New hardcore action cam from Sony

Sony has launched a compact, toughened stills/video camera. The DSC-RX0 is said to be waterproof to 10m, shockproof for a 2m drop and even crushproof to 200kgf / 2000N (no, we have no idea what the means in practice either)

It boasts a 1-inch stacked CMOS sensor with over 15 megapixels. The lens is a Zeiss 24mm F4 (fixed) with maximum shutter of 1/32000 and a stills rate of 16fps.

Video features include 40x slowmo (1,000 fps albeit at lower quality), the “S-Log2” picture profile and a clean 4K output over HDMI. Unfortunately, despite Sony claiming the cam is “designed to facilitate creative photographic and videographic expression beyond current limitations”, it doesn’t appear to have a mic jack so getting decent audio into it will be problematic. Yes, it’s an action cam but people still like to use these things for compact vlogging and for that, a mic jack is really rather necessary.

This thing is tiny though, weighing just 110g and measuring 59mm x 40.5mm x 29.8mm (WxHxD)

Intriguingly, Sony’s (optional extra) wireless radio commander, the FA-WRC1M can be used to trigger up to fifteen RX0’s while the PlayMemories app can control five of them, so you could dot these around a tricky shoot and control them all from a single point. That’s quite cool.

The RX0 will cost around 850 Euros to start with (ouch). See the full press release on Sony’s website (click here)