Posted December 22nd, 2014

Frozen December Sun

I recently purchased a Sony DSC-RX100 advanced compact camera and this photo is from my first session trying out my new camera. The RX100 is tiny enough to fit in almost any pocket, yet it has an unusually large sensor for a compact model and produces excellent image quality. For the serious enthusiast photographer, it is quite full featured and provides a high level of user control, compromised mainly by the inherent limitations of such a small body in terms of ergonomics and shortage of space for many usable physical controls. It won't be replacing my venerable Pentax DSLR equipment when I head out with intent to photograph, but the Sony's small size means I will routinely have it with me when I would not be packing the Pentax gear, and hopefully it will lead me to capture some worthwhile images that I would not normally shoot.
The current Feature Photo was taken in early afternoon with the sun about as high in the sky as it gets at this time of year, and it really does not radiate much warmth, hence the title. The subject is one I might well have photographed with my DSLR, but I would not have been able to capture a similar image with that camera; its larger sensor would have resulted in a comparably composed shot having shallower depth of field, rendering the trees in the background as nearly unidentifiable blobs. I could have further stopped down the aperture of the RX100's lens to add more definition to the background if that was what I wanted, but I would not have been able to achieve the degree of front to back sharpness that was inherent with the still smaller sensor of my old Konica Minolta Dimage A2, as in this Feature Photo taken from the same spot in 2007.
Sony DSC-RX100, 36mm (97mm in 35mm equivalent), f/7.1