Any Camera People Here?

[siringo]

Had a look at the Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark III yesterday & found it uncomfortable to hold & too small in my hands. Also I couldn't read the viewfinder (although that may be able to be changed bi increasing text size??).

Had a look at a Canon DSLR & Nikon D5600, both were much better to hold. The Nikon was very comfortable.

Also looked at a Canon equivalent to the Olympus. Viewfinder was much easier to read & also better to hold.

[1337]

@siringo said in Any Camera People Here?:

Had a look at the Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark III yesterday & found it uncomfortable to hold & too small in my hands. Also I couldn't read the viewfinder (although that may be able to be changed bi increasing text size??).

Had a look at a Canon DSLR & Nikon D5600, both were much better to hold. The Nikon was very comfortable.

Also looked at a Canon equivalent to the Olympus. Viewfinder was much easier to read & also better to hold.

It might be obvious to you but it's easy to forget to adjust the diopter on the viewfinder. If it's slightly off compared to your vision, you'll have problems reading the viewfinder text and symbols.

Then the viewfinder differs in magnification between cameras. Something like 0.7x is considered good (in 35mm equivalent).

And also in eyepoint, which is the maximum distance from the eye to the viewfinder where you still can see the entire viewfinder. It's important for eyeglass wearers especially. Something around 20mm is considered good, that's about 3/4".

With an electric viewfinder you also have the resolution and refresh rate to consider and for optical viewfinders it's the design of the focusing screen and it's brightness.

PS. This is the specs for the
Nikon D5600
Viewfinder Magnification: 0.82x (Approx.)
Viewfinder Eyepoint: 17 mm (-1.0 m¯¹)

Olympus OM-D MKIII
Viewfinder Magnification: Approx.1.23x (=0.60x in 35mm equiv.)
Eye Point: Approx. 19.2mm

So Olympus camera has a slightly better eyepoint but a significantly smaller viewfinder.

[1337]

@siringo said in Any Camera People Here?:

Had a look at the Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark III yesterday & found it uncomfortable to hold & too small in my hands. Also I couldn't read the viewfinder (although that may be able to be changed bi increasing text size??).

Had a look at a Canon DSLR & Nikon D5600, both were much better to hold. The Nikon was very comfortable.

Also looked at a Canon equivalent to the Olympus. Viewfinder was much easier to read & also better to hold.

It's good that you checked them out in real life.

Be weary of what lenses will fit the cameras though. It's nice when lenses have a much longer lifespan than the camera body.
Even if you decide to sell you camera down the line it's often the lenses that will be valuable long after the camera. Especially if you have bought expensive lenses.

Nikon and Canon dSLRs are good in this regard but their mirrorless versions not so much.

So if you are picking between two cameras that feels equally good, consider what lenses they use and if those have been around and are popular.

[JaredBusch]

I have a Nikon D3500 that I bought in 2009ish, but I mostly use it in point and shoot mode.

Back in the early 90's I was really looking into photography before I fell into IT. But I even let it fall away as a hobby.

I like the Nikon over the Canon simply because I like the feel of them, better to hold.

[scottalanmiller]

@JaredBusch said in Any Camera People Here?:

I like the Nikon over the Canon simply because I like the feel of them, better to hold.

I started off as a Canon guy in the 1980s, switch to Nikon around 1992 when I went pro. Both are great, but I've just always preferred the Nikon. I use a D90 now and it remains just fantastic. Totally replacing with another Nikon when the time comes as my primary workhorse.

[scottalanmiller]

Traditionally, like 1960-1980s, Canon was favoured by scenic photographers, and Nikon by journalists.

[bnrstnr]

Agreed here on Nikon comments. We have a D5300, I mostly use it in point and shoot mode, too. My wife dabbles with the other settings. I have briefly used some friends lower end Canon DSLRs and the Nikon was a better fit for me.

[1337]

I just remembered that another option when buying cameras and lenses is to rent them for a few days or a week.
If you like it, you know what to buy. If you don't like it for whatever reason, well you haven't bought it yet.
Maybe you'll find out that you don't really want an advanced camera and are satisfied with the phone. In that case you just payed to be able to play with expensive toys for a week.

lensrentals.com for instance and others have gear they will ship to you. Midrange dslr will be something like $50 for a week. You have to pick a lens too.

[PhlipElder]

@siringo said in Any Camera People Here?:

I'm looking for a camera and I know nothing.

I'm happy with the quality of the photos I get out of my Samsung Galaxy S6+ but I'd like to have, is it called a viewfinder? The thing you used to have to jam your eye up against with all the cameras we used to use before we used smartphones.

