MWGL Photography thread II ( Continued)

Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Wayne Coyne.

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Went for a walk today up at Balloch on Loch Lomond. 3 shot pano
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Not a good picture but it looks like cep season has started - i got another 15 or so of the smaller ones as well from another patch :) They were nice and firm so I just cleaned them up, sliced then and froze them straight in a vac pack

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Anybody have experience with mirrorless?

Some of you may remember how fed up I've become with my Nikon D3200. I thought about a new lens, and a few of you suggested the Sigma 18-300mm. However, I've decided that I'm not entirely convinced the problem isn't in the camera, and even if the camera is OK, I'm not sure the Sigma lens would make me happy.

So, I've decided to jump ship. Nikon let me down on this D3200. This is the second Nikon digital I've owned (the first was a high end point and shoot), and I thought both were substandard compared to offerings of other manufacturers. I think Nikon has been riding the coattails of their film camera superiority for far too long.

I believe that mirrorless is the future. I've been looking at:
  • Sony A6300 with 18-135mm lens ($1000 open box)
  • Fujifilm X-T20 with 18-55mm ($1200)
  • Fujifilm X-T2 with the same 18-55m ($1200 used)
Anybody have any experience with mirrorless? With Sony or Fujifilm?

The lenses on the above cameras get universally rave reviews. I'm leaning toward the Sony because of the better zoom range, and the fact that Sony has a much larger ecosystem than Fujifilm.

However, the Fujifilm cameras have knobs that let you control a great deal of the camera functions without having to wade through menus. And the Fujifilm camera is shaped more like an SLR which seems like it would be easier to hold. Lastly, Fujifilm is renowned for the quality of jpegs they produce. While I'm not adverse to futzing around with post processing software, I don't particularly enjoy it, either. If the camera could give me great jpegs directly, so much the better.
 
I still have my Nikon P7700. A couple of things made me go back to Canon. First was the proprietary USB cable they used to transfer pics from the camera to a computer. Lose it and you have to buy one from them for the premium price. Next was their firmware update. The update made aftermarket batteries unusable. And the last straw came when I managed to get some gunk into the buttons on the camera back. I was told it would cost a minimum of 150 bones just to open it up. a simple cleaning was 20 bucks after that, and if it needed parts, it would go back to the factory for a refurb job at my expense.
 
I've heard the key complaint is battery life on mirrorless being a constant and significant issue. Making the LCD viewfinder screen work seems to take a lot of battery life. The smallness factor of most designs doesn't help as you can't jam a big battery into the smallish bodies. I've also head that the small size sounds nicer but the ergonomics are not really great, and with a big lens attached they only get worse. I think the final issue for me is that canon seems to wan to use a different lens mount for their mirrorless cameras, and I have like 10K worth of glass with the standard mount. I guess look carefully at mirrorless and really think about what the advantages and disadvantages are, and how and where you want to use your camera.

I would check out some of the youtube reviews on these to see if they have some of the issues I mentioned. I think mirrorless will eventually take over the SLR market, but I think it just isn't there yet.
 
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The battery issues appear to be resolved. According the the DPreview reviews of the mirrorless cameras I referenced, it looks like you can expect 350 or so shots on one charge. That's more than enough for a day of shooting for me.

One of the nice features of mirrorless is that they can be charged via the USB port, so a small USB power pack could greatly extend your shooting if needed. The X-T2 has an optional handgrip with aux batteries.

The ergonomics factor does concern me a bit. My hands are on the largish size. The Fujifilm is shaped and sized like a small SLR. The Sony looks dinky.

The different mount is required because the sensor is mounted much closer to the front of the camera. There are adapters for various lenses, but I don't know what their capabilities are in retaining any automatic features. In any case, I have no glass that I want to keep, so it's a non issue for me.
 
Well, that sounds like good news on the mirrorless thing as far as battery life goes. I've not really thought about or looked into these in a couple of years. The USB port charging sounds awesome, especially if you have a USB outlet in the car, or, as you mention, on a portable battery thingy.

