You will get a chuckle out of this… retro camera are a fashion statement now apparently even if they don’t take great pics… 
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Unbelievable! Back in 2004 I bought at CoolPix 5400. It was small, thankfully not Pink (aside from the severe chromatic aberration) but horrible, as well unreliable - Nikon replaced it twice under warranty and then gave me a sufficiently attractive deal to switch to a D80.
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Seems a bit unlikely as the predecessors were rebadged Panasonics with the Leica premium and supposedly tweaked ‘magic Leica colours’
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If you add a lens, that may change. The 12-32 pancake zoom from Panasonic is 70 grams and is 24 mm long; the Fuji XC15-45mm, with similar angles of view is 135g and 44 mm collapsed (yes, I know the DoF is different).
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Really the only case where small-format cameras do well size-wise are configurations where the equivalent APS-C or FF lens would be so slow that it couldn’t even autofocus reliably. Even in those scenarios, they fail.
SELP1650 is 116g and 29mm collapsed, covers a wider equivalent zoom range (24-75 FF equivalent instead of 24-64), and has 1 stop additional light collection capability when you consider that the sensor is twice the area but both are f/3.5-5.6 lenses.
Panasonic G9II + the 12-32 lens = 658g + 70 grams = 728 grams
Sony A6700 + SELP1650 = 493g + 116g = 609 grams
The Panasonic setup is more than 100 grams heavier and an entire stop slower.
Sure, but the G9 II is one of the larger MFT cameras. Not an Oly M1X, but still. On the other end of the spectrum is the GM5 with 211 g. That, with a pancake, rivals most compacts; my LX7 (1/1.7") weighs more than that.
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Are you able to elaborate on the point about not being impressed please ?
Is it in specific situations you are not impressed e.g. at night, close-up, or is it in general.
As I get older I’m looking for a smaller lighter camera setup and M4/3 always catches my eye.
Thanks,
Phil.
The gx9 is 250g (407g vs 658g) less and much smaller, in comparison to a small aps-c one should pick a small MFT ?
The lumix pz 14-42mm 3.5-5.6 (28-84mm FF equiv) which is 95g would be a closer fit to the 24-100mm (FF equiv) range of the G7 x in the first post example I guess.
Nevertheless A6XXX and even A7X pack quite big sensor for their sizes/weight. forgetting budget constrain, the a7C would be the absolute winner in the regard !
I wonder if any camera FW or Magic lantern offer some in camera magic comparable ? @ sony the app market is rather quiet so I guess there’s nothing really exiting there …
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Sony cameras are rather nice but do note that the filter stack on the sensor is thicker than Leica so if you intend to adapt vintage wide angle lenses there will be a color cast
I think it makes sense to work backwards from lenses, and then compare bodies. Eg pick the 120mm equivalent one want so get, consider its size and cost, and compare with the usual suspects (M4/3, Fuji, Sony come to mind, Nikkon still has very few lenses specifically for APS-C on the Z mount). M4/3 lenses are usually smaller, but that may not be the case for a particular focal length, or the lens could have features that are worth the size (eg wider aperture).
But it is important to keep in mind that this topic is about replacing a compact. Carrying larger cameras just sucks to joy out of photography for a lot of people, so it may be important to keep the package small even if it lacks some features. Yes, the Sony A7C is an amazing feat of engineering, and quite small, but is it worth the cost for @LateJunction?
Apart from lens size, one advantage of Micro 4/3 is the availability of cheap but still capable second-hand bodies, and the huge lens selection. The Olympus Pen range is reasonably small (but without a viewfinder, usually), Panasonic has some smaller cameras (eg the GX800, without IBIS), etc.
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Random thought on this. I find a flippy screen extra useful on a small camera as you’re often using it in the street or to get high viewpoints.
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Just to throw in another random option, talking of street. There’s the Ricoh GR fixed lens compacts. APSC, tiny, fast, but bit pricey. No flippy screen.
Given that
is part of the specs, I am not sure that the premium fixed focus compacts are a good fit.
