I want to buy a proper camera, what do i need to know?

Arts & Media Visual Arts & Design
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The G7 is not a bad camera but for proper use of adapted lenses I would try to get as close to the native sensor / film format as possible. m4/3 would not be my recommendation.

You are right about Fuji lenses being pricey, the bodies on the other hand are pretty cheap, at least some are. Something like the X-E1 will spit out beautiful color jpeg files and is APS-C, so at least closer to 35mm film.

If it doesn’t have a hotshoe, it’s not a camera in my mind. I wouldn’t recommend that one. Also premium compacts are delicate creatures, most have moving lenses and stuff that breaks easily. My Panasonic LX100 knows… :wink:

@Automobili3XF OK, so in this case I would go mirrorless and manual everything with adapted glass. That way you get a feel for what is doing what pretty quick. The mentioned Fuji X-E1 (or X-E2 or X-T1 if you can get one cheap) does have manual dials for time and exposure compensation. Combined with the aperture setting on adapted lenses as well as manual and automatic ISO, you are good to go for almost anything. If you have to have some autofocus zoom lens, you can get one later on.

In general any APS-C sensor mirrorless should be fine and the easier it is to dial in stuff manually the better.

For lenses I would try to get a 24mm, which is slightly wide angle, and a somewhat fast 50 to 60mm lens. (As in a 55mm or something, not a zoom from 50 to 60. :wink: )

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Premium compacts are not really on my mind to be honest, they seem to pretty limited.
As for mirrorless, like i said, i love the more compact shape and weight, but my concern is that, going with a mirroless camera, i wouldn’t be able to use it on the courses i mentioned, most of them only mention the applicant’s need to have a DSLR camera, not sure if they would allow a mirrorless camera to be used.

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Anything a DSLR can do, a mirrorless can do as well. The only thing I can think of where DSLRs did better in the past is AF performance on high end bodies. Since the Sony A9 that isn’t true anymore either.

If they actually want you to have a DSLR, that course isn’t worth your time.

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Its just an assumption to be honest, some courses around here try to block people out if they don’t have the exact equipment they’ve asked before because some of the teachers are complete jerks that refuse to be flexible, i hope its not the case with photography courses.
Thankfully there’s more than one course as well.

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Well, ask them! :slightly_smiling_face:

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Will do!
Also, what do you think of the Nikon D5600? I spoke to my distant cousin, who’s a professional photographer, and she told me about it, said it would be an interesting model to start with.
Either that or a Canon T7i.

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The D3X00 and D5X00 series of Nikon cameras don’t have built-in AF motors. So any old school AF-D or older lens won’t have autofocus on those. And that is a lot of lenses. The newer lenses on the other hand don’t have manual aperture rings anymore, so when you want to use those on a mirrorless body you need specific adapters to move the aperture at all and even then you can’t dial in exact values.

On top of that with the D5600 you have a mirror to deal with again and a flange distance that makes it pretty much impossible to adapt any lens. Same goes for any Canon DSLR. Or ANY DSLR! That is why I am arguing against those bodies. Buying into a DSLR system is like buying into closed computer systems. You are giving up the freedom to use whatever you want. Just don’t do that.

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Definitely a valuable information, i wasn’t taking that into account.
So, let’s see if i got this right, ideally, i would buy a mirrorless camera body, an AF-D (or similar) adapter and earlier, manual lenses?

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There is no AF-D adapter because AF-D is just a subset of Nikon F-mount lenses.

You want to look for manual lenses, yes. When you find a lens that you would like to use, you need to find out if it can be adapted. It’s always about the mount being used but in general you can say this: Any SLR lens with a manual aperture ring on it will work on any mirrorless camera with the right adapter.

As an example:
If you have a Fuji camera like the X-T1 and you want to use an old Nikon 50mm lens on that, you need the adapter from Nikon F-mount to Fuji X-mount. If instead you want to go with a Contax-Zeiss lens, you need a Contax C/Y mount to Fuji X mount adapter. Simple, right?

There is a lot of different mounts, active as well as legacy ones. I don’t want to overwhelm you but just for quick reference:

… yeah, it’s a lot. :wink:

If you want to get most out of any lens you would want to match the native sensor / film format. So for most lenses in existence that would mean you want a full frame camera. If you can find a Sony A7 of any kind for cheap, that would get you right there. So far I’ve advocated for Fuji because it’s APS-C (the slightly smaller sensor format) cameras should be cheaper and they absolutely will give you nicer colors when shooting JPEG.

Look, in the end there is many ways to skin a cat, right? The best thing you can do right now is ask the folks leading those courses about what exactly you need to bring. Not brand names, not model numbers, just what features do you need in a camera to be able to participate.

