Yesterday was a busy day! Two parties, no time to edit, tough mixed lighting, and low light. Every shot in this post is straight out of the camera, and 18 out of the 22 images on this post were all shot at f/2.
For Nadia’s birthday party, I used a custom white balance, neutral picture style, +1 contrast, +1 saturation, Dynamic Range Optimization set to auto, and auto ISO. Mostly, I used wide area autofocus with face detection enabled (without registered faces, I’ve just never bothered with that feature). The Sony RX1R II is so quick to autofocus, that I was able to capture candid moments perfectly.
Just a few hours later, The Karate Edge (the karate school where we train at) was having their Halloween Party. Lighting in there was all over the place. Everything was set up exactly like it was for Nadia’s birthday party, except I had the camera set to Vivid mode. ISOs ranges all the way up to 12,800! The photos are so clean though, that I had to look at the EXIF data to see which ones were that high of an ISO.
One thing that bothers me though about the camera, that I didn’t realize till looking at the images today, is that I had the Auto ISO programmed to go no higher than 6400 at 1/125 of a second. Apparently, once the camera needs to slow down the shutter speed more than 1/80 of a second, it bumps the ISO up (even though I had it programmed not to). That’s why the ISO was so high. It turn out that it didn’t matter, the images look fine, but it is annoying. The manual doesn’t really explain this “feature” either. I had to read about it in forums.
One thing I tried earlier in the day and at the Halloween party was taking close up portraits with macro mode. It works, I took a few shots, but it works faster and I got better results in regular mode.
It works for selfies quite nicely, even though you can’t see what you’re doing. That’s me on the left, and my beautiful bride of 18 years on the right.
Another selfie, but this time I completely cut off my face. Oh well, it got everyone else in the shot.
The more I use this camera, the more I am impressed with it. How about you? Do you own this camera? Looking to buy one? What’s your opinion?