Iām a fellow FF Sony shooter and have found myself very fond of the 35mm focal length for a walk-around lens with my kids. My 35mm is Sigmaās F1.4 DG HSM, which comes in at 775 grams and is fairly large at 77mm x 120mm. Iāve found myself grabbing my Sony FE 50mm f1.8 due to its much more compact size and weight, so Iām strongly considering a slower, but more compact 35mm to grab when Iāll be outdoors.
I donāt know if this is the case for you, but I am actively choosing my gear around gear Iāll be more likely to use - even if this comes comes with some trade-offs in terms of IQ or aperture speed. My gear blows a cellphone out of the water for my hyperactive kids, but as they say the best camera in the world is the one youāre carrying.
Something to think about.
As others have hit on already, sensor size is the thing holding you back. Bigger image circles require more glass to resolve. The most compact FF e-mount option Iām aware of is Zony 35mm f2.8
Hereās a quick size rundown. The zFc is very classic looking, so I included it. Had a n APS-C and is wearing a FF lens though. Next up is your A7c with the previously mentioned lens, followed by a fairly compact micro four thirds body and then the Nikon J5.
If you want compact and donāt mind wider lenses, micro four thirds bodies are probably your best option. The OM-5 is a modern gripless body.
An attempt while mobile: !beebutts@lemmy.world
An actual link: https://lemmy.world/c/beebutts
You already have the things you said you like, so be happy I guess. Newer sensor generations are always incrementally decreasing noise, but itās not that dramatic. Newer lenses are constantly improving sharpness, increasing AF speed, decreasing vignetting, decreasing loca, etc but theyāre pricey. The only thing that really stands out to me is sensor based image stabilization offered on mirrorless bodies. You can get some fairly long, and thus low noise, exposures with surprising sharpness hand held these days. M43 cameras are the clear winners here, but even on APS-C and FF sensors, the stabilization offered by sensor based stabilization is better than that offered by lens based stabilization.
The plus DLSRs, especially before the D40/D800 was that they were extremely repeatable. As soon as additional features, like face/eye AF got added to the mix, it all gotā¦ very hairy. āWill my camera find a face? What if it looses that face?ā Aside from Canon and Sony, most modern mirrorless still struggle with front or back focusing some when using face/eye detect. Electronic View Finders can be very cool with all the information they display (level information, histograms, even flashing blown highlights/shadows in the case of Olympus, etc), but unless youāre looking at a pretty modern (or $$ used) body, they tend to not be very high resolution. My A7II is serviceable, but itās not that great - especially when manually focusing. But speaking of manual focusing, one of the cool things an EVF can do is focus magnification for the thing youāre focusing on as you adjust focus. Blackout free shooting with an electronic shutter on an A9 makes panning photos a lot easier for me since you can see the thing youāre tracking continue to move.
/many random thoughts
All that said, used F-mount lenses are getting cheap - especially if you have a built in AF motor which you doā¦
All good!
There are options!
M43 cameras can be a lot more compact but once you start really sweating equivalence it does get a bit messy. Modern FF mirrorless cameras, and their lenses, will also offer size/weight savings over a DSLR. Hereās a very quick size comparison. Note that there is a newer version of that Sony 24-70 that reduces weight to 659 grams (vs the 1,070 of your Nikon DSLR lens). I find that my Pixel 3a is pretty good for bright light with moving subjects, but as soon as my subjects start moving and lighting drops my dedicated cameras make a world of difference.
Ambient lighting, especially if you can get it to fall fairly directly on faces, will be the thing to try to use to your advantage.
Youāre doing great with your English!
As far as flash, there are two things you can do to make it better:
- Use a gel or a dedicated filter to match the color temperature of the ambient lighting
- Diffuse the flash - donāt just aim it directly at your subjects. If you were inside, you could bounce it off a wall but since you likely wonāt have a wall at your disposal you could look at diffusers. There are tons of DIY options available as well as products you can buy
Good point - thereās a difference between dim, but still somewhat directional, light that you can have your subjects pose around and straight up dim light. A dim light directed at someoneās face will result in a lot more detail than that same amount of light randomly diffused around the scene. If itās going to be truly dark, with no sources of directional light, and OP is a pixel peeper they probably wonāt like the results.
If OP does go the flash route, which I hope they do it itās actually dark, there would no longer be a need to shoot wide open unless maybe theyāre focusing on single subjects. For groups, more depth of field is good.
