[Closed] Recommend me a mirrorless camera

I don't know much about cameras. Is this the same as micro 4/3rds? I have a Panasonic Lumix G3 and a couple of lenses that I bought about ten years ago and haven't used much at all. I've no idea what it's worth but have been meaning to think about selling it for years and jot got round to it. Let me know if you decide that one of those would suit and I'll give you the details.

Might be interested in the lenses if hooja isn't, depending what they are!

I'm a bit out of step with cameras nowadays as I've been happy using the ones I have and felt no need to upgrade.

For me, the key thing for mtb and outdoors photography is size = accessibility (I use an old Canon S95 for this as is slots into a little pouch on the front of my backpack strap). I find if I have to go rooting around in my bag for a camera, nine times out of ten I won't bother.

With that I mind I'm gonna recommend what I have - a Panasonic Gx80. Its still on sale today but it's been around since about 2016 I think, so should be plenty of used options. It's small but fully featured, not massive resolution by modern standards (16mp I think) but plenty for my needs.

Most of the more recent Panasonics have grown in size, which is probably why it's still on sale. A couple of websites have run pieces recently about why it's still relevant today (and one still recommend it as a great travel camera choice).

I mainly shoot with a Panasonic 20mm 1.7 lens which is really flexible and great quality for the price - you need to spend a lot to get much better. Autofocus can be a little bit slow, but I can live with that. It's also tiny, which I really like.

I also still use the kit lens which is pretty decent, and have adapters for old Nikon and M42 lenses which opens up a world of cheap possibilities (but are much bigger).

Very much depends on the use you want to give it and how serious you want to get with it.

I have two distinct mirrorless systems - Canon R and Olympus.

The Canon stuff is brilliant but expensive. While the native lenses are expensive its very easy to adapt older EF glass to fit it and retain the full functionality, so there is every lens option imaginable at relatively low cost. The one downside of the Canon is its physical size - its not much smaller than a DSLR once the lens is mounted.

Hence I also have an Olympus system - Smaller, Cheaper but the image quality has never disappointed me. I primarily use this for street photography where you want to remain incognito. There are lots of used options and a couple of different body styles. I actually prefer the retro feel of these cameras to the Canon system. You could probably get started in this system for under £200.

However that being said, If I was starting from scratch today I would probably go for Fuji - beautifully made, amazing glass and somewhere between the two systems in size.

Wow that wasn't very helpful.

Fuji XT10 with an XF 27mm pancake lens works for me. Small enough to stick in a pocket (walking) or bar bag (cycling) and plenty available used. But really there are so many good systems out there, so you have to decide what works best for you.

If action photography is part of your aim then Mirrorless is unlikely to be the best bet due to inferior autofocus.

Make sure you get a ‘proper’ one with a viewfinder.

Other than that go with what you can afford and the right size for you. I don’t think there can be any bad ones out there these days.

I tried a bunch of cameras out after discarding a Canon M100 (chosen for its compactness and price). They were all much of a muchness IMO. I eventually went for a Sony a6400.

andylc
Free Member
If action photography is part of your aim then Mirrorless is unlikely to be the best bet due to inferior autofocus.

Naw mate, thats total tosh. Look at the Sony A9 for a dedicated sports mirrorless and try and tell me that has inferior autofocus.

Again, treat whatever camera you look at as an ecosystem. The lenses are specific to the camera models so if you decide to go Sony or Canon for arguments sake then you will be spending a fair bit on lenses for that system and that system alone.

Myself, i use a sony A7iii and it doesn't lack in any department. Canon have an amazing range but im not up to date on specific models.

Autofocus really is the crucial part though. For Landscape photography the original A7 is perfect.
But for sports its not until the A7iii and original A9 came out that the autofocus was up the required standard for this.

 

I picked up an Olympus e-m1 mk2 just over a year ago and it's brilliant. lovely handling, lots of tactile buttons and wheels which fall to hand rather than digging through menus, great image quality some really nice features.

Paired with an Olympus 12-40 f2.8 you get really quick and accurate AF and a very versatile set up.

I also use a Panasonic 100-300 mk2 which is a nice lens for getting way closer to the action without spending a fortune.

It's all much lighter and compact than my pervious Canon DSLRs (APS-C) and miles lighter than full frame set ups.

Photos have a lovely 'quality' that you just can't achieve with phones. Phones can be great for day to day snaps but the 'proper' camera with a little effort produces something on another level.

