Best Compact/CSC For ~£400

DAnDan

DAnDan

DAnDan

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So this is a bit of a vague spec me really.

I'm thinking of getting a decent camera for general out and about use. Originally I'd planned on getting an SLR, something like a 100D as I have access to a couple of Canon fitting lenses, but I've pretty much ruled out the SLR as I don't think I'll end up using it enough just due to the size. While a lot of these cameras still aren't pocketable, they're hugely smaller and lighter, so a lot less hassle to carry around, with image quality that's obviously not as good, but pretty close, I think?

So I'm now looking at a good quality smaller camera, preferably one with an APS-C sensor, although that's not an absolute must as long as the image quality and noise are good. Wifi and touch screen are very desirable, but again not the end of the world if the rest of the camera is worth it.

  • A simple option is the RX-100, it's a smaller sensor and without changeable lenses, but it's likely the smallest of the lot, and seems to give very good pictures for the size. These seem to be available for around £330 at the moment.
  • Then there's the Fujifilm X-A1, which has a free lens offer on at the moment, which is a nice little bonus. This seems to be around £370.
  • There's the Samsung NX2000 for around £250 (seems to be a decent cheaper option?) and the NX300 for a little over £400.
  • The Olympus E-PL5 at around £310
Basically, there's a lot of cameras in the price, and I don't really have much expertise on what is/isn't good.

So guys and/or girls, what are your thoughts on this overall? Anything I've missed that's worth a look, or anything that's outright the best in this area?
 
Personally, I'd go with the E-PL5. It is a brilliant wee camera with a cracking sensor and m43 has the most developed system as a whole with a great variety of lenses at various price points, many of which are very small.

I haven't actually used any of the other options on your list so might be a bit biased, but it's where my money would go. The Fuji X series is very tasty looking but many of the lenses are relatively large compared to m43 so you don't necessarily save a whole lot of bulk over a small DSLR kit.
 
Columbo said:
The problem is you are concerned about bulk, the Fuji and the Samsung have 1.5x crop APS-C sensors so the lenses are pretty big to cater for that, almost on a par with standard DSLR lenses.
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This, if you care about bulk then stay away form mirrorless with APS-C sensors (unless you know you only want to use a short prime). Nikon 1 and m43 cameras like the EPL-5 are your only way to get smaller lenses in a CSC, especially if you want telephoto lenses or some zooms.
The Sony RX100 is very small but has the fixed lens, the smallest m43 and Nikon 1 bodies are about the same size but the lenses stick out a little more.
 
Yeah there's definitely an increase in size on the X-A1/lenses.

http://j.mp/1o42wQu

I do like the idea of being able to keep a physically small lens on there for most stuff, but then stick a larger lens on if there's something I know I'll need the extra zoom for.

But how well will the general image quality stack up on the EPL-5 against the APS-C based cameras?
 
DAnDan said:
Yeah there's definitely an increase in size on the X-A1/lenses.

http://j.mp/1o42wQu

I do like the idea of being able to keep a physically small lens on there for most stuff, but then stick a larger lens on if there's something I know I'll need the extra zoom for.

But how well will the general image quality stack up on the EPL-5 against the APS-C based cameras?
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The sensor in the EPL5 is just as good as modern canon crop APS-C sensors for example, but not as good as the latest, Nikon/Sony/Fuji but not a large difference.


http://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Comp...L5-versus-Fujifilm-FinePix-X100___895_839_695

e.g., the Epl5 does very well against the latest Canon 70D.Play around with different DSLRs and look at the results. Ignore the overall score but look at the breakdown, e.g. dynamic range, ISO, colour depth.

You really don't loose anything.
 
Thanks for the help so far guys!

So seems like two good options are the E-PL5, and the X-A1/X-M1, with the Fujis being a little larger.

I do quite like the sound of the X-A1 for £370 with the 16-50 mm kit lens, and free 50-300 mm lens as well. I can then keep the smaller kit lens on for general stuff, but have the longer lens tucked away to bring with me on occasions where it would be worth it.