Our oldest was around four and the younger one was around 18 months before I picked up a J5. That camera really was a gateway drug back into photography. Itās small enough to fit into a somewhat larger pocket (gym shorts, cargo pants, most coats) with the 10mm (27mm FF EQ) prime on it. I carried the body, with a lens attached, two additional lenses, and its charger in a truly tiny 3l bag - basically the size of a fanny pack. Before the J5 I would break out my D5300 occasional. The J5 got me back into the habit of carrying a dedicated camera again. It was extremely unobtrusive, both from a blending in perspective and a size/weigh perspective. It took me about 6 months to move onto a larger mirrorless body for better low light performance and I havenāt really looked back. The only other thing I can offer up is getting a peak design camera strap. Carrying your camera cross body at your hip, with the lens pointing down, is way more natural than walking around with it sticking straight out in front of you. It also will help the camera not move around as much with you or when you bend over.
Itās true that we donāt do a ton of travel, and that our trips are now in-state, but weāre still doing something most every weekend even if thatās just going to a park. There are plenty of opportunities to take interesting photos of the scenery around us, as well as the kids interacting with the world and getting to experience something new for the first time.
Happy you found it interesting/entertaining!
Your D800 remains a very capable body. The three advances since them are quieter mechanical shutters (not all brands embrace them equally), pretty solid electronic shutters (so you can pass on the loud mechanical shutter when needed), and face/eye/subject recognition (makes getting the shot a lot easier). There have been some advances on the ISO noise front too, but these have been slow and steady IMO.
If you frequent dimly lit places and your kids are constantly on the move, itās hard to beat a MLIC with a fast prime. I do occasionally miss my speedlight, diffusers, and umbrella for the effects it could create but I get by in dim light pretty well without them.
Coming from a D40, D5300, and getting back into kids with a J5 itās kind of funny to find myself standing by a A7III, but itās a great value these days and delivers more consistently eye/face in focus photos than a Z6II.
Thanks! As I said in the intro, typing this out really helped me organize my thoughts for why I keep sticking with the Sony body even though I donāt know that I feel a strong attachment to the body itself. If it turned on a bit faster and consistently, the EVF were a bit more glasses friendly, and the shutter were quieter I think I would be completely happy. An A9 will take care of at least one of those things, so it seems like a good next body to try.
And agree. I didnāt spend a ton of time with film, but my D40ās max level was 1600. It has HI1 at 3200, but that could get pretty noisy. My D5300 did go to 12800, but it also got pretty noisy fast.
It really depends on the shot, but ISO 12800 is completely usable on a modern sensor.
- @IMALlama@lemmy.world to
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No worries. Donāt overthink and try not to overbuy! Itās very hard to go wrong, but itās very easy to get caught up in pixel peeping and specifications wars. If youāre not going to be making big prints or doing heavy crops, most any body from the past 10 years paired with a fast lens will serve you well.
My D5300 is certainly nothing fancy these days, but it holds up just fine on 20"x30" canvas prints.
For fairly stationary things, especially if you donāt have to zoom, a cellphone will get you most of the way there - unless youāre going to be in a very dark environment. I say this as someone whose carried around a dedicated camera for a while, but the best camera in the world is the one you currently have with you. You can absolutely get in the habit of carrying a dedicated camera with you though.
80-90% SOOC (canāt give much time to editing). I am ready to give time to learning and practicing manual controls though
Most camera brands and bodies will give you solid SOOTC JPEGs, but each offers some level of twist. This is where people start taking ācolor scienceā. All the RAWs are basically the same, but the algorithms to make pleasing looking JPEGs vary by brand. Nearly all are customizable, so you can tweak one brands twists to be more or less pronounced. Based on my personal experiences I would say:
Fuji (X-H2s) = a bit stylized, but pleasant to look at. Reliable white balance and subject meeting, after changing the default metering mode.
Nikon (D40, D5300, Z6II) = warm and pleasing. The Z6II I owned for a little while would struggle with white balance indoors, especially with warmer interior lights. It also tended to meter the frame, not the subject, but you can customize this some. I have more than a few photos of someone underexposed in front of a sunny window
Sony (A7 III) = probably the most true to life, but true to life can be kind of boring/flat. The most reliable auto white balance and meters for the subject out of the box.
