Need a new lighter camera

[agb]

Age is wearying me and I am getting a bit unwilling to carry BHC with me and also having a medical problem which gives me slightly shaky hands I have been looking around at replacing my 7D and assorted lenses with something much lighter and smaller. I would use it for land, sea and city scapes, a bit of street photography,people buildings etc. It seems that I may have to give up on thoughts of birds with the longer lenses unless they are close enough that I can easily take the mono pod or tripod and longer lenses with the 7D.
Today I checked how I went with my IS lens set at 35mm with IS on and IS off. Very obvious that I cannot hand hold at 1/60th and probably not so good a bit higher too.So a system with IS is a must.
I have looked at the Fujifilm range, X100S/T, and the XT1, then the Olympus OMD-EM1, and now the sony a6000. Of them all only the sony a6000 seems to fit the bill. The olympus with lenses is more than twice the price,and although it does have some very nice lenses it appears to have nothing in the wide angle, 10-15mm FF range,and the fuji does not have IS on the lenses I would like.
AK in the lets shake this forum up a bit thread made the comment about sony raw for the a7 being only 11 bit. Does this also apply to the a 6000 and if so is it a problem? I have thought of the sony a 6000 with the 10-18 f4 OSS, the 35 f 1.8 OSS and the 50f1.8 OSS lenses. They should cover all I would need for the type of photography I will do in the future I think.
Am I missing, ignoring something that I should take into account?

[davsv1]

Hi Graham,
You say you want ff 10-15 range lens, but the sony lenses you mention come no closer the m4/3 you say don't exist, remember the sony is apsc so a 1.5 crop factor so 10-18 f4 is ff 15-27 whereas the m4/3rds 7-14 is ff 14 -28 and it is f4 in the panasonic or f2.8 in the soon to be release Zuiko and with in built image stabiliser in the EM1 ALL lenses are stabilised. For what it's worth the Olympus files a 12bit raw.
Have you looked at the range of lenses available for m4/3 http://www.ausphotography.net.au/forum/showthread.php?137286-Available-lenses-for-m4-3
I also suggest you go to your nearest shop and feel how both cameras feel to hold, ergonomics are important for comfortable shooting, if your not comfortable holding your camera you'll get tired easier and get less enjoyment.

It may be worth waiting to see how the new EM5II feels to, it is due out very soon

and I just got an email to say a new pro fish eye 8mm 1.8 will be out after mid 2015

[jev]

Am I missing, ignoring something that I should take into account?
Budget?
What lens length do you think you need?

[agb]

Budget?
What lens length do you think you need?
Budget is the least I can get away with. The Olympus EM1 plus lenses come in about $4500, which is considerably more than I would like to spend. The sony at about $2050,much closer.
Lenses from wide angle about 10-15mm, 50,75mm? Thats why I suggested the sony 10-18, 35 and 50mm.

- - - Updated - - -

Yes, thanks davsv1, I had not forgotten about the 7-14, olympus. MY research so far does not give it a very good rating so I had discarded it as a possibility. And thanks for the link, I had forgotten to look there. Good old ausphotography, lots of resources here and I not using them.:o
Yes, the new em5II may be worth having a look at.

[davsv1]

Budget is the least I can get away with. The Olympus EM1 plus lenses come in about $4500, which is considerably more than I would like to spend. The sony at about $2050,much closer.
Lenses from wide angle about 10-15mm, 50,75mm? Thats why I suggested the sony 10-18, 35 and 50mm.

- - - Updated - - -

Yes, thanks davsv1, I had not forgotten about the 7-14, olympus. MY research so far does not give it a very good rating so I had discarded it as a possibility. And thanks for the link, I had forgotten to look there. Good old ausphotography, lots of resources here and I not using them.:o
Yes, the new em5II may be worth having a look at.
But the Olympus 7-14 is not yet released, are you sure your not mixing it up with the 4/3 version, that is a f4 and is rather expensive $2800 if it's still available.
So the EM1 body can be had for $1200 I would think 12-40 pro lens $1200 but as a kit $1900 rrp but should be able to get it for $1600 (12mm f2.0 $rrp $999 gotta be able to bargain it down some 45mm f1.8 $500rrp ) if you want to go prime not 12-40zoom, & 75 f1.8 $999rrp so
EM1
12mmf2 $999
17mmf2 $600
25mmf1.8 $500
45mmf1.8 $500
75mmf1.8 $999
in 5 lenses or for $ 4800 rrp

Or
12-40
75mmf1.8
covers 12-70 in two lenses @ $2700 missing between 40 and 75 of course

The 12-40 is a fine lens well made and weather sealed.

