Sony Unveils The QX1 And QX30 Lens And Camera Sensor Add-Ons For Smartphones

Sony has indeed added to its lineup of camera tech add-ons for smartphone devices today, with not one, but two new devices in the QX series of accessories. The QX1 and QX30 join the existing QX10 and QX100, with the QX1 offering interchangeable lenses as revealed in a leak earlier, and the QX30 offering 30x optical zoom.

The two new Sony accessories both offer ways to improve your photo quality on smartphones, but the QX1 really steps things up by offering a bayonet mount that works with existing E-mount and A-mount (with an adapter) interchangeable lenses. It also includes a shooting accessory kit that lets users set up the lens for selfies, and for getting tough high and low angle shots. Underneath the hood, there’s an APS-C Exmor CMOS sensor with 20.1 megapixel resolution, and Sony’s Bionz X image processor, which offers low noise on an area-specific basis for better low light shots.

Screen Shot 2014-09-03 at 10.37.00 AMThe QX30 has greater zoom than any previous QX-series accessory, with a landscape-grabbing 24mm at the wide end and a tight 720mm equivalent at the narrow end. It includes optical image stabilization to reduce shake motion effects even at the top of the zoom range, and it has a digital zoom feature that allows users to extend zoom to a factor of 60x. 10FPS continuous shooting and lock-on AF make this a prime candidate for action shots, and it captures full HD video at 60fps.

Sony’s QX range still represents some of the weirdest gear in the mobile world, and there are no competitors out there, but Sony must see some value in the line and decent customer response if it keeps introducing new devices. The QX1 line especially should prove interesting, as it gives NEX and DSLR users a way to move away from dedicated camera devices and into a mobile-first solution, which could begin to erode those latter categories even further.