Also something with bluetooth, a screen so I can review what I just shot, maybe wifi, SD card. Also the ability to add filters, just like I do on my smartphone.

Manual focus and the ability to add lenses may be good as well.

Budget is up to $500.

With thanks.

There are plenty of good third party lenses that can attach to smart phones. I've been wanting to pick-up a good Macro and Zoom lens set for my iPhone X as I can't be bothered to carry around extra kit with me where ever I go.

^^^ This was taken with my iPhone using the native lens and built-in software. The built-in camera app sucks so purchasing an app that allows for full control is on the To Do List as well.

As a comparison, nothing has come close to the Lumia 1020 that my wife now has for photo capabilities. That was one awesome camera that had a smartphone attached to it. :S

[siringo]

Thanks for all the info people.

There's so much to look into. Had a look at a Canon EOS 50M the other day, nice camera, nice to hold, not bad price wise.

The search continues.

[siringo]

@Pete-S said in Any Camera People Here?:

@siringo said in Any Camera People Here?:

Had a look at the Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark III yesterday & found it uncomfortable to hold & too small in my hands. Also I couldn't read the viewfinder (although that may be able to be changed bi increasing text size??).

Had a look at a Canon DSLR & Nikon D5600, both were much better to hold. The Nikon was very comfortable.

Also looked at a Canon equivalent to the Olympus. Viewfinder was much easier to read & also better to hold.

It might be obvious to you but it's easy to forget to adjust the diopter on the viewfinder. If it's slightly off compared to your vision, you'll have problems reading the viewfinder text and symbols.

Then the viewfinder differs in magnification between cameras. Something like 0.7x is considered good (in 35mm equivalent).

And also in eyepoint, which is the maximum distance from the eye to the viewfinder where you still can see the entire viewfinder. It's important for eyeglass wearers especially. Something around 20mm is considered good, that's about 3/4".

With an electric viewfinder you also have the resolution and refresh rate to consider and for optical viewfinders it's the design of the focusing screen and it's brightness.

PS. This is the specs for the
Nikon D5600
Viewfinder Magnification: 0.82x (Approx.)
Viewfinder Eyepoint: 17 mm (-1.0 m¯¹)

Olympus OM-D MKIII
Viewfinder Magnification: Approx.1.23x (=0.60x in 35mm equiv.)
Eye Point: Approx. 19.2mm

So Olympus camera has a slightly better eyepoint but a significantly smaller viewfinder.

Yes, the person in the shop pointed out to me about the diopter, I didn't even know about it, so I'm sure the Olympus Viewfinder would be fine.

I did find out that the Olympus has a Micro 4/3rds sensor and the Canon 50M an APS-C sensor and since landscapes are going to be a popular choice for images, the larger sensor would be helpful. I also will be doing low light work, so again the larger sensor will be helpful.

[scottalanmiller]

@siringo said in Any Camera People Here?:

Yes, the person in the shop pointed out to me about the diopter, I didn't even know about it, so I'm sure the Olympus Viewfinder would be fine.

Also worth noting, if you are nearsighted like me, mirrorless is a "look near" system as the LCD is right in front of you, and an SLR is "look far" as you are actually looking at the object off in the distance.

[scottalanmiller]

@siringo said in Any Camera People Here?:

I did find out that the Olympus has a Micro 4/3rds sensor and the Canon 50M an APS-C sensor and since landscapes are going to be a popular choice for images, the larger sensor would be helpful.

I'm confused. What does sensor size have to do with this? Sensor size itself means absolutely nothing. Sensor size is an underlying, indirect (under the hood) factor that determines lens design, cost, quality, etc. But has nothing to do with type of photography, etc. Bigger sensors need bigger lenses to do the same work, so require way more weight and cost in glass to do the same things. So unless you have an unlimited budget, bigger sensors work against you as they make the things that matter harder to do, and only change the things that don't matter.

It is by making the sensors super small that phones are able to compete.

[scottalanmiller]

If anything, the larger the sensor, the harder to get glass to handle landscapes. Smaller sensors make everything easier, all other things being equal.

[siringo]

I can only go by what I've read which said that a larger sensor will let in more light which is helpful in low light situations.

Also I read that a the smaller the sensor the more zoomed in an image appears. From what I understood, and if I can paraphrase, If looking at a face a larger sensor will see the eyes, cheeks & chin, but a smaller sensor will only see the nose, hence the image is zoomed in if you like.

