Sony RX100 VII ISO Range

Sony’s RX100 line of high-end compact cameras has established itself as one of the best choices for top-notch image quality coming from a tiny package. It’s not surprising that it has become the choice of many professionals who want to take a pocket-sized camera with them on their travels.

The latest model is the RX100 VII. I’ve been out shooting with it recently, and you can find some of my posts on it here.

Compared to some cameras, and indeed some Sony cameras, the RX100 VII has a pretty limited ISO range; it goes from ISO 64 to ISO 12800. Of that, ISO 100 to 12800 is the native ISO range, with ISO 64 and ISO 80 falling into the extended ISO range (where software takes over from the hardware’s limits). So you can’t push the limits of acceptable image quality with six-figure ISOs, which is a sensible choice with the RX100 VII’s smaller sensor size.

I’ll post some example images and a detailed hands-on review separately, but I also thought it might be useful to someone to post some examples of photos taken throughout the camera’s ISO range so that you can judge for yourself how its ISO performance stacks up with your expectations.

This is a scene I often use for ISO tests because of the smooth tones between highlights and dark shadow. Basically, it’s a good test of ISO image quality, particularly as you start getting into the higher ISOs (in addition to being a fun place to shoot around the equinox!).

ISO Range Sample Images

I haven’t applied any processing or corrections to any of these images—they’re as shot and entirely untouched after they’ve come out of the camera. They were all taken with a Sony RX100 VII.

You can click on each image for a full-size version. I haven’t done any post-processing at all on these, but the versions displayed are from the JPG versions which have the camera’s built-in processing applied. You can see the effects of that most easily in shots at the higher ISO end.

While the full-size versions give you a good idea of the camera’s performance, the versions you see displayed on the page here are still derivative versions that are generated for web display. So in the caption for each image you can find download links for the direct-out-of-camera original RAW (ARW) and JPG versions (I shot them with the RAW+JPG option). You can download and view the original images at full resolution if you want a closer look. The JPGs here range from around 6MB to 16MB. The RAW files are around 21MB each.