I thought that travelling by bicycle is restrictive when it comes to how much luggage you can take…well, that was long time ago, before I got 2 kids. Now, travelling on holiday by any kind of transport seems to be a challenge when it comes to packing up. After all, kids need everything, right ? Nappies, food, 6352564 items of clothing for changing weather conditions, not to mention toys they can’t part with and, those days, a tablet fully loaded with cartoons. How to fit in the remaining space ( or rather, lack of space... ) your camera with your beloved lenses ? ( just a few of them, you know, only the wide angle, 85mm for portraits, fast 50mm, macro, telephoto, and, my latest love – a lensbaby… ). I am not going to mention the forbidden word – tripod… If I leave them, I will leave so many shots I could get if I had them…or will I ?

Truth be told, I was trying. Short strolls to the park, I was taking everything. Well, mostly everything. Only to realize that with 2 kids running around you are lucky if you have time to take even few snapshots. What about patiently setting up tripod ? Changing lenses ? Time-lapsing ? Hahaha… Mission impossible. So what do you do if you can’t also leave at home your passion for photography ? Compromise. Or, compress and compromise. What do I mean by compress ? Well, fit all your equipment into one device. If that kind of camera will ever be constructed, well, I will take a mortgage to get it. Right now I had to find the best possible alternative.

So my search started for a camera that :

- comparable picture quality to my Canon 5D Mark II
- having lens ( lenses ) with biggest possible focal range
- was relatively small and lightweight
- allowed for all manual control
- was reasonably priced

I have search long. I have searched wide. I have searched whole 5 minutes. Then I accidently came across a forum ( discovering that other photographer also have children and similar dillemas ) where a mystical code was constantly repeating. the code was RX10. When combined with the word “Sony” I have discovered solution to my worries. The best existing one for now, at least.

I will not go into technical details – these can be easily found online ( for example here :

http://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/cyber-shot-compact-cameras/dsc-rx10 ).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After placing some frantic bids on ebay week later I had in my hands good “the king of bridge cameras” as to use a quote from one of the forum members. Ideal ? Definetely not. Best solution to my needs when travelling ? Absolutely. Easy to use, lightweight, not too big. Quality – you bet, and what a lens ! Relatively wide ( starts at 24mm FF equivalent ) up to 200mm, 2.8 all the way. Of course as soon as Sony releases new RX version with 16 – 300 2.8 lens I will switch, but this is nowhere in sight in Sony’s plans ( at least according to Sony rumours website ).

So here I was – enjoying holidays in Gran Canaria – playing around with my never-becoming-tired kids and being able to get some decent shots in the meantime. They might not be perfect – with better lenses shots could be sharper, have better background blur, bokeh and… could not be shot at all as I would not have time to change lenses or set up a tripod. I would not have 70% of the shots had I not got this new camera. And having to choose between having decent shot against not having a perfect one ? The choice was really simple. I was going on holiday, after all….

 

Below are some example pictures taken with this camera - I have not done much work in post processing with them - just slight contrast / clarity / etc. simple edits, no photoshop, just lightroom.