Photos have a lovely ‘quality’ that you just can’t achieve with phones. Phones can be great for day to day snaps but the ‘proper’ camera with a little effort produces something on another level.

Thread derailment alert! Rapid descent into pointless argument incoming.

In classic 'recommend what you have' I bought an Olympus OM-D M1 a while back, great little camera and with the 14-42mm pancake lense which doesn't protrude much more than the grip, it can go into a bag without much effort. But you can also stick on 12-100mm f4 pro lens for action shots.

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£250 for the body on mpb and fast prime lenses are dirt cheap - it's only if you start looking at the pro lenses then you're into £4/5/600 per lens.

Edit: wot CP said!!

I’ve got a LUMIX G9, which is probably the cheapest’pro’ level M4/3 mirrorless camera out there.

I tend to wildlife photography, so the G9 is not the greatest at Birds in flight but that is probably one of the hardest subjects to master. I haven’t tried any mtb action photos yet (but must do) it has a 6K photo mode which is very good for action shots.

Being Micro 4/3 all lenses are double the focal length due to the sensor crop, so my 100-400 is 200-800 35mm equivalent and in a package that only weighs 1.6kg, it is great for hand held shots and soo much lighter than a full frame mirrorless equivalent.

I have recently move from a canon 60D to a R6. I still use my old ef mount lenses with an EF to RF mount.
Overall the mount makes the R6 & EF lenses longer than the old 60d.

As for focus etc. The R6 outshines the 60D. Faster, more af points and much better high ISO performance.

I do fancy something more compact to take with me, I've been looking at a used small canon m series and lens but not acted on anything yet.

If size isn't an issue I have very few issues with the R6.

Finding a shop to that would let you handle and understand how each system works would be really beneficial. For instance Fuji is more of a tactile experience with dials for adjustment whereas I believe Sony is very menu driven. Canon and Nikon were a bit later to the party and I'm not sure how they work. Am I right in thinking Olympus are out the game? I went Fuji so don't pay much attention to what's going on outwith their ecosystem. The use of old school dials and aperture rings for me though is the winner,great on a mirrorless system. And as above I've an xt20 and with the pancake lens is highly pocketable.

Another Lumix GX80 user here - I like the size for travelling but also plenty lenses available (including cross-compatibility with some other makes). Currently lives with a low cost Olympus 12mm F2 on the front in my packback (landscape and biking type piccies)

I have the Fuji X-T10 which gets recommended a lot and I like it very much, but it’s probably not the right choice for action photography.

Getting reliable focus on fast moving subjects is a skill I haven’t mastered yet, and while the newer Fuji bodies should make it easier I understand they’re still some way behind Canon and Sony for AF capabilities.

Good point about the action photography. I missed that part. I don't think an XT10 would be the best choice for that. Some of the newer Fuji cameras (e.g. XT30) are much better in that regard, but are new enough not to be cheap yet 🙂

Thanks all, some great opinions

If budget allowed, I was leaning towards with a Fuji xt30, or a Nikon z fc

I’m also a sucker for how a camera looks and feels.

I was hoping to find similar but sub £500 used
Some great options listed above for me to start looking at

With regard action shots, I’m more meaning, climbing/mountaineering stuff, rather than fast moving action
Cheers

I’d suggest the xt2 or xt20 then. I think both should be sub 500 with a lens.

The xt2 is from their higher end range, they’re not as compact but have an extra control dial, more of a hand grip and weather sealing.

I’m sure the newer mirrorless cameras especially Sony are a lot better, but certainly for wildlife and bird photography I found my Olympus OM-D M1 to be sorely lacking when it comes to getting the right shot in complicated backgrounds. Also had a Sony RX10 which supposedly had worlds fastest AF at the time, but again with busy backgrounds it was not great.
May be due to coming from Canon 100-400L I was expecting too much. Since gone back and wouldn’t change again, but of course DSLR + 100-400L is neither small nor cheap. Don’t think there is much that betters Canon USM focus with full-time manual focus override, but then we are talking about a 2 grand lens so it should be good.
Also worth considering unless it’s gotten a lot better, manual focus with an EVF can be infuriating.

The newer sony's autofocusing is like black magic. I've got a A6400 and it has *vastly* more accurate autofocus than my old 7D + L lenses - eye AF is unreal.

All the major brands have now ditched DSLRS for their pro models, so they tend to agree...

I thought you meant eye controlled…Canon brought that out must be 20 years ago but have ditched it now. Finding the eye every time though - now that would be useful assuming it works, which presumably it does.

