Southeast Asia seen through the Sony RX100M3
I’ve found the perfect travel camera.
I know, leading off a story with its eventual conclusion is pretty unconventional, but why beat around the bush. Travel is such an important part of the Millennial lifestyle, and whether it’s a quick weekend out of town trip, or a monthlong adventure in another country, being able to capture travel moments has never been more imperative.
Sure you can take just your smartphone, and many of today’s top smartphones are capable. But if you’re looking to take that next step up, towards professional quality images, sans the bulk of a hefty DSLR, the Sony RX100 Mark 3 is the camera to get.
Announced in March 2014, and available locally for just under P45,000, the RX100 Mark 3, is the third iteration of Sony’s popular premium compact. I hesitate to call it a pocket camera, because it is, but doing so would also lump it with many other pointand-shoots, and that would be an injustice.
At roughly the size of and deck of cards and weighing just over half a pound, it’s small enough to be your constant companion, and I assure you, the usual remorse that stems from everything becoming too heavy all of a sudden is nonexistent.
But despite the size tradeoffs, you are getting a very capable camera with a large one-inch sensor (roughly six times bigger than similarly sized point and shoots), super fast f/1.8 lens for great depth of field and low light performance, a versatile 24-70mm lens (wide angle to reasonable amount of zoom), two ways to compose a shot either via the built-in optical viewfinder or a threeinch LCD panel that flips all the way up for selfies, and the ability to almost instantly transfer photos to your smartphone via a quick tap.
It’s also very easy to use, in fact, most users will be fine leaving it on Superior Auto Mode and letting the camera handle the lifting, which is the setting used on all these photos taken during a friend’s recent trip through Southeast Asia.
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