The sample one in the Hong Kong causeway bay sony store had it set up such that the middle button brought up the focus point selection screen. The choices did seem to have quite a bit of horizontal and vertical range. Definitely lots more range than a d3/d700.

tulaev wrote:
Emacs wrote:
Distagon 35/2 isn't the best glass for benchmarking
This is comparable lens, and for it there are comparable photos.

No. It would be really amazing if the RX1 lens would be worse: the Distagon 35 is SLR lens and it's forced to struggle with long flange distance of SLR and thus it's highly compromised lens. The RX1's has no such limitations and must be much better: sharper across the frame, less CA, less distortion. In other words, it should be close to perfect, especially for this price. I don't see it is. It isn't.

Emacs wrote:

No. It would be really amazing if the RX1 lens would be worse: the Distagon 35 is SLR lens and it's forced to struggle with long flange distance of SLR and thus it's highly compromised lens. The RX1's has no such limitations and must be much better: sharper across the frame, less CA, less distortion. In other words, it should be close to perfect, especially for this price. I don't see it is. It isn't.


This must be the most weird post here in a very long time...


BTW, lots of full size samples here:

http://www.dcfever.com/cameras/viewsamples.php?set=796

Emacs wrote:
the Distagon 35 is SLR lens and it's forced to struggle with long flange distance of SLR and thus it's highly compromised lens.
Short flange distance isn't an unambiguous advantage for digital cameras. See Leica's story.

tulaev wrote:
Emacs wrote:
the Distagon 35 is SLR lens and it's forced to struggle with long flange distance of SLR and thus it's highly compromised lens.
Short flange distance isn't an unambiguous advantage for digital cameras. See Leica's story.

It is. It may be not so significant as in film era, but it still is, compare Summilux 35 ASPH FLE (summicron 35, biogon 35 zm) vs Samyang 35

snowboarder wrote:

This must be the most weird post here in a very long time...

Sorry, but the only weird thing is its price in Europe for such IQ level. It isn't sharp enough at borders even at f8.

Emacs wrote:
snowboarder wrote:

This must be the most weird post here in a very long time...

Sorry, but the only weird thing is its price in Europe for such IQ level. It isn't sharp enough at borders even at f8.

yeah, europe gets crazy prices, so in europe it is overpriced. i bet this lens does better in the corners at f/2 than the biogon and maybe the cron. it looks to me more like a matter of tradeoffs than an overpriced lens (outside of europe).

sebboh wrote:
Emacs wrote:
snowboarder wrote:

This must be the most weird post here in a very long time...

Sorry, but the only weird thing is its price in Europe for such IQ level. It isn't sharp enough at borders even at f8.

yeah, europe gets crazy prices, so in europe it is overpriced. i bet this lens does better in the corners at f/2 than the biogon and maybe the cron. it looks to me more like a matter of tradeoffs than an overpriced lens (outside of europe).
Personally, I wouldn't care much about border sharpness at f2. But it is a must to have decent sharpness when stopped down. It isn't the case for is camera.

This is the specific image I was talking about earlier. It is at f2.8 on a planar subject and it looks excellent across the frame includinfg corners. A RAW file with good sharpening for web should look only better.

Emacs wrote:
Personally, I wouldn't care much about border sharpness at f2. But it is a must to have decent sharpness when stopped down. It isn't the case for is camera.

What are you basing this opinion on?

I've been looking at RX1 raw files of test cards (not my preference!) converted by Lightroom with no sharpening or correction applied, comparing them to raw files (also uncorrected and unsharpened) from other cameras like the D800 (unfair) and D600 (more fair, but with a 70mm f/2.8 fixed reference lens - less than fair).

The conclusion I have come to is that the camera is clearly optimized for the centre but it doesn't fare too badly at the edges at all. The RX1 does suffer from CA that at the edges doesn't fully go away as it is stopped down to f/8, and when software correction is not employed, barrel distortion is certainly noticeable with test targets.

I also can't help but wonder how the ZM50/1.5 Sonnar would compare if we had the same test targets.

I'd like to see some planar real life subjects at various distances, corrected and uncorrected, before fully making up my own mind, but my feeling so far after comparing a bunch of full frame camera/lens combinations, sadly no 35mm lenses though, is that the RX1 and its lens is doing a pretty good job overall and quite a fine job shot at or near wide open.

