Sony's New RX1R II Is A 42.4MP Full Frame Camera With World’S First Optical Variable Low-Pass Filter

Sony just keeps on disturbing the camera market. today they announced their new RX1R II camera (pre order link). It is a small, palm-sized, camera packing a full frame sensor capturing 42.4-megapixel and the world’s first optical variable low-pass filter which can be turned on or off from the camera menu.

The RX1R II boasts a 42.4-megapixel back-illuminated 35 mm full-frame Exmor R® CMOS sensor complimented by an advanced BIONZ X™ image processing engine. This duo delivers data rates 3.5 times faster than the RX1R, which allows for 14-bit uncompressed raw format output.

As far as other specs, ISO ranges from 100 to 25600 (Expandable to 50-102400), has the same autofocus system as the A7RII with 399-point phase-detect Fast Hybrid AF system, and it shoots Full HD 1080p60 Video in XAVC S format. Though I doubt it will be a camera used mostly for video.

This is a fixed lens camera so you can’t change lenses, but it comes with a pretty nice glass: a Carl Zeiss Sonnar 35mm f/2 lens, which along with the fast focusing, small form factor and low light performance makes it optimal for street photography.

Maybe the most interesting feature of the camera is its world’s-first variable optical low-pass filter which allows to decide between two settings: an image with increased sharpness (low pass off) but more prone to suffer from Moire, or reduced sharpness but eliminate moire and aliasing. If you are undecided there is a medium setting as well. The good news: you can bracket the low-pass filter to get the optimized shot per condition.

This video does a pretty good job of explaining the feature

As far as display goes, the RX1R II features both an advanced pop-up 0.39″ 2.36M-dot XGA OLED Tru-Finder EVF with 0.74X magnification and some fancy glass from Zeiss and a 3.0″ 1,228.8k-dot LCD monitor that can tilt upwards 109° and down 41° for working in a variety of positions and angles.