This is just awesome, I applaud you sony.
+1 Absolutely. SOny might have some odd "standards" but they showed a long time ago that they are SERIOUS about digital photography, and back in the day I had ALL the dsc-p# cameras from Sony, (P10 my absolute favorite) Sync flash at 1/1000s and of the very best looking cameras around. Plus they were about 50 million times faster than the Ixus's.
Sony, you might not be best at everything, but you have the biggest balls and push everyone else and always go where no concervative Canon or Nikon man will go. Awesome!!! I've been waiting for FF (digital) compact since, hm, ever?
Glad to see that there are number of people who understand what it is all about in general prospective.
It was my dream as well to have compact high quality FF mirrorless camera with one of the best lenses so that I could always carry it with me. And I am very glad to see that achievement from Sony. It could be very good complement to the 1Dx – I can use 1Dx for specialty shoots using different telephoto lenses and RX1 as second camera with normal fixed lens – so I do not need to bother to change lenses on 1Dx when I need wider angle lens and high quality image.
To my view this is kind of conceptual camera to show what Sony is capable of now and I think their goal is to show their technologies in action thus putting milestone in digital cameras evolution. Sometimes this is more important than making profit at the very beginning. Similar to what goldminers were doing in Alaska at earlier times - putting marks that they reach this territory ahead of others and this is their territory. Also to do all that in compact body is much bigger challenge and costs more than to do the same in the body which is twice or even more bigger . Also big challenge is lens optic design for short distance between lens and FF sensor so that all light is fully captured by sensor pixels - to ensure that light rays are fully orthogonal to the sensor surface at any pixel location on the sensor. And for faster lenses this is much more difficult than for slow lens. Also this is lens with lens shutter - which is more common for MF lenses than for FF lenses (e.g. Schneider Kreuznach leaf shutter lenses for Phase One 645dDF+ system
http://www.phaseone.com/en/Camera-Systems/Leaf-Shutter-Lenses.aspx). Only this one is a big difference itself . Also low light performance should be at least 1/3 better than for new Sony A99 as there is no translucent mirror between lens and sensor.
For me they just captured industry trend (pretty much that is something that you could “feel” in the air) at early stage and embodied that in RX1. And long term evolution vector is towards mirrorless FF cameras with high quality phase detection AF directly on the sensor. Technologies are already here. It is now just matter of time and money to put all that in production. I am sure that in some near future we will see number FF mirrorless compact cameras having phase detection AF points all over the frame and not only in central area of the frame.
I think that in some time we will see pretty interesting review of this camera from Michael Reichmann on
www.luminous-landscape.com. There is also already one availble on dpreview -
http://www.dpreview.com/previews/sony-cybershot-dsc-rx1/