If action photography is part of your aim then Mirrorless is unlikely to be the best bet due to inferior autofocus.

why is that, then?

I found an explanation here: https://www.sansmirror.com/articles/choosing-a-mirrorless-camer/autofocus-systems.html

tldr DSLRs use a separate autofocus sensor which is good at tracking movement and small changes in distance. High end mirrorless cameras have largely caught up now. For static subjects it’s not really a concern.

I’ve just bought used Olympus micro four thirds.

Lots of options at different prices. I decided to survive with dumb autofocus to keep the price down

Sony apsc and Fuji x are also good. Maybe slightly larger due yet same zoom range

I still think that autofocus tracking performance is a relevant issue with mirrorless. Yes if you go to the top end of new professional mirrorless bodies that are costing thousands of pounds this is probably not an issue. However models like the E-M1 and another mentioned earlier the A6400 are if you are looking for certain types of photography. Look at articles about using the A6400 for birds in flight and you’ll see how frustrating an experience it can be! I had an E-M1 with 100-300 lens which on the face of it should have been a great setup for birds, but it seemed almost supernaturally able to focus on the wrong thing or not at all, especially in lower light.
If you’re not likely to do this sort of thing then it’s probably a non-issue though.

Not used it for birds in flight. Not my niche.

But for MTBs and toddlers (which are an absolute sod to capture as they're so unpredictable) the af on my a6400 is like night and day compared to my DSLR.

As far as tracking goes, even with eye af off you just half click on the object you want to track and it does it relentlessly even if the object goes behind something briefly.

The sony af is better than the Olympus system tho I believe. And the e-m1 is nearly 10 years old now.

I find the whole discussion around AF systems on cameras a bit confusing. It seems to get mentioned a lot in reviews as a key point of difference but the use cases where it matters seem to me to be very few. Maybe that’s just down to what I shoot but all this talk of tracking, eye detection and phase encoding points seems to miss the basic fact that your camera just focuses at a certain distance. Then your aperture controls how much of the scene before and after that distance is in focus.

For the OP wanting to shoot climbing action shots even manual focus would be fine as all the action takes place at roughly the same distance. The subject might move quite quickly (so fast shutter speed and high burst mode might matter) but the distance from the camera isn’t likely to change much. So, I’d prefer to nail the focus manually rather than have a camera that was trying to re-calculate the focus for each shot and then got confused by a bird flying through the shot at the crucial moment.

I’ve been wedded to the LUMIX M4/3 system for a while, currently got a G80 and G9 body. The G9 is bulkier, but has more sophisticated AF tracking, the G80 is more compact, and still very capable, but might take more work to get good results for action photography. Panasonic’s AF system gets a bad reputation in some quarters, but I think the criticisms are very overblown, and apply more to videography rather than stills shooting. It’s also offset by the ease of use of the Panasonics, where the physical controls and menu system make it easy to adjust camera setup in comparison to something like Sony cams, which have better AF, but very clunky menus. Never used Fujifilm bodies, but they seem to get similar positive comments about the physical control layout, and my mate likes his XT? For the colour processing in jpeg.

My default lens for both cameras is the 14-140mm - the updated version is weatherproof, so makes a good outdoors combo with the G80/G9 which are both weatherproofed as well.

I find the whole discussion around AF systems on cameras a bit confusing.

Tend to agree. Lightning fast focusing is for a small set of use cases and not something that has ever bothered me. I am more concerned about how the camera feels to use and I am still using a DSLR from 2007 as it is one button per function, two control wheels, OVF, fits my hand perfectly etc,. It happens to focus pretty fast as it is a DSLR but that doesn't matter that much for my use.

Indeed for many it is a non issue. Just have to think what sort of shots you are going to take. Nature photography on a long lens in dodgy light and it becomes a much bigger issue. Not just the autofocus but also that fact that manual focus can be a ball ache with some mirrorless cameras.

How about something like this?

I find the form factor to be really good for carrying around and I've even got a top tube bag which it fits in and the 14-42 pancake zoom is incredibly compact.

Thanks for all the advice
I have managed to get a great deal on a Fuji xt20, body lens, polariser and batteries for £450
Very happy

Thanks for all the advice
I have managed to get a great deal on a Fuji xt20, body lens, polariser and batteries for £450
Very happy

nice! hope you enjoy getting back into it

Good choice 😀 Hope you enjoy it.