Sony’s New RX10 V Camera Ends a Long Hiatus With Sharper Focus and Serious Speed

Sony ended nearly a decade of silence on its RX10 series this week by introducing the fifth-generation model. The RX10 V keeps the format that made the camera line popular among travelers, wildlife watchers, and sports shooters while adding meaningful upgrades where they count most.

Sony thoroughly updated the body, drawing inspiration from their Alpha mirrorless cameras. The redesigned shape makes a significant impact, with a deeper grip, more intuitive and accessible buttons, and a separate eight-way multi-selector that feels like a genuine joystick, making it very easy to move the AF point around. The dust and moisture resistance has also been improved, allowing it to handle outdoor elements with more ease. The new body is slightly larger and heavier, weighing roughly 1.1 kg with the battery and memory card installed, but the added weight results in a very comfortable feel even during long photo shoots.

The ZEISS Vario-Sonnar T* 24-600mm equivalent zoom with an f/2.4-4.0 aperture continues to steal the show, as it remains the only lens you’ll ever need, spanning a huge range in a single fixed compact. You can take wide-angle shots of street scenes at the short end, then zoom out to capture a close-up image of distant wildlife, all without changing lenses. You can get up close and personal with just three centimeters at 24mm and a nice tele-macro distance of roughly 72 cm when fully extended. Optical stabilization in the lens ensures that your hand-held images remain stable throughout the zoom range.

Under the hood, the 20.1-megapixel one-inch stacked sensor is teamed with the latest BIONZ XR CPU and a dedicated AI unit, and this combination is the real thing. Real-time subject recognition has significantly improved autofocus, allowing it to detect humans, animals, birds, insects, automobiles, trains, and airplanes and frequently swap to the one you want in focus. Human position estimation adds another layer, allowing you to track someone even if they turn their back on you or are wearing a helmet or sunglasses. Simply tap the rear screen to enable real-time tracking, and it will adhere to the subject like glue.

Burst mode now supports up to 30 frames per second with the electronic shutter, and the viewfinder remains entirely blackout-free even while operating quickly. The camera can perform up to 60 autofocus and exposure calculations per second, allowing you to consistently capture fast-moving subjects. There is also a Continuous Shooting Speed Boost option, which allows you to adjust the rate while shooting without having to pause. That means it’s ideal for chasing birds in flight, sporting events, or wildlife encounters where timing is critical.

The electronic viewfinder has also received a big upgrade. It’s now a large 0.5-inch Quad-VGA OLED panel with 3.68 million dots and 0.78x magnification, providing an even sharper and brighter view that makes it much easier to capture the photo just perfect, even in strong sunshine or intricate scenarios. The rear screen was also upgraded to around 1.62 million dots, making it more easier to navigate the settings and evaluate your photographs.

Video quality has improved significantly. Full width 4K recording now supports up to 60 frames per second, and if you want to go all out for silky smooth slow-motion, you can do 4K at 120 frames per second, but only in cropped mode, so you’ll have to make some frame tradeoffs. Active Mode stabilisation has also been added to help keep footage steady while shooting handheld. You’ve also got more options for tweaking the look and feel of your footage, such as S-Cinetone for a cinematic color palette straight out of the camera, S-Log3 for more flexibility when grading in post, and you can even import up to 16 of your own LUTs to see how your finished edit will look in real time on screen. If you’re shooting on your own or capturing a dynamic subject, the Auto Framing feature will keep your main subject right in the middle of the frame, even if they start moving.

With the new NP-FZ100 battery, battery life has increased dramatically. You can expect to get around 630 shots per charge while utilizing the LCD monitor, which is a 50% increase over the previous generation. You can now go out and about without worrying about running out of power in the middle of a long day on location or capturing wildlife in the middle of nowhere. The connectivity options have also been expanded, with USB-C support for rapid data transfer and charging, 5 Ghz Wi-Fi, and full integration with Sony’s Creators app for remote control and software updates. With the Multi Interface shoe, you can now send a crisp digital audio signal to your microphones, no more muffled sound quality.

Sony suggests a retail price of $2,299.99, but you can get your hands on this camera beginning in August. That pricing includes all of the brand-new features, including a faster processor, quicker autofocus, a better viewfinder, a longer battery life, and video enhancements. So, if you were a fan of the previous model (the RX10 IV) but wanted some of the newer and better features without having to switch to an interchangeable lens system, this model is a significant step forward for the type of photographer that requires a camera that can perform in real-world settings.