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Sure thing because, in the end, the more i look and the more i read the more confused i get, the numbers and terminology are pretty confusing :grimacing:.
I’ll ask about the cameras in the courses then, what i don’t want is to potentially waste my money on an expensive camera/system that will shortly be obsolete or simply not enough for what i’ll need.
It also seems that Nikon gave up support for the brazilian market, they still honor warranties but its not a good sign.

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I wouldn’t worry too much about that honestly. The reasons against Nikon from where you are right now are: Nikon DSLRs are on the way out, Nikon full frame mirrorless is still brand new and pretty expensive and Nikon 1 (a smaller mirrorless system) is using a tiny 1" sensor and … is also pretty dead.

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Hmm, that clears up things, perhaps i shouldn’t even consider newer Nikons then.

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That’s not entirely accurate, you can adapt a lot of older lenses to Canon EF pretty easily with a dumb (no glass, no electronics) adapter. Off the top of my head I’m pretty sure M42, and Nikon F will usually work fine.

Nikon F has a slightly longer flange distance so you need an adapter with a lens element in it to get infinity focus for M42 mount lenses.

I think Pentax K can adapt to M42 without an additional element too.

I usually adapt M42 glass myself, so that’s the one I know best. There are adapters with corrective lenses available for most common dslr mounts to other common dslr mounts. The main argument against adapting like this is that the corrective lenses will slightly degrade image quality but that has never become an issue for me. That extra bit of glass is what you get to avoid by going mirrorless.

There is also Tamron’s old Adaptall2 system of lenses that will work on basically anything full frame or smaller.

You don’t really have to “match” the format of your lens to your sensor as long as the sensor the lens is intended for is equal or larger then yours (but the are some exceptions where lenses for smaller formats will still cover larger ones)

I wouldn’t be so quick to count out DSLRs. In my experience DSLRs on the whole tend to be built a bit better then their mirrorless counterparts, they have better battery life and there is a greater native lens selection if you decide you don’t want to adapt lenses. These are of course generalizations, but something to consider.

Cameras don’t really become obsolete very quickly. I still regularly shoot with my S5 pro, which is close to 13 years old, and I’m very still happy with the results.
It is a tool to make an image and as long you can read the images off of it I wouldn’t worry too much about a camera becoming obsolete, lots of people still create great work on film after all.

As for what you need I’ll second what was said about asking those teaching the courses what they want you to have.

Just to be clear I’m not trying to say that you shouldn’t get a mirrorless camera, just that I don’t think that DSLRs should be so quickly dismissed. Also, I think it’s really hard to go wrong with most semi modern cameras over 10mp, that have manual control, and will allow you to save raw files.

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They also got the advantage of having focus sensors instead of going via the main image sensor. The dedicated focus sensors are faster.

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Well, yes. There are exceptions because you might be able to squeeze a thin adapter in there. As a rule of thumb it is still the case that any manual SLR lens will work fine on a mirrorless camera and most of them won’t fit on other SLRs.

But you are cropping off parts of the image circle you have. I didn’t say you have to, I said to get the most out of it. Also it’s not just about “does it work” but about the characteristics of the lens. You might lose a lot of the things that makes the lens special in the first place.

I had Nikon cameras for a long time, D3s, D4, D800E … I am now shooting the Leica SL. None of the Nikons come close in build quality. Also I would get a Fuji X-E2 over any D3X00 or Rebel any day of the week. And on top of that mirrorless cameras have less moving parts. No, DSLRs are not better built. That is a myth at this point.

Agreed. :+1:

As mentioned I have shot pretty high end DSLRs. If you look at high end mirrorless today the theoretical performance benefit doesn’t translate into a real one anymore. The A9 series in particular is ridiculously fast. Phase detect pixel have come a long way.

Also, if @Automobili3XF goes manual focus none of that matters anyway.

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Quoting because very important point I failed to mention.

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Don’t know why but that post went right past me. :upside_down_face:

I haven’t seen anything that he shot and I don’t like the guy. If you want good photography information on youtube, there are better sources and less annoying ones at that. Search for Joe McNally, Zack Arias, David Hobby, Gregory Heisler, Joey L., Chase Jarvis, Lindsay Adler… or for the more basic stuff even the Adorama educational videos aren’t terrible. Lots and lots of free stuff.

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Will check them out for sure! I think i’ve already come across one or two of them when i looked up some of the models i was interested in.

What i tried to say was, that i’m afraid to potentially invest in a system that will be left behind by the brand or will not be generally support by the aftermarket.
Some of the models mentioned here seem to have a much wider range of lenses or adapters that will fit on them in comparison to others.

I’ve been trying to contact one of the better ones around but i think they are still in new year recess, they are not picking up the phone today.
Alegedly they would either include a camera in the course package or give you approximate specs for students to buy their own camera.