SONY RX100 III
THE BEST COMPACT MONEY CAN BUY?
The best compact money can buy?
Sony is back again with the third version of its popular Cyber-shot rX100 prosumer compact. The camera hasn’t really changed all that much in terms of looks, but has increased about 3mm in thickness to accommodate the larger lens, though it’s still compact enough to slip into a loose pants pocket. The rX100 III has a robust build, but the camera also retains its slippery surface and there’s still no finger grip on the rX100 III, making it much harder for tired hands to hold on to the camera after a long day of shooting. Sony does market an optional stick-on grip to improve the camera’s handling, or you could opt for a third-party grip.
The biggest addition to the rX100 III is the 1,440K-dot oLeD evF, which looked super sharp. It provides 100% coverage, allowing us to focus and frame the shot more precisely than the rear display. Pushing the evF back into the rX100’s body will cause the camera to shut down, which we found to be rather irritating. While it only takes the camera two seconds to be ready to shoot, having to power on the camera repeatedly after pushing in the evF is something we can all do without.
The rX100 III takes it further with its display being able to flip up to 180 degrees (and 45 degrees downward), thus making it easy to take selfies. The 3.0-inch, 1,229K-dot, LCD monitor is sharp, bright, and a boon for live view shooting and reviewing of pictures afterwards.
The Fn button on the rear brings up to two rows of functions. You are able to choose the functions to be assigned to these two rows, and can even arrange them in a preferred order. You can also assign functions to the C button, the left and right buttons on the d-pad, and the button in the middle of the d-pad. With a press of the Fn button, you can access the settings that you commonly use, so we found ourselves rarely needing to access the various submenus during shooting.
The rX100 III also comes with a built-in neutral density (ND) filter, which lets you shoot at F1.8 during the day to get blur the backgrounds without any worry of overexposure.