Focus videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SUmFB_Q7kY (note camera does not have a memory card inserted)

Shooting in the dark. Really dark.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKCXtvwi-D0

Enough with test targets, some images of the world around us:

http://photo.yodobashi.com/gear/sony/cameras/rx1/index.html (translation here)

And a pair from this site:

http://www.dcfever.com/news/readnews.php?id=7436 (translation here)

More files from dcfever.com

Emacs, excuse my skepticism, but I can't help that notice that you just joined FM and all your post seem to be nothing but negative regarding the RX1.

New members are always welcome, and contrasting opinions are bound to come up, but in this modern age of so called "guerrilla marketing" where people are paid to either post in popular internet forums to promote one product, or inversely bash another, I can't help but wonder......

Why don't you wait until you can get your hands on the camera, or at least until we can see more samples under various conditions to make such judgements ?

Going on and on about how poor something is, when you, nor 99.9% of users here have used it, just seems a bit silly at best.

wayne seltzer wrote:
This is the specific image I was talking about earlier. It is at f2.8 on a planar subject and it looks excellent across the frame includinfg corners. A RAW file with good sharpening for web should look only better.

Emacs wrote:
sebboh wrote:
Emacs wrote:
snowboarder wrote:

This must be the most weird post here in a very long time...

Sorry, but the only weird thing is its price in Europe for such IQ level. It isn't sharp enough at borders even at f8.

yeah, europe gets crazy prices, so in europe it is overpriced. i bet this lens does better in the corners at f/2 than the biogon and maybe the cron. it looks to me more like a matter of tradeoffs than an overpriced lens (outside of europe).
Personally, I wouldn't care much about border sharpness at f2. But it is a must to have decent sharpness when stopped down. It isn't the case for is camera.

it definitely looks decent in the corners to me, not world beating, but not any weakness that would be noticeable in prints either.

also, for me sharpness in the outer third wide open and general look for portraits is much more important. both of these seem extremely good to me, but i still need to see more shots.

Mine has no issues with corner sharpness at all at any f stop as shown in the photos Ive posted.

RX1 captured video produced by "darwinfish105" on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rELUi5Sejo

Same user, over on flicker:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/darwinfish105/

millsart wrote:
Emacs, excuse my skepticism, but I can't help that notice that you just joined FM and all your post seem to be nothing but negative regarding the RX1.

New members are always welcome, and contrasting opinions are bound to come up, but in this modern age of so called "guerrilla marketing" where people are paid to either post in popular internet forums to promote one product, or inversely bash another, I can't help but wonder......

Why don't you wait until you can get your hands on the camera, or at least until we can see more samples under various conditions to make such judgements ?

Going on and on about how poor something is, when you, nor 99.9% of users here have used it, just seems a bit silly at best.
This camera is in leica pricing category (in europe, at least) and I expect it to be close to excellent. Now I see it's rather useless in AF mode if I need to focus not in center (I would hate to "focus and recompose" at f2.0, camera should take care of it, via using touchscreen to change focus point, or via something like Hasselblad's True Focus approach). Second, no tilting screen? So no stomach level shooting? IMO it's the best method to stay unnoticed, much better than everything before and it's shame they didn't implement this.
I keep wondering at sony ability to spoil excellent hardware with poorly minded decisions and half-baked implementations.
// Happy NEX-5n owner. Unfortunately, other companies producing even crappier cameras, pity.

So, the camera has dumbiest user interface.
What about image quality? Well, the sensor is excellent: I love smooth transitions, nice tones at base ISO, low noise levels at high ISOs, it's really great.
Second, lens resolution in the center and its rendition is really great as well IMO. But distortion is noticeable and more pronounced than one of Fuji X100, which is far from perfect.
And resolution at borders doesn't look good even at f5.6.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sonyelectronics/8028159648/sizes/o/in/set-72157631631658271/
It's smeary. I don't know what part is guilty for that: lens, or sensor, or both, but for these money (in Europe it costs twice more than Leica X2) they could do much better.

This camera is about 1/3 the price of an M9 with a Leica 35/2. If you are comparing to the X1/X2, then yes.

carstenw wrote:This camera is about 1/3 the price of an M9 with a Leica 35/2.
M9 and it's lenses with coupling are full of mechanical gimmicks so being 2.5 times more expensive isn't surprise. Of course I compare with X1/X2.