Sony - DSC-QX10 18.2-Megapixel Attachable Lens-Style Camera for Most iOS and Android Mobile Phones - Black

I had been watching this product since release, and was intrigued, but turned off by the price. I happened to find it as an open box product, with an additional discount, and bought it on a steep discount. I really enjoy it, but I don't know that it would have been worth full price, for me. My purpose for the camera is to bring it to places where my DSLR can't go. It's small enough that I can put it in my purse and use it at concerts or sporting events to get a good picture. Obviously, the zoom isn't as good as a 300mm lens, but the photos are clear and suitable for my personal photo albums. Attaching a comparison of the Christmas tree taken with my iPhone vs this camera. The low light photos are pretty impressive. I'm also attaching a photo of the dog taken in the kitchen with the lights off. Light was coming in from other rooms. Photos in low light are not grainy at all. I read a lot of reviews on the wireless connection. I'm using an iPhone 5 with it. When I'm in my house, it's a bit of a hassle, because my phone wants to connect to my home network. Each time you turn it off & on, you have to go to settings and reconnect. However, I also took it to the beach, where it automatically connected, since there were no preferred networks present. There was no need to go to settings first, just turn the camera on & open the app.

Shopped for DSLR backup prior to vacation - cruised BestBuy and saw and played with QX10. Got 'snared' by drastic 'Open Box' discount and took it home and played with it. I warn you that you'll have to 'play' with it a bit because it has a lot going on but you'll uncover features like HDR and amazing ISO as you do. The quality of the pictures is great . The Moon-on-the-Water was shot using one of the modes and according to Photoshop the ISO that the QX10 selected was 12,800 and the exposure was 1/4 sec. There is a second photo - actually a montage - that shows the chromatic aberration of my DSLR kit zoom lens compared to the #barely discernible# chromatic aberration of the QX10. Sony recently released a s/w update for the phone end of your system and a firmware update for the QX10 and it's pretty cool because it gives you a grid to help with composition and direct control over ISO. It also clears up some tech issues.

Sony broke the camera mold with this model. A lot on people do not like the concept...well they have not use it! Some way cool and interesting angle can be achieved with this camera. Takes an excellent picture too.

This product is designed for an add on to smartphone. Adding this camera gives your smartphone the ability to have 10x OPTICAL zoom and great picture quality. In that sense, it is a great product. However, it is an "add-on" for the smartphone, meaning for the full features, your smartphone is necessary and considering the pairing process takes long, it makes the product not so great. In order to connect the camera to your smartphone you have to reset your smartphone's WiFi to connect to the camera (I'm an iPhone user and didn't get NFC support for the connection and the WiFi was the only option. Maybe the experience might be better or even worse with the NFC). Once it is connected, you could use the special App to connect to the camera and control / view the pictures. This WiFi setup takes long time, and has to be redone (not necessarily the setting up the WiFi as the setting will be already stored, but finding a "new" WiFi device takes long time anyways). I took it to the zoo while I walking, I turned the camera off - to preserve power and to carry it easily. Whenever I find something to shoot, I have to turn it on, wait for my smartphone to reconnect (takes 1-3 mins) and then could take the shot. Considering you are using smartphone for taking pictures whenever you like in an instance, this totally is not for that purpose. Burst shots are not possible as the app wouldn't let you shoot it as it has some "processing wait time" between shots. I even turned off the preview / download to smartphone feature, but it was still impossible to take burst shots. (Maybe mechanical button might have worked, but haven't tried that as that wouldn't anyway give me a look on what I'm picturing as no viewfinder.) If you are trying to add a decent zoom / picture quality to take on your smartphone with instant on feature, I'd have to say I couldn't recommend this item (as that was my purpose of this item, but was not satisfied). For that purpose, I'd say purchase a point-and-shoot camera with WiFi functionality instead. Because anyways, you are adding something to carry on and they definitely don't have the lag of Sony QX10, but have more functionality but have the same WiFi connection that you could use to store / edit / share the photos you've taken from the camera. I've been talking about the bads too much, but there are also goods to the camera. Because you have the screen separated from the camera, you have the flexibility to what you take. (Of course other WiFi enabled cameras also has this functionality.) And it is really small camera considering it's image quality. There is no camera that is this small, yet powerful.

Hard to sync with iPhone, but works well with Android phones. Tried it with my Note 2 and synced over NFC no problem. Wouldn't work with the new Note 3, no matter what I tried. Checked Sony site, and this model is not yet supporting Note 3. Hopefully will be remedied soon, as the camera fits just barely onto the Note 3 body, but not on the Note 2 body.

If you're a techy, I would highly recommend the DSC-QX10. If you're not there are some issues that you might want to consider first before buying it. I was pleasantly surprised that it works without a memory card and that it can also work with Sony's RM-LVR1. That's the good news. There are several things that are both annoying and frustrating. The battery in the ActionCam is a NP-BX1 and the battery in the Cyber-shot is an NP-BN. I would be nice if they were both the same. Sony offers no support for Windows XP. If you need to do firmware updates or install the PlayMemories software you have to look elsewhere. In order for me to get the software to work on my Android device I had to carefully read the FAQs online and guess as to what applied to me and in addition I used a buffer flusher. It was not obvious as to which solution helped. Just because your Android device isn't listed by Sony it doesn't that it won't work. My phone is a Oneplus One and, after several failed attempts, Sony's software now works fine. The software is a work in progress. I hope that in future editions it will have lighting profiles so that it will be easier to take photos and movies in different lighting conditions. In order to use the DSC-QX10 with the RM-LVR1 you may have to do a firmware update. The latest version is 3.0. My Cyber-shot lens had version 1.0. Now that I've solved various problems, it now works as advertised.

I'm amazed at how easy this camera is to use and the quality of pictures that I've gotten. The zoom on the camera is just as clear tight as it is wide. I have yet to use the video feature, but it's really easy to switch out settings - even between photo and video. This is a great little camera - and one that grabs attention anytime I have it out!

I like the idea of this it lets me hold my phone a bit more like a camera since the lens is large enough to hold in one hand like a regular camera. It takes great photos. But it isn't fully thought out. Each time my phone goes to sleep, the wifi disconnects so it takes some time to become ready to use again which is irritating. I would rather the lens kept all the pictures on it's on sd card rather than transferring them to the phone each time, that also creates a delay between shots, I'm not sure this will catch on, I don't think the picture quality is much better than my phone (Galaxy Note 3) and the software implementation is only okay.