The newer Olympus cameras (E-M1 X, E-M1 Mark III) claim they can do it handheld, but I haven’t tried them in person. I assume they are doing some kind of software correction beyond the stabilization to correct for motion.
Anybody have experience with the Panasonic GX9? I’m starting to like the idea of a smaller camera that would work well for street photography and this one appeals to me. I’m wondering if I should sell my Canon T4i and lenses and upgrade.
Full-frame is nice, but most people will be perfectly satisfied/happy with APS-C or micro 4/3, especially if they’re not looking to do professional work. Lots of advantages, but the biggest one is cost. You can buy Sigma’s absolutely best-in-class trio of fast primes for APS-C or m43 for a fraction of the cost of a single, top-of-the-line FF prime.
This is definitely something that has emerged over the last few years, once mirrorless went FF. I’m trying to get another lens for the A7 II Sony and basically the minimum is going to be $700 for new; there are tons of APS-C lenses for 1/2 or 1/3 that price.
That said I do like the full frame resolution because i’m a pixel peeper and get very unhappy about fuzziness. My ideal camera would literally be something like a 1000mp camera, because most of my inspired photos are landscapes. Actually when I get a chance i’m going to try a software/photoshop composite trick to make ultra-high resolution photos instead of getting a pixel shift camera that PetaPixel mentioned in a past article… as soon as i can get Creative Cloud to function again (it seems corrupted).
A 1000mp mirrorless camera, you say?
The new R6 looks nice and a lot cheaper than the R5 but still way out of my league. Those are basically pro prices. My only problem with m4/3 is that it makes it hard to get wide angle lenses. If I have a 15mm lens I want to to be actually 15mm dammit, not 30 or 35!
Try APS-C. It’s only a 1.5/1.6 crop factor, compared to m23’s 2.0 crop.
The new Fuji XT4 is getting absolute raves. Probably the finest APS-C camera ever made. It’s a bit larger than normal APS-C cameras, but it’s worth it. The only downside is that there’s like no third-party lens support.
What Woolen said. We have an APS-C and it’s fine. Unless you need full-frame for some explicit reason, the newer format is as good on mirrorless.
Truly the make or break these days is -also- how you get pictures OFF THE CAMERA and if there are apps, wireless transfer, etc. I’ll throw this out there, not every vendor is good at it. It gets really tiring moving Micro-SDs back and forth and only to a laptop. Some here might disagree with that statement but there are a multitude of programs for image editing on a tablet, but far fewer means of getting images TO a tablet. If you’re all PC or Mac Pro, ignore this.
I just got one of these:
Which has a built in SD card reader, wifi, and internal battery. It downloads all your photos without software, just a couple button presses. But, it’s new, so we’ll see how it goes.
Looks interesting. I think our problem is that we take the camera going out or on vacation and don’t have laptops, etc. Especially for quick weekend trips. “Hey, let’s look at those pics!” Yeah … in viewfinder. The camera I got her about a year ago is nice but holy hell their app for doing transfers blows chunks.
So, that being said, if that is important to you, read reviews on that or select an alternative format. Build your camera use around how you use it.
Oh yea, that’s where a tablet comes in handy for sure. Even an iPad mini is probably 10-15x larger screen than a camera screen.
Goddamnit, I wish my friend still worked at Sony
It’s kind of crazy that Moore’s Law has effectively ended for camera tech - the same Sony camera i got a couple years ago is exactly the same price as it was then. As the camera tech advances but the aftermarket prosumer camera market shrinks, prices just go up with each generational improvement, rather than “raising all the boats”. There’s no moment to jump in because all the moments are bad.
It’s weird because i just encountered the last of the Depreciation Days, because my Canon DSLR devalued by about half by the time i sold it for the Sony. But we’ve hit a point where depreciation (other than for wear and tear) just no longer happens for technological advances.
I’ve been looking for pre-, during, and post- Christmas sales and… the price of cameras is just a constant.
Yeah. I’ve been thinking about upgrading. The A7C is sorta what I want; Sony’s next-gen real-time focusing system is pretty damn amazing. But the prices are high.
I got my A6500 a few years ago through a friend who worked at Sony. They’re pretty generous with their employee store (25% off!), and it’s not uncommon for employees to buy tons of stuff for friends and family. However, the friend I got my camera from left Sony.
Sony treats its cameras like Steam treats video games. As they get older, the MSRP doesn’t drop dramatically but there are bigger and more frequent sales.
So for instance, the A9 was $1000 off until yesterday, the A7III was $800 off, and the A7RIII was $500 off. Today, the prices are back to normal until the next sale.
I guess it’s a decent strategy if you are trying to appeal to cost-conscious consumers and at the same time force professionals pay when they need to replace a camera immediately. It’s not really a matter of Moore’s law, it’s the popularity of cell phones forcing Sony to focus on large-sensor cameras that appeal to professionals.
What does the aftermarket prosumer camera market entail?
Steve’s Digicams, soldering on after the loss of its founder and namesake in 2017 and holdover over the prosumer days when the internet wasn’t consolidated, closed its forums in January and finally declared it ended all publishing on June 21st, though it has been effectively dead for more than a year.
Oh no, i remember using it to help making camera buying decisions years and years ago. Sad.
The last few months i’ve been enjoying mirrorless pocket cameras like the RX100 and HX99… playing with them makes me a better photographer, and having a camera at all times helps feel like i’m not going to miss an especially pretty shot whilst driving around. But their limited dynamic range and generally less impressive lens quality of course makes a pretty low ceiling. It’s just that especially with Sony point-and-shoots they basically use the same software as their more expensive cameras, for better or worse, but it makes them good at training you as a photographer, learning how to work around their limitations.
But i’ve recently had the chance to work in Antarctica come up and decided to invest in a more rugged “pro” camera, and because i’m a Sega guy in a Nintendo world, started looking at Olympus m4/3 format cameras.
There’s a lot one could say about that (like, is the Olympus brand even going to survive a year) but the main reason I made this post is that it seems like Olympus spends a lot of money creating, not “specialists” or “advertisors” but “visonaries”. Even in Austin once the camera store staff discovered i was looking into the Olympus brand i got mobbed by a couple of “visionaries” who worked there. Most videos on YouTube about Olympus are made by “visionaries”; ie paid users. It’s a … weird feeling… like voluntarily walking up to a Scientologist church, knocking on the door unbidden, and saying, why, yes, I do want a reading!
It seems like from the outside Olympus has kind of cornered the market on bird photography, almost certainly by accident and for various physics based reasons.
This is 1/2 the reason i … uh… bought an E-M1X while on sale. I mean i guess i can take it back for a week…
The limited experience i’ve used it with shows a strange inverse to light and effectiveness (ie, it seems to work best in low light, not the other way around).
Olympus cameras would probably be best for that environment. But I’d still make sure to research Sony and Canon and see what other Antarctic photogs recommend. This sounds like a once in a lifetime opportunity, so go big or go home.
