Sony has just launched two new innovative lenses which are especially unique in their genre. These lenses look like most interchangeable lenses, but they have the particularity of being completely autonomous. They therefore have a trigger, a memory card port, a battery, an NFC chip and a WiFi chip.
The functioning of these 2 toys deserves some explanations. You can fix them on your smartphones, you must then connect the smartphone and lens together by Wifi in order to be able to use all the features. Once the 2 devices are connected, the lens view is visible on the phone screen and can be used as an integrated lens. During a capture, the photo is both stored on the phone and in the lens SD card. Obviously this kind of lens allows you to take photos of incomparable quality with the sensors integrated into smartphones. Here is the proof with the technical characteristics.
Technical characteristics
- Compatibility with iOS and Android (Sony’s “Play Memories Mobile” application is not yet planned for Windows Phone).
- 20.2 mega pixels for the DSC-QX100 / 18.2 mega pixels for the DSC-QX10
- Optical zoom lenses stabilized in the 2 versions. (3.6X for the DSC-QX100 and 10X (25 – 250 mm) for the DSC-QX10 )
- Video recording in Full HD 1080 / 30p.
- Focal range 25-250 mm with apertures of f / 3.3-5.9.
- The sensitivity ranges from ISO 100 to 12800 (in superior auto mode) for the QX10 and from ISO 160 to 25600 for the QX100.
- Exmor ™ R CMOS sensor
- Direct WiFi / NFC
Examples of photos
10x Zoom test. The first photo: Zoom to 0, the second Zoom to around half and the last Zoom to the bottom.
Test in practice
My first reservation before the reception concerned the connection with the phone or the tablet. I was afraid that there is an annoying discrepancy between what the objective sees and what we see on the screen of the linked terminal. My second reservation concerned the fixation on the smartphone. Is it really well fixed? Doesn’t it damage the phone? Is it secure?
The final word
Will it revolutionize the world of photography as we sometimes hear it? It is still too early to tell. Has it revolutionized the way I take photos? Yes clearly. I wanted to be able to take good photos (fed up with cameras integrated in the smartphone which in all cases and for all smartphones give an average quality. Sometimes average / good, but average nonetheless) without investing too much and having something too big to carry. I found in the QX10 what I was looking for.