If I understand that correctly, a larger sensor would be better for landscape shots.

[scottalanmiller]

@siringo said in Any Camera People Here?:

I can only go by what I've read which said that a larger sensor will let in more light which is helpful in low light situations.

That's true, but essentially useless info. This is one of those "out of context" pieces that sounds informational, but actually misleads you. you see, the sensor has more surface area to let in more light, but that's never been the primary issue with low light sensitivity. The main problems are glass and aperture. Both of which get worse when the sensor gets bigger. So bigger sensor normally causes low light problems, rather than fixing them.

This is like where they say "If you want ZFS to manage disk alerts, you need to skip hardware RAID" and people think it means you need to skip hardware RAID, but really it means that you don't normally want ZFS to manage the alerts.

This is why looking at "under the hood components" without looking at the full system is misleading. The information you have is true, but you don't have the full picture to see how it is likely to apply to the end result. You are reading out "means" and not looking at the "ends."

This is why many phones with itty bitty sensors have better low light handling than some expensive "big sensor" cameras - because they are able to achieve huge apertures with lots of glass affordably.

What matters for low light photography is your resulting F stop (aperture) combined with the ISO rating of the sensor. That's it. How those numbers are achieved can be from many factors, factors that might be interesting, but not factors you can look at in isolation to figure out how well the system will work.

[scottalanmiller]

@siringo said in Any Camera People Here?:

Also I read that a the smaller the sensor the more zoomed in an image appears. From what I understood, and if I can paraphrase, If looking at a face a larger sensor will see the eyes, cheeks & chin, but a smaller sensor will only see the nose, hence the image is zoomed in if you like.
If I understand that correctly, a larger sensor would be better for landscape shots.

None of this is correct. All kinds of concepts are being mixed together here and attributed to the wrong components of the system. What you are reading is someone talking about problems that would arise if you put a different sized sensor into a camera built for a different sensor size. Of course it's going to be all screwed up because the lenses will be adjusted all wrong. But don't take "the camera will be broken" to lead to advice about how to build a camera.

Think of this in IT terms. Imagine if you want to build a server, and you only read about CPUs. You start ignoring drives, RAM, operating systems, etc. and start looking at CPUs in a vacuum. Pretty soon you read that ARM CPUs are more efficient, or Power CPUs are faster and you build a system with a $1000 CPU, no RAM, a slow hard drive, and expect to install Windows 10 and then find out that the obsession with the CPU was pointless as only AMD64 CPUs will work with Windows, and you glossed over the important components that make the most difference.

It's great to want to learn about how cameras are designed and built, and in doing so you can understand them better. But in order to understand the components, you have to understand the entire camera, and then learn about the sensor, lens, aperture, ISO sensitivity, sensor speed, mirrors, and other components in the context of how they go into building a complete system that works as a whole. Unless you are going to do that, you cannot look at an individual component and make these kinds of observations or your conclusions are going to be, at best, random, and at worst, backwards.

There is a reason why big sensors are most popular with portraiture and small ones most popular with landscape; but we should never discuss sensors in a vacuum like that because that knowledge on its own will never do us any good.

[scottalanmiller]

This of this another way....

Small sensors can handle low light better than some large sensors. And small sensors can handle full 360 degree "as wide as it is possible to be" shots. Given those two facts, which are trivial to prove facts because both are common and can simply be shown, then try to apply your "big sensor for better low light and less zoom" theory. Doesn't make sense, right? The bigger sensor can't go beyond the "perfect" 360 degrees, and you can't argue that they are better for low light if the smaller is better for low light (sometimes.) So it is easily provable that all those conclusions can't be true.

What a big sensor WILL do, is make the camera larger and more expensive. There is no way around that, because you need more glass to handle a bigger sensor, and the glass is the most expensive part of any camera. So the cameras get heavier, and longer. That's a guarantee.

Beyond that, if they zoom more, zoom less, better lowlight, worse low light, better for certain types of things, or not... are not determined by the size of the sensor but rather by the collection of camera design components - almost all of which are in the glass, not the electronics.

[siringo]

Thanks for taking the time write up so much info @scottalanmiller it's greatly appreciated.

The hunt continues & the knowledge increases.

Thanks again.

[scottalanmiller]

@siringo said in Any Camera People Here?:

Thanks for taking the time write up so much info @scottalanmiller it's greatly appreciated.

The hunt continues & the knowledge increases.

Thanks again.

More or less, look for a camera that is comfy to hold, does the things that you want to do, is the right size and weight, and check the image quality. That's really what matters.