The X-A1 with the kit lens is a little larger than the EPL-5 with the kit lens, but I don't think it's enough to make too much difference. Need to see if I can find a shop with both in stock to take a look at really.

D.P. said:
The sensor in the EPL5 is just as good as modern canon crop APS-C sensors for example, but not as good as the latest, Nikon/Sony/Fuji but not a large difference.


http://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Comp...L5-versus-Fujifilm-FinePix-X100___895_839_695

e.g., the Epl5 does very well against the latest Canon 70D.Play around with different DSLRs and look at the results. Ignore the overall score but look at the breakdown, e.g. dynamic range, ISO, colour depth.

You really don't loose anything.
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Thanks, that's a really good site!

I'm really surprised at how well the 4/3 and APS-C cameras compare to the entry level SLRs! I really wasn't expecting them to actually be as close. I guess it makes sense with the same/little smaller sensor sizes though.
 
Well the NEX series use the same APS-C sensors as Nikon SLR's so it would actually be a surprise if image quality was not as good. Unfortunately it also means the lenses must be the same size, so you don't really save any bulk. Unless you're going to use a single pancake lens, but then then you might as well just buy a compact. The m4/3 sensors do have smaller lenses ofc but image quality doesn't match the Nikon APS-C sensors by some margin, some compacts actually perform better.

It's just a shame that the ridiculous lens prices for the m4/3 prevent it from being a credible system, £370 for a 50mm f/1.8!

Honestly if your looking at those kind of price ranges I would recommend a compact, CSC tend to be even more expensive than SLR.
 
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Energize said:
Well the NEX series use the same APS-C sensors as Nikon SLR's so it would actually be a surprise if image quality was not as good. Unfortunately it also means the lenses must be the same size, so you don't really save any bulk. Unless you're going to use a single pancake lens, but then then you might as well just buy a compact. The m4/3 sensors do have smaller lenses ofc but image quality doesn't match the Nikon APS-C sensors by some margin, some compacts actually perform better.

It's just a shame that the ridiculous lens prices for the m4/3 prevent it from being a credible system, £370 for a 50mm f/1.8!

Honestly if your looking at those kind of price ranges I would recommend a compact, CSC tend to be even more expensive than SLR.
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I'm not too worried about the price, I doubt I'll be building a huge range of lenses so that shouldn't be too bad. I'm more worried about getting something that I'll actually use, which means something I won't mind carrying around on holidays/trips/etc.

Still leaning towards the E-PL5, possibly the X-A1. The kit lens isn't too much bigger, but has the advantage of the larger sensor.

Going to try and have a play in a shop with both and see if that swings it one way or another.
 
Energize said:
Well the NEX series use the same APS-C sensors as Nikon SLR's so it would actually be a surprise if image quality was not as good. Unfortunately it also means the lenses must be the same size, so you don't really save any bulk. Unless you're going to use a single pancake lens, but then then you might as well just buy a compact. The m4/3 sensors do have smaller lenses ofc but image quality doesn't match the Nikon APS-C sensors by some margin, some compacts actually perform better.

It's just a shame that the ridiculous lens prices for the m4/3 prevent it from being a credible system, £370 for a 50mm f/1.8!

Honestly if your looking at those kind of price ranges I would recommend a compact, CSC tend to be even more expensive than SLR.
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I think you'd be surprised by the latest gen of m43 sensors. Pretty much everything released since the E-M5 has had really good image quality.

I just posted a bunch of landscapes shot with the E-M5 and 9-18 in this thread, it's certainly good enough for me - http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18596598
 
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I'm sure when shooting landscapes it's fine, in good light you can take great photos with a mobile phone after all, however it's ISO performance is poor compared to APS-C and especially 35mm so any kind of low light/sports photography is out of the question. It's an inherent result of having such a small sensor, the laws of physics as they are a 4/3 sensor is always going to be have worse ISO performance than larger sensors of the same technology, it scales linearly with sensor area.