Thatās not to say that other cameras donāt do a good job, I just donāt have personal experience with them
Ergonomic, light.
Here I would say:
- Micro four thirds. Smaller sensor = smaller glass. One of this systemās selling points is itās size/weight, so they tend to not pull a Fuji
- Fuji mirrorless. All they make are crop sensor bodies, so their glass is usually optimized for that sensor size. Meanwhile over im Sony/Nikon/Canon world, they make a mix of FF and crop sensor glass. Sometimes thereās a FF lens that stands out and you wind up using it on a crop sensor body, resulting in a bigger-than-necessary lens. My D5300 nearly always has a FF 70-300 on it because the lens is really very good and when it came out there wasnāt a crop body equivalent
- Sony and Nikon mirrorless crop sensor bodies. You could also throw Canon in this mix. See above for reasoning
- Mirrorless FF. See the A7III with the somewhat pancake lens on it in the link brlow
- DSLR. Generally speaking the largest glass for a given focal length and aperture, but as people move to mirrorless it is getting cheap to buy this glass usedā¦
Hereās a rough comparison between all five using the focal length you referenced. I also snuck in Sonyās 50 FE 1.8 on a FF camera to show that each system will tend to have a compact prime or three.
travel photos, capturing scenes like I see them with my eye
Most cameras should do just fine here IMO. Procedural photography has made strides in smartphones, but itās hard to beat a dedicated camera
Low light photos
Fast glass will make this way better. If youāre serious about low light, stop thinking about a f2.8 lens and start thinking about really fast primes. If you havenāt read about f-stops yet, the quick primer is f/4 to f/2.8 is one stop, f/2.8 to f/2 is another, f/2 to f/1.4 is yet another.
IMO you should buy a f/2.8 lens for any gain in image quality it offers over its f/4 counterpart - not because itās faster/lets in more light. If you want to really let in more light, a prime lens is the way to go.
Note that fast glass = shallower depth of field if shot wide open. This is potentially one of the advantages of something like micro four thirds. I took pictures of my kids with Santa this winter and stepped down to f/5.6 to try to get all their faces fairly sharp on my 50mm and A7III (full frame). I had about 0.4 meters of āin focusā plane. On a micro four thirds body, I could have used a 25mm lens, at f/2, and wound up with a very similar looking photo. Although the FF sensor is about a stop lower noise, the micro four third photo would have probably had lower noise due to the two stop faster aperture. Not that this particular photo is noisy, but you hopefully get the point.
Long-lasting gear. Okay with getting prime and telephoto lens later if needed.
Most gear will last quite a while, especially if you keep it dry. If itās going to get wet, make sure to get weather sealed. Thatās going to drive up cost.
Videography is not a priority as of now, may explore later.
Same situation here, lol.
ā¦
So, think about what you want and go from there.
As youāve already heard in this thread, one of the bigger adages in photograph is āthe best camera is the one you have with youā.
Iāll also add one more, but it doesnāt sound quite as catchy: the better the shot looks āin cameraā the better the outcome.
What do I mean? Try your best to nail framing, composition, and exposure as youāre taking the photo. You can always adjust after the fact via cropping, bumping exposure, etc if you need to but if you can avoid, or minimize the amount of, this youāll usually get a better end result. Modifying the photo after you take it is called post processing.
You recognized a good opportunity for a photo, which is a great first step. I personally like the aspect ratio (eg lots of sky, some foreground) but I find the cars in both corners distracting. Thatās probably why youāre hearing so many suggestions to crop. I suspect if you walked a little bit closer you could have gotten both cars out of frame. This would also frame the pizza place a little tighter and you probably wouldnāt lose much sky.
Possible standing locations:
- standing on the same side of the car on the right thay youāre already on, but closer to it. You could probably aim over its trunk to put it out of frame
- standing behind the car to the right, assuming the driver wasnāt ready to back up
- standing on the far side of the car on the right, putting you closer to the building and the car behind you
The second building to the left is also a little distracting, but that might be harder to avoid. Move around! See if you can better isolate your subject unless you think something in the foreground or background is adding to the photo.
For OCD symmetry, I would have walked a meter or so to your left and lined up with the bricks that lead to the light pole. This would let you be square to the building across the street too, assuming the bricks run at a right angle to it.
Nice picture otherwise! People are always interesting subjects.