back-button focus on the Mark IV, which is a welcome change if you're used to doing focus that way.) Finally, a quick note on the price. There’s no question that this camera is expensive -- as far as I know, you literally cannot find a more expensive bridge camera. But considering all that this camera does, the price really is a deal compared to what you’d have to spend to do the same with a traditional camera set up and multiple lenses. A Canon 600mm F4 lens is over $11,000 just by itself. Would you get better pictures with that lens than with the Rx10 IV? Sure. But you can get pictures that are (in my opinion) 90% as good, for a small fraction of the price. And the RX 10 IV does things that many DSLR cameras can't. For example, in addition to its fancy slow motion video tricks, the RX10 IV can sync with a flash at incredibly fast shutter speeds (1/4000th compared to 1/200ths for most DSLRs), meaning you can get that effect where your subject is lit and the background is entirely black. Hard to do on a traditional DSLR. If I had to pick a complaint on the camera, it would be that the pop-up flash cannot act as a wireless controller for off-camera TTL flashes. Sony's DSLRs can do that with the built-in flashes; not sure why Sony didn't include that feature on this one. Also, Sony's menu system is notoriously non-intuitive. Everything is there, and it's not bad once you get used to it, but some things aren't where you'd expect them to be in the menu. All in all, it's easy to give this camera five stars. If you're looking for that one camera to rule them all, this is the one. You won't regret it.