Add the 7-14 when it come out @$1200...maybe, big guess on my part could be more could be less don't quote me on that price:)

[agb]

But the Olympus 7-14 is not yet released, are you sure your not mixing it up with the 4/3 version, that is a f4 and is rather expensive $2800 if it's still available.
So the EM1 body can be had for $1200 I would think 12-40 pro lens $1200 but as a kit $1900 rrp but should be able to get it for $1600 (12mm f2.0 $rrp $999 gotta be able to bargain it down some 45mm f1.8 $500rrp ) if you want to go prime not 12-40zoom, & 75 f1.8 $999rrp so
EM1
12mmf2 $999
17mmf2 $600
25mmf1.8 $500
45mmf1.8 $500
75mmf1.8 $999
in 5 lenses or for $ 4800 rrp

Or
12-40
75mmf1.8
covers 12-70 in two lenses @ $2700 missing between 40 and 75 of course

The 12-40 is a fine lens well made and weather sealed.

Add the 7-14 when it come out @$1200...maybe, big guess on my part could be more could be less don't quote me on that price:)

Probably the panasonic 7-14 f4.
Thanks for your responses. I have much to think about.

[Gonk0]

Hi agb, I dont know how to tell exactly if the Sony a6000 is 11 bit raw files or higher, but if someone tells me how to look I will.

I have only had the Sony a6000 for a month now and got it VERY CHEAP form Harvey Norman on there new years sale, and the few photos i have taken look good, I have one atm
in the Birds forum, and I will have another shortly in the landscape forum.

The only lenses I have atm are the two kit lenses the 16-50mm and the 55-210mm, but i do plan on getting some more lenses down the track or an adapter to use my canon lenses
with the a6000 in manual mode.

[Arg]

Hi, with your wish to keep price modest I would say an all Olympus kit of EM10, 9-18 zoom, 25 and 45 primes, all for $2k-ish.

[agb]

Hi, with your wish to keep price modest I would say an all Olympus kit of EM10, 9-18 zoom, 25 and 45 primes, all for $2k-ish.
Thanks Arg, I'm still procrastinating so any suggestions are welcome. Finding it hard to think of parting ways with my Canon 7D and lenses.

[Arg]

That's what I had until 15 months ago!

[swifty]

You could consider the EOS-M3 if you only want to dip your toes into mirrorless for the time being. Personally I feel it's quite a step up from Canon's earlier EOS-M offerings.
Being Canon branded all you would need is an adapter to use your current lenses, AF and all.
But it may take a while for the EOS-M lenses to flesh out if you're after native lenses.
In this respect other mirrorless formats will have an advantage, particularly m43.

[agb]

Thanks swifty. Am I right that the M does not have a viewfinder, which I would rather like to have. It's bad enough for me holding the camera close, but much more difficult with a point and shoot, hold it at arms length LCD only style camera

[swifty]

I'm not entirely sure whether the optional EVF-DC1 can be used with the M3 but a quick google search seem to reveal some pics of it attached.
So I'm guessing yes you can get an external EVF but currently Canon doesn't have any with built-in EVF for their EOS-M line.
Note that the EOS-M3 is only announced and not shipped so info seem a little sketchy.

[agb]

That's what I had until 15 months ago!
So how did you come to the decision to get the oly. EM1? or EM5? Are you really happy with it? Done any prints?

[arthurking83]

me and my big mount! :rolleyes:

Hi Graham, note that this issue of 11bit raw files is an issue for me(and maybe someone else out there too) in that it really shouldn't happen in a high end camera nowadays, in this day and age.

