Photographers Are Getting This Camera All Wrong (Sony RX1R III)

I spent a week with the new Sony RX1R Mark III, and now that all of the hype has kind of died down and people can step back and remove all the emotion from it, I figure it's time to throw my two cents in. Now, I've watched all of the videos. I've seen all of the rage about like the price and the lack of functionality and the added and missing features and all of that, but I come from a perspective where, you know, I absolutely love the RX series. I love small cameras and I love portability. This is my old RX1R M I which is so beat up and dropped and destroyed such that it doesn't even work anymore. And I still use my RX100 Mark 7 which is sitting here on the shelf all of the time. So these cameras are 100% in my wheelhouse and something that I'm specifically the target market for. And that's really important because I feel like a lot of the discourse about this camera has to do with two main things. Price and missing features. So rather than give you a long spec sheet technical review kind of thing, which many other YouTubers have done, and you can just go and watch those videos instead, I'm going to give you my take on what I think about those two main things. And to do that, we're going to have to talk about cars. But before we do that, I just wanted to let you know quickly that I am actually releasing my creative business mentorship called the creative leap on October 1st. In it, I teach a four-phased approach to learn the best ways to monetize your craft and take it from passion to full-time thriving career. It also comes with an exclusive Discord community of like-minded growth mindset individuals bringing each other up so that you have support while you're building your new creative life. If that sounds interesting to you, then you can check it out at pack. studio. And if you join the weight list, you'll be the first in line to get the lowest price for the first 100 students who join. Link in the description. Okay. I like using cars as an analogy here because I'm a car guy and a motorsports guy and it's such a familiar analogy to many people but with such a different reaction in the camera world than what it is usually received in the car world. Cameras are like cars and like cars the people using them are different. You know, some people, maybe most of you, don't give a about cars. And maybe you just want your car to be able to take you from point A to point B, and that's kind of it. Great. If that's you, you're probably a Toyota Camry or Corolla kind of person. You don't really care. You know, something cheap, something that gets 90% of what you want it to do done, and you're never going to ask anything more of it. Some people might care a little bit more about the ride quality and the plushness of the ride. You know, some people might care a little bit more about the speed and the excitement you feel while driving. Some people might care about how safe the car makes them feel or how much stuff they can haul in it, whatever the case may be. But when you're into cars, when you're a true driver and you're looking for a driver's car, you look for cars that give you something different. stiffer suspension, a louder exhaust with pops and bangs, you know, the feeling of diving into a corner and the car has just so much grip. It feels like it's on rails. As car people, you know, we're looking for excitement, a sense of emotion, connection, feel, and to do so, we pay for it. This is why the best cars in the world that give you these emotions are your luxury brands, right? Porsche, Ferrari, Aston Martin, McLaren, whatever. The thing with sports cars though is that while they are great at giving those experiences, inherently to do one thing well, you have to give up another thing. There is compromise to have great handling characteristics and lightweight. Most of the time, sports cars need to sacrifice trunk space. I mean, many of them don't even have a trunk. It's kind of assumed that if you're driving a sports car, you're not going to be hauling your suitcases to go to the airport. And yet, so many people complain about the RX1R Mark III when it comes to this. You know, in so many different ways, the RX1R Mark III is a supercar. It's a McLaren 720S. It's a Ferrari 296. It's a Porsche GT3 RS. It absolutely excels in a few given tasks, you know, like making you feel emotion and driving around a racetrack really quickly, but it absolutely fails at picking up the kids from school or going

to do the groceries or going over speed bumps. And the price that you pay for all of those inconveniences is then offset by the enjoyment you get from the things that you would actually buy it for, the things that it's good at. Now, you could say that supercars are crap because, you know, some of them don't have four-wheel drive or air suspension or they're extremely loud in the cabin and they don't have adaptive cruise control and on and on. They're intentionally missing all of these features because those features don't fit in the intended audience that those cars were made for. And in the car world, that's kind of an accepted thing. We know that we're in for a bumpy, loud ride in these kind of cars. And if that's not what we're looking for, we look for something else. And yet, the RX1R Mark III is for the kind of photographer who prioritizes portability and discretion. It's wants an EDC camera that can do most things well. Sure, like any car, it has some weird perks like not having IBIS, but you work around it. You know, it's not that big of a deal. You know, in the racing world, when you rely on ABS too much, you just cop a bunch of under steer, making you really, really slow into the corner. Not having IBIS is like returning to fundamentals. And, you know, since I destroyed my Mark 2 right here, I actually forgot what that was like. And I it was actually kind of fun, you know, having to challenge myself to shoot in this such a fundamental way in the way that, you know, fun is challenging when you're trying to grow through something. You know, it's rewarding. All this to say that this is the smallest full-frame camera you can buy right now. And this statement was actually true 10 15 Yeah, 10 years ago when this first came out. And if you aren't the kind of photographer who wants to sacrifice everything for the sake of portability, then this camera, the Mark III, is not for you. You know, it's the same kind of thing when we're talking about price as well. You know, that is to say, if you can't afford the RX1R Mark III, if you look at the price and it's just too expensive for you to justify, then this camera is not for you. you are by definition not the target customer. Just like if you can't afford a supercar. Now, I make a good living, but I know that I wouldn't be comfortable spending half a million dollars on a car right now. So, I'm not the target market. At least not right now. Although, I am working on it and I accept that. But I am the target market for the RX1R Mark III because I've got the money and I've got the collection, you know, of cameras that all do very different things and are for specific types of shoots, even if they all do the 90% of the same thing of getting from point A to point B and just taking photos and video. And that's another thing I'll add to this little rant here. You know, a lot of people are looking at this camera to this camera as a beginner or as an intermediate or there are even some advanced people out there and they're looking at it and thinking that this camera should be the be all and end all of cameras that it should do everything because of the price. It should have every feature and that is just not the case. This camera has a very specific purpose and it should be your second, third, fourth camera to someone who can afford it. Most likely a professional who is already making money from their photography. Even my A1 M I, this guy right here, some people say it should do everything. Some people do say it does everything, but by comparison, it doesn't do lightweight. It's heavy. It's bulky. It's big. and it's expensive, but again, I am the target market for that camera from a professional perspective rather than from a personal perspective, which I am for the RX1R. Anyway, all this to say that other YouTubers out there will watch YouTube videos for opinions and then YouTubers will do what YouTubers are good at, which is the echo chambering the out of a single perspective and opinion. And round it goes to every single other YouTuber there. and no one has a single original critical thought. I don't say this because I am a Sony digital imaging ambassador and I should be singing its praises. It's far from that, you know, and this new incarnation of the RX1R is not perfect and I have my own niggles and agrievces with it as I do with all of my other cameras. But you as a consumer, you know, you should know where you stand. You should know what you're looking for in a product and how

it services your needs and whether your budget allows for it. You know, try to see where a product fits in the overall product line and then if you find yourself being the target audience for that product, then you can go ahead and make an educated decision. It's very easy to be cynical and speculate, which a lot of opinions on YouTube about this camera have done. It is far harder to be empathetic and to be objective. So, something to think about. And that's all I've got to say on the camera. It's a great camera. I'm gonna get one with my own money, but putting it on the business so that you know I can actually expense it as a business expense because I can. And if you also want to have a creative business where you can expense cameras, then remember I am releasing my creative business mentorship called the creative leap on October 1st, which you can find out more about at pack. studio. All right, get out there and make something that matters. Peace.