Sony Cyber-Shot RX10 IV

SONY’S PREMIUM SUPERZOOM CAMERA OFFERS FASTER AF AND 24 FPS BURST SHOOTING.

- George Schaub

INTEGRAL ZOOM LENS CAMERAS are often referred to as “bridge” cameras: the idea being that they bridge the gap between compact and DSLR models. If there’s a bridge connection here it’s in the rather incredible zoom range of the Sony Cyber-shot RX10 IV ($1,700, retail price) that spans the far shores of 24-600mm equivalency. While a camera/lens combo of this capability is necessarily larger than a DSLR body alone, and at first glance may seem like a candidate for shaky shots when zooming to the longer focal lengths, the RX10 IV takes full advantage of Sony’s built-in Optical SteadyShot image stabilization system (4.5 EV shutter speeds) along with any corrective optical adjustments applied to the various focal lengths via the BIONZ X image processor.

Both dust- and moisture-resistant, the Sony RX10 IV superzoom camera contains a 20.1MP one-inch-type stacked phase-detection AF Exmor RS CMOS sensor with a DRAM chip. There are two key operative phrases here that speak to its overall size and image quality: the one-inch sensor allows for a “smaller” camera with such a long zoom range, while phase detection speaks to the improved autofocus (AF) performance—claimed to be an incredible AF response time of 0.03 seconds—critical when you zoom far into the reaches, and when capturing action images. (Sony’s previous model, the RX10 III, used contrast-detection based AF, which was noticeably slow.)