I have looked at the Fuji and the Sony lenses that deliver 120mm equivalent, and while there are some fine choices optically, they are all a bit on the bulky side.
For the specs, I would probably get a
- a smallish micro 4/3 body, depending on which features are needed,
- a Panasonic/Olympus 12–32mm or 12–42mm pancake lens (these often come in a kit, plenty of second hand options too)
- round it out with the Panasonic 35–100mm or Olympus 40–150mm for tele.
Er, yeah, fair point
Good burst stacking algorithms need quite a lot of processing power - older Pixels had a dedicated image signal processor for these purposes, I think newer ones may be using Vulkan Compute. The only open source implementation of Google’s MFSR I’ve found requires CUDA because apparently a CPU-only implementation was way too slow.
Even the CPUs alone in a midrange smartphone are vastly more powerful than what you see in any camera except for the likes of the Galaxy Camera and Nikon’s attempt at an Android camera - both of which were catastrophic commercial failures so it’s unlikely you’ll see anything like that attempted again. (I think Yongnuo kinda sorta tried it but I’m not sure if it ever got released?)
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I find that a little hard to explain…
To start with I’d like to say that I find the camera itself excellent - very well made, light yet solid, small yet easy to hold.
Image quality - I think it’s a combination of less dynamic range than a bigger or newer sensor, more noise and probably combined with the fact that I don’t own any really decent m43 lenses.
I just find the files less flexible when processing in darktable, and a little prone to breaking up when pulling shadow details. Also feel like something about the colours is different to my other cameras (Sony, Nikon, Pentax similar age or older) even though I have custom profiles. Might be imagining this last point.
I suspect it’s personal taste to some extent!
But compared to any compact camera I’ve had it’s excellent really - just I don’t quite ‘get along’ with it.
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Fun fact (IIRC), Android started life as a camera firmware, and only later was taken over by Google and adapted to be a smartphone OS.
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Maybe 1" compacts with bright lenses are an option.
If you check this: PowerShot Shootout: Canon's G1 X III vs G7 X II: Digital Photography Review
You can see that the 1" camera has:
- a wider zoom range
- a faster lens, even when converted for full-frame equivalence.
Cameras with such sensors/lenses include the Canon G5 X Mk ii, G7 X Mk iii (with the longest lens, equivalent to f/7.6 at 100 mm), Sony RX100 before Mk vi, Panasonic LX10/15 (equivalent to f/7.6 at 72 mm) and LX100 (i or ii, with the fastest lens, equivalent to f/6.2 at 75 mm, but many reporting unfixable dust-on-sensor issues). Source of data: chart at the bottom of Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX10/LX15 Review: Digital Photography Review.
But then those are the same (or in the same category) the whole thread started with (sorry, I forgot about that).
For an even longer zoom and a relatively bright lens, the Panasonic FZ 1000 (i or ii), equivalent to f/10.9 at 400 mm or the Sony RX10 (iii and iv), f/10.9 at 600 mm. But those are ~800 grams (Pana) or over 1 kg (Sony), and the latter is also expensive.
And of course there are pocketable superzooms with slower lenses. I have bought my wife a Pana TZ100. Sure, it can zoom, but in less than optimal light (e.g. indoors, our outdoors in the evening), because of the much slower lens, it produces results comparable to my own LX7 (which has a much smaller sensor but a much brighter lens).
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By chance, I just read this on the same theme. He comes down on the side of the G7Xii.
Yeah, found that blog entry as well. However:
- I don’t really do such quick captures,
- I like the promise of higher dynamic range (both the Ming Thein and the CameraLabs review emphasise that as an advantage)
- the G7Xii has no EVF, and that probably makes it unusable for me. Maybe these newer cameras have better screens, I don’t know, but I don’t want to risk it. When I bought the LX7, I found it pretty much impossible to use outdoors, in bright light, there was so much reflection. I bought the optional viewfinder for it (cost about as much as the camera, both of them used), but then it’s no longer really compact:
Plus, I need glasses for objects close to me, but not when outside; the viewfinders allow me do dial in an adjustment, which is not possible with the screens.
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