4/3 are fine for shooting in most conditions, however they lack the flexibility to tackle more demanding environments like sports and low light photography because of their ISO performance. The ISO performance of the EPL1 was why I dumped it, indoor photographs were terrible and to get a 50mm f/1.8 it was cheaper to buy an SLR with a 50mm! Even with an f/1.8 lens though, ISO is still high in indoor sports. Meanwhile we haven't seen even a one stop improvement in m4/3 ISO performance. With 35mm I can use an f/2.8 zoom no problem and get clear images.
 
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Energize said:
I'm sure when shooting landscapes it's fine, in good light you can take great photos with a mobile phone after all, however it's ISO performance is poor compared to APS-C and especially 35mm so any kind of low light/sports photography is out of the question. It's an inherent result of having such a small sensor, the laws of physics as they are a 4/3 sensor is always going to be have worse ISO performance than larger sensors of the same technology, it scales linearly with sensor area.

4/3 are fine for shooting in most conditions, however they lack the flexibility to tackle more demanding environments like sports and low light photography because of their ISO performance. The ISO performance of the EPL1 was why I dumped it, indoor photographs were terrible and to get a 50mm f/1.8 it was cheaper to buy an SLR with a 50mm! Since then we haven't seen even a one stop improvement in m4/3 ISO performance.
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Total rubbish.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/stu...&x=-0.32769596199524964&y=-0.4028157759091339
 
By all means from the comparisons you can clearly see much less noise at ISO ranges 6400-25600 on the D600 vs E-M5 when resized to equivalence, and that's despite the lens and aperture used on the D600 being to it's disadvantage.

That is one of the reasons sports professionals use SLR's.

The only none sane thing is to expect a camera costing a fraction of the price of another with a far smaller sensor to perform as well, more so when published test data and even the laws of physics contradict it.

http://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Compare/Side-by-side/Nikon-D610-versus-Olympus-OM-D-E-M5___915_793
 
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Energize said:
By all means from the comparisons you can clearly see much less noise at ISO ranges 6400-25600 on the D600 vs E-M5 when resized to equivalence, and that's despite the lens and aperture used on the D600 being to it's disadvantage.

That is one of the reasons sports professionals use SLR's.

The only none sane thing is to expect a camera costing a fraction of the price of another with a far smaller sensor to perform as well, more so when published test data and even the laws of physics contradict it.

http://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Compare/Side-by-side/Nikon-D610-versus-Olympus-OM-D-E-M5___915_793
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But that's a comparison of a £1200+ full frame SLR against a £300 MFT, I don't think anyone should be surprised that the Nikon wins. But I also don't think that was the point people were originally trying to make.

I was asking about the best quality within the options I'm looking at, people were explaining them to me. The SLR is definitely better quality, but it's not a camera that I'm interested in getting. :)
 
Unless I missed something where the hell did the D610 come into the discussion? Nobody was claiming that the M4/3s sensors matched up to Nikon/Sony/Fuji's latest and greatest APS-C sensors and all of a sudden we're slating them because they don't match up Nikon's latest full frame sensors? What a thoroughly pointless discussion.
 
Energize said:
snip
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The whole reason I bought the E-PL5 was to be used when diving which will be used primarily in low light situations and hard to focus subjects. I've done quite a bit of testing recently with the E-PL5 and it performs very very well so far. Looking forward to using it UW, but its a divers favourite due to its low light performance.

OP - I picked up the E-PL5 off ebay for £230 the other day, I'm simply blown away by how good this little camera is. I can't praise it enough. The E-PL6 is basically the same camera with wifi bolted on, if thats your thing.

Here is an image with the kit lens which goes to f/3.5

LWU15PJ.jpg

Sharp enough for me!

The only time I notice IQ issues is at 100% Crop, but then only photographers notice that.
 
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