I Bought A Sony RX10 III Camera - By Accident , But I'm So Excited Anyway!

Introduction

You probably wonder how on earth are you going to buy a Sony RX10 III camera by accident? As per usual, the devil is in the details, which you will find out reading the next paragraphs. There's one person that probably knows upon reading the title, that's my dear advisor @hetty-rowan. She doesn't even know I ended up making this mistake as I thought it was funny to leave that for her to read in this post..

The desire for a good camera

For many years now, I had the desire to have a good camera other than a good camera on my phone. I never had the funds to purchase one and when I did, I had other priorities so the idea slowly faded to the background. Sadly, in the recent years, I've had more and more issues using my phone camera even when they printed fabulous pictures in the first few months. The final straw is that a decent full moon picture is never possible, not even when I can see the full moon clearly above the sea from our balcony. It's a pain not being able to capture these magical moments.

Type of camera

Recently, we decided to make some changes in the business and with that comes the part where I will be taking on some new tasks, leaving me with some room to explore the photography side that I've always loved. We'll see how things evolve in the next months but for now it mainly means that I will be learning about how to use the camera we purchased mainly.

Before buying it, of course decisions had to be made about the type of camera as well as the budget and things that are important to me. I decided to ask @hetty-rowan for advise because I know she's been digging into cameras to purchase a camera herself some time ago and she could probably narrow down the search much better than I could have done possibly myself.

The verdict was that I was going to for a bridge camera for several reasons. Not just because these cameras are very versatile but also because of one very important thing that I can't ignore and that's my sensitive back. After a full year of extreme pain, and a hernia to top it off, there's no way that it's reasonable to think that I'd go exploring carrying all the heavy lenses with me. I already know where that would end: camera used very little or worse, not at all after some time and money wasted. Having a bridge camera will probably make me most happy as it's suitable for various things that I intend to use it for.

Budget

The budget was set about half of what we ended up spending and this was mainly because at some point I didn't want to settle for some stuff anymore and my boyfriend kept coming back to me about the Sony RX10 IV model we originally wanted but decided against because of the price. As I could not find it for a good price refurbished either, I had no other option but to let go of the thought that this was going to be my camera anytime soon. My boyfriend mostly thought we should up the budget if possible if it meant having a really good upgrade compared to within the budget we set originally. I mostly had issues with that myself because I have a harder time spending these amounts overall, even if it means you have a much higher quality product.

Tax deductions

Of course the year is coming to an end and business-wise I figured it would be smart to make sure some investments for the business would be done this year to up the costs, therefore I hoped to at least find another option soon. When I looked for the Sony on Sunday, it suddenly appeared on the site where I checked for other models, or at least I thought. As the camera looks the same, my brain didn't register the III part instead of IV as I thought I was looking at. Stupid? Absolutely, especially considering the prices we're talking about here. Not fun and yes I felt really dumb when my boyfriend noticed it in the screenshots that I took from the status of the product.

A very stupid mistake on my end but after hours and hours of videos to see if this would be a disaster or could still possibly be good enough for me, we decided to give the camera a chance.

Questionable status of the product

As I didn't purchase a new camera, but looked for refurbished ones instead, I have to take into account that it's possible the camera has some scratches or minor flaws on the outside. It didn't take me long to decide not wanting to purchase a camera in any other state than "excellent" simply because they don't show the flaws upon ordering the camera.

While I'm still waiting until the camera arrives tomorrow, I received the invoice today and noticed that the invoice states the status is "very good" rather than the seller's site "excellent". I looked up the furbisher's website and could find pricing info for this model and noticed that the "very good" status is priced 130 euros lower than what I paid. If it were indeed in excellent condition, it would be the same price as I paid now.

Although there can be an honest mistake, I tend to believe that the seller where the product comes from marked the correct condition and the seller who I bought it from thought they could level the status up so they can make even more profit. I would be quite disappointed if that were the case because I would have never bought it if it were in a lower state because I find it too risky with these expensive purchases.

Nevertheless, I have 30 days of trial period and can return it with no questions asked if I want to within that term. I will inspect the camera very thoroughly and if the party who refurbished it will confirm to me that the camera is indeed not in excellent condition while I want to keep it, I hope to be able to have them pay me back the difference. It's a long shot and I don't even want to worry about it yet, we'll see how it arrives.

Excited to start this new journey!

I've got some tutorials ready and definitely hope to be ready to capture the full moon in about a week from now. I'm going to aim for a nice trial period with plenty of different types of pictures to see as many results as possible.

You'll see me appear in this community quite often from now on as I'm hoping to share my journey with you all..

If you have any experience with this particular camera and want to share tips, please feel free to drop it in the comments. I'm sure it will be quite overwhelming to start with but also very rewarding when I start to understand the camera better over time..

Thanks for stopping by!

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All kitten pictures above are mine but taken with my smartphone as my camera won't arrive until tomorrow.

The pictures have been taken in the summer of 2023 when we had a litter of kittens to foster and the tiny furballs were such a bundle of joy! They surely brought up good memories going through these pictures today..