Sony's A7 series is supposedly aimed at professional/(very) enthusiastic photographer types in the wild.
I consider myself to be a very enthusiastic type, and as such have a specific and particular workflow method.

Part of that workflow method is that I can't seem to do HDR type photography as well as I've seen from some others out there in this same wilderness.

I (still) prefer to do the single exposure, maxed out dynamic range thingy.

So (as one example), I try to capture as much dynamic range as possible in this one exposure, using various techniques. That is, filtering whether that's via grad filters, or polarisers or whatever else PLUS software pushing. That is, once I have my image exposed as well as I can(at the time of exposure), I then use the availble software to pull highlight or push shadows to the point where I get good tone rendering but without loss of quality.

Fewer bits, while we may not be able to see the loss in fidelity in an average shot with minimal processing will fall short compared to the same shot captured in the same way but with more bit depth information in the file.

a quick example: typical sun blessed landscape shot, with grad filters and polariser used to max out tone levels is taken, but usually with the highlights blown by 1 Ev or so, and maybe 2 or 3Ev of shadow loss .. remembering that I've already balanced out 3 or so Ev with the use of filters to get this single exposure.
Using my preferred software, I know I have at least 1Ev I can pull back to recover the highlights, and that I can recover 2 Ev easily in shadow detail.
So if the camera can natively do 12 or 13 Ev of dynamic range, and I can get 3 Ev back with filters, and pull out another 3Ev in software process .. before I get noisy posterisation .. well my 12-13 Ev camera now easily gets about 19 or so Ev in total without the ugly results I've always managed using HDR.

I know, from experience with the D300, that I lose about 1-2Ev in software processing shooting in 12bit rather than 14bit mode.
The D300 has the annoying capacity in that the switch from 12 bit to 14bit slows the camera down from 6fps to 1 fps. Just a design of the sensor readout.
Sometimes this loss of frame rate can make a difference in some situations(yes! landscape ones too) where the exact timing can be critical. It's rare, but I've had them.

So any loss of bit depth information, to me, is something that is a major factor in the specs of the camera.

What it is that I've seen from the 14 bit to 12 bit switch, is kind of a noise pattern where shades of a particular colour(mainly blue) don't blend nicely.. but step down instead.
When zoomed in to the pattern, it looks like blotchy noise pattern. When viewed overall, it looks like a rainbow pattern of similar coloured lines.
Of course you can get the same results from a 14bit image type .. the difference is in how far you can push the processing before it appears.

if it's just for general photography, ie. not inclusive of the type of situation described above .. then the loss of those extra bits isn't important .. as they say "you probably won't see it".

In fact, it's more likely to be the case that you most certainly won't see it.
Having considered the A7(not A7r) for a long time, and having played with it a bit at a store, it's an otherwise nice feeling camera. I just wouldn't use it for doing landscapes(the way I do them), and it's more for weirdo lenses I like to fool around with .. and hence more macro stuff(where I usually use external lights and so forth).
There are a few more weirdo lenses I want to get too .. but they wont' mate well to the D800.

So had I got an A7(not A7r), the D800 would have still been my main camera .. the A7 would have been the weirdo camera for artsy image situations.

Again, just my preference! .. I didn't like the EVF, as my primary objection. Moving from dark to light, it washed out to easily and ghosted too much.
Holding the camera tho, it felt almost natural to my hand, and this is my secondary consideration.
I'm not sure if my hand size is large or what, but I do wear XL gloves(riggers gloves) so maybe I have large hands .. but all other mirrorless cameras felt too small to hold naturally by hand.
Still haven't seen or touched a Fuji XT-1 tho to compare.

Overall.. if you don't do the same sounding workflow for your images to what I described above(which is most of my photography preference) .. then the 11 bit limitation may not ever bother you.
Apart from Thom Hogans' and Luminous Landscapes' comments on it, I've never seen/read/heard any other negativity of that specific specification.

hopefully that clarifies my comment more accurately for 'ya.

ps. give me a 16bit raw file update and a few more pixels to the D8xx series camera .. and I'm in! ;)

[agb]

Thanks for the reply AK, will have to think about it a bit, along with the other issues before I jump ship.