Can you control everything SLR like from the camera, or is it via a touch screen menu system? They look so small that it seems they don't have the buttons to have all the controls easily accessible, and that would bug me...but probably not enough to offset the convenience of a small size, full function camera that you can put in a big pocket.
 
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Can you control everything SLR like from the camera, or is it via a touch screen menu system? They look so small that it seems they don't have the buttons to have all the controls easily accessible, and that would bug me.
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My T6i has a touch screen as well as the controls on the body. It tends to drain the battery faster, at least mine does. Then again I should probably learn how the whole damn thing works together. More nested menus to it than I can count.
 
parrotheada1a said:
My T6i has a touch screen as well as the controls on the body. It tends to drain the battery faster, at least mine does. Then again I should probably learn how the whole damn thing works together. More nested menus to it than I can count.
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My canon is the same, with many LCD menus, but all the important bits are assigned to buttons or multifunction dials/pads. You can also program a few buttons to do whatever you might need from the menu system. I shoot in auto mode a lot, but I often have to switch to a more manual setting to get the right metering mode, adjust ISO, prioritize aperture or time, change drive or focus mode, and so on, and digging through menus on a touch screen seems I would miss some shots.
 
Tiltsta said:
Well, that sounds like good news on the mirrorless thing as far as battery life goes. I've not really thought about or looked into these in a couple of years. The USB port charging sounds awesome, especially if you have a USB outlet in the car, or, as you mention, on a portable battery thingy.

Can you control everything SLR like from the camera, or is it via a touch screen menu system? They look so small that it seems they don't have the buttons to have all the controls easily accessible, and that would bug me...but probably not enough to offset the convenience of a small size, full function camera that you can put in a big pocket.
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Different for each camera.

The Sony A6300 has menu controls - no touch screen and very few knobs.

The X-T20 has a bunch of knobs (that can be assigned custom functions) as well as menus with a touchscreen.

The X-T2 has a bunch of knobs (that can be assigned custom functions) as well as menus, but no touchscreen - it uses a joystick thingie.
 
I've been on holiday in whisky country on Speyside and also visited Oxford for a long weekend. Here's a few Speyside pics

Went to maybe ten distilleries, Macallans newest at £140m provides the worst visitor experience imo, it's awful. Although I did like the design of the place as modern industrial plants go/

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This was in Glenfarclas, worth a visit
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typical speyside scenery, lots of woods, barley and water with some mountains in the distance. This was taken handheld from my hotel room, at 300mm and a three shot pano
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plenty of nice walks, this is Findhorn Gorge, very low water at the moment
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loads of abbeys, castles etc. Here's the remains of Elgin Cathedral. Most cathedrals were destroyed to varying extent during the reformation
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also a fair amount of pictish stones/sites, this big one was pretty awesome, it had intricate carvings of a battle and beheadings etc on it. historians don't know what battle it was though :). Probably kicking the fuck out of the romans imo

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Also this harbour wall was made out of stones from the biggest pictish fort in scotland. shame they didn't leave it alone

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This is Fort George, was built to put down any more Jacobite rebellions. Took 20 years+ to build and was extortionate, it is huge, I think one of the largest artillery emplacements in Europe and it's 250 ish years old. Was never used but is still owned by the military
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This is a picture I took of the courtyard of Hallwyl Castle through an 800 year old pane of glass. I thought the effect from shooting through crappy glass made for some interesting optical distortions.

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A few pics from my recent trip to oxford

This is the dining hall in christchurch college, students eat breakfast/ dinner here. not too shabby. My brother is a Fellow at another college and so gets into all of them at will, so I didn't have to pay to go around any of them, which is nice. Some have huge grounds like Magdelen, which has a herd of deer in its grounds.
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This is a fairly typical college, I'm afraid I can't remember which one it is
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They all have chapels too of varying sizes, depending on the college
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view from the top of a church
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bridge of sighs
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graffiti from top of said church....goes back a long way/ some from the mid 1600s there :)
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pub - this one is particularly old, from t mid 1300s I think. Lots of good pubs in oxford. also canals
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also went round Hook Norton brewery, very steam punk. A lovely tower brewery. Beer wasnt the best though
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