The newly announced Sony RX10 V transforms bridge-camera performance by integrating a dedicated AI processing unit with its expansive 24-600mm equivalent lens, making it an incredibly versatile powerhouse for wildlife, birding, and portrait photography. I have been avidly watching videos and reading hands-on write ups to give you a little pReview of this new camera.
For wildlife and birding enthusiasts, this upgrade effectively eliminates the tracking lag that traditionally bottlenecked superzoom cameras. By inheriting modern Real-time Recognition AF from Sony’s Alpha mirrorless line, the camera uses deep learning to instantly lock onto the eyes, heads, or bodies of birds and animals, maintaining a sticky grip even through dense foliage or during erratic flight. This advanced subject recognition pairs seamlessly with the BIONZ XR engine to support up to 30fps blackout-free continuous shooting, allowing you to capture split-second action across the entire focal range while the system calculates autofocus and exposure up to 60 times per second across 575 phase-detection points.
Seeing the bird and animal tracking in action was very impressive, and Sony are certainly leading the way with autofocus in bridge type cameras. This could be a camera for actually capturing birds in flight much more easily than with the Nikon P1100 and similar cameras (who can do it, but with less frames per minute, less accurate autofocus and less general performance).
When switching to portraiture, the new autofocus architecture offers effortless precision that compensates for the broader depth of field inherent to a 1-inch sensor. The AI unit introduces human pose estimation, which recognizes and tracks human forms even if a subject turns away, wears sunglasses, or becomes heavily backlit, instantly re-engaging Real-time Eye AF the moment an iris becomes visible. Sony has also dramatically improved the physical shooting experience by adding an Alpha-style rear joystick and a dedicated AF-ON button to the body, giving you immediate manual control over your focus zones through the upgraded 3.68 million-dot EVF without ever needing to dive into menus.
Conclusion
Sony have released another fine camera, that could genuinely be of interest once again to amateur wildlife photographers, or people just needing an all around camera. Will it be enough to sway people with larger sensor cameras such as micro four thirds? Well, people are already doing this, and this could be a much more logical step than moving to the tiny sensors of the P1100 type cameras.
Whatever, it is nice to have a new camera on the scene, and nice to see that 1 inch sensor bridge cameras are still alive and kicking.
My name is Mark G Adams and I run Photography By Mark G Adams. I am a professional photographer from South Wales, shooting weddings, events and portraits as well as running meets and workshops. For fun I like to shoot landscapes, wildlife and occasionally do street photography. Enjoy my website as I share my knowledge learned over decades of working and having fun in photography – This Is My Personal Website
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