Photography News 03

Camera review Samsung Galaxy Controlling the Galaxy Camera is like controlling no other compact because there are no buttons other than the shutter release; everything is done via the huge rear touch screen. You still have full control of the settings though, so long as you select Expert user mode – this brings up an interface of virtual dials for changing aperture, shutter speed, exposure compensation and ISO. In the shooting screen, these settings are displayed all the time, and to change one all you need to do is touch it – this reopens the settings interface. These main settings are the only ones that are so directly accessible; for others you have to go into the settings menu. This gives you fairly comprehensive control – for example, you can change the white-balance, focus mode, drive mode and metering. Focusing is also down to touch control. While it’s not the quickest, it’s simple to focus anywhere by just touching your subject on- screen. There are only two focus modes, normal and macro, which means there’s no continuous AF or manual focusing. One big advantage of the touch-screen control is that, without the need for buttons, there’s space for a huge LCD screen that’s the same HD quality as smartphones – beautiful for composing and viewing your shots.

SonyRX100MkII

Despite being so small, the RX100 Mark II feels unexpectedly sturdy in your hand. It’s built solidly, and the wide-aperture lens adds quite a weight to the front, although it’s still well balanced. Overall, it’s in fact slightly chunkier than the original RX100, and this is because there’s a tiltable screen on the back, which is great for composing from high and low angles. There’s a lens ring that by default controls the aperture, but can alsobe assigned toother functions – it’s great if set up as a zoom ring, because it feels natural to turn this to zoom, and it allows much more precise control than the lever around the shutter button. There are plenty more customisation options too. The quick menu, opened with the Fn button, can be altered to include seven functions of your choice in any order, and four of the preset buttons can be reassigned. Functions that can be assigned to any of these include things like ISO, white-balance, metering and AF mode, so you can have all the main settings arranged exactly as you wish. My only complaint with the handling is the shutter button. The half press isn’t well defined so it’s difficult to judge and occasionally led to me taking photos unintentionally. Focusing on the RX100 is a little sluggish in comparison to some of the other premium

The lens, controlled with a lever around the shutter button, provides a massive 21x zoom equivalent to a focal range of 23-483mm. This is possible because the 1/2.3-inch sensor is small, and this brings with it a compromise in image quality, with less detail than with bigger sensors. There’s no option to shoot Raw files – it’s JPEGs only. Exposures and colours are excellent though, and the dynamic range is good, with no shadow or highlight clipping even in contrasty light. The ISO range goes up to 3200, and the JPEG processing ensures there’s not too much grain, but detail becomes progressively blurred as you go up the sensitivity scale. With the Android operating system, you have access to all apps that can be downloaded from the Google Play store, including image-editing apps and useful things like Google Maps and Samsung Photo Suggest, which will help you find photo hotspots on location. With the options of mobile and Wi-Fi connections, you can also share images with other devices, or directly to the Internet and social networks from the playback mode on the camera.

compacts, but it doesn’t feel like it holds you up. The manual focusing set-up is excellent – the lens ring becomes a focusing ring, and focus peaking on screen provides very clear highlighting of sharp edges, combined with magnification that helps with accuracy. The sensor in the RX100 Mark II is the same one-inch type as in the original RX100, and this is as big as you’ll currently find in a compact aside from those with APS-C sensors. It’s still around three times smaller than an APS-C sensor in terms of surface area, but from the images, you couldn’t tell. Images are packed with detail, and resolution and overall quality just about match up to that from the Nikon Coolpix A. With 20.2 megapixels, the quality is easily good enough to produce excellent large format prints. Where it doesn’t do quite so well is in its ISO performance, where noise starts to become an issue at ISO 1600 and gradually worsens up to the top settings. That said, its performance is a lot better than most compacts of a similar price. Add the RX100 MkII’s overall performance to its excellent handling and you have a good value compact.

SPECS

SHOOTING SPEEDS Single, continuous 10fps LCD SCREEN 3in tiltable with 1228k dots STORAGE SD, SDHC, SDXC, microSD, microSDHC DIMENSIONS 101.6x58.1x35.9mm WEIGHT 281g including battery and memory card

AUTOFOCUSMODES Single, continuous, manual, direct manual EXPOSURE COMPENSATION +/-3EV in 1/3EV steps, AEB continuous in 1/3, 2/3 or 1EV SHUTTER 30secs-1/2000sec METERING PATTERNS Multi pattern, spot, centre-weighted

PRICE £575 CONTACT www.sony.co.uk SENSOR 1.0 type 20.2-megapixel Exmor

LCD SCREEN 4.8in HD Super Clear TFT, 1280x720 STORAGE MicroSD DIMENSIONS 128.7x70.8x19.1mm WEIGHT 300g including battery and memory card

AUTOFOCUSMODES Centre, multi, face detection EXPOSURE COMPENSATION +/-2EV in 1/3EV steps, AEB SHUTTER 16secs-1/2000sec METERING PATTERNS Multi, spot, centre-weighted SHOOTING SPEEDS Single, continuous

PRICE £289 (WI-FI), £339 (Wi-Fi+3G) CONTACT www.samsung.co.uk SENSOR 1/2.3in 16.3-megapixel BSI CMOS IMAGE DIMENSIONS 4608x3072 pixels ISORANGE 100-3200

R CMOS, Bionz processor IMAGE DIMENSIONS 5472x3648 pixels ISORANGE 160-12,800 (100-25,600 extended)

PROS Excellent image quality, flexibility in controls, good build quality CONS Spongy shutter button, autofocusing could be quicker

PROS Screen is great for composing and viewing, long zoom, Android apps CONS Small sensor means less detailed images and limited low-light performance

Image quality and ISO performance

ISO 100

ISO 400

ISO 100

ISO 800

JPEGDETAIL

RAWDETAIL

ISO 3200

ISO 12,800

ISO 800

ISO 3200

Photography News | Issue 3