Cheapest mirrorless setup for birds?

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Energize

Caporegime
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So my dad is looking for a camera that can be compact when he needs to it to be for holiday etc. but also something that can be used for wildlife (mainly birds). I suggested a mirrorless as sort of the best solution for this.

It's not going to be totally hardcore so doesn't need to be megabucks, he'll probably buy it and then hardly use it tbh. :p

I have no idea about whether he's best going m4/3 or aps-c and which manufacturer to go for.

I'd figure he's going to be looking for a compact zoom or prime for normal out and about stuff and a tele zoom for bird stuff.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. :D
 
Cheap and birds don't really go together in a sentence.

Anything telephoto is going to be expensive, especially in a mirrorless because there is little competition. You get the manufacturer's own lenses and nothing else, as opposed to you get Canon, Sigma, Tamron, Tokina all making lenses in the same mount.

Like the Fuji 100-400 is £1400, it is neither cheap or small.

If you want to shoot birds, it is going to be expensive and big.
 
You could go m43 with a GX80 or G80 and start with the Panasonic 100-300mm (prob worth spending the extra on the mk ii version).

A GX80 and a 100-300 ii would be under £1K. Although the G80 would be much nicer and isn't hugely more, I'd pay the extra personally.
 
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Raymond Lin said:
Like the Fuji 100-400 is £1400, it is neither cheap or small.
Click to expand...

You don't need to spend anything like that for a long lens with micro 4/3.
I use the Panasonic Lumix 100-300, which while not cheap at about £400, is a fraction of a £1000+. 300mm with m43 is roughly an equivalent of 600mm with full frame. You would struggle for action flight shots, but action flight shots are not the only worthwhile bird photos.

(these are sharper if you click on them)




And not an expensive or big lens:
 
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How about Olympus OM-D M1 (the mark 1 version) from Jessops for £679. You could couple it with an Olympus M.ZUIKO Digital ED 75-300 mm 1:4.8-6.7 II Lens which is currently fairly cheap at £350 at Amazon. The OM-D M1 had an excellent review at DPreview

https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/olympus-om-d-e-m1

Alternatively, you could go a little smaller, with the Olympus OM-D E- M5 Mark II, which can be had for around £689 at Amazon, again it gets a good write up at DPreview

https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/olympus-om-d-e-m5-ii

Micro Four Thirds would seem a good solution, the bodies are fairly small, as are most of the lenses, but if you move to faster aperture lenses/longer lenses, then the trade off isn't that great.

At the moment there are over 10 different lens producers making lenses for the Micro Four Third mount. They're all interchangeable onto any Micro Four Third body, so don't worry about people saying you're restricted to the manufacturers lenses or nothing else. The current Micro Four Thirds Official Lens map can be found at

http://www.four-thirds.org/en/common/pdf/catalog2017_en.pdf

Some of the smaller Micro Four Thirds lenses, such as the Olympus 17mm f/1.8 (around £269), the Olympus 25mm f/18 (around £289) and the Olympus 45mm f/1.8 (around £199) are absolute gems and capable of superb results and are very lightweight and compact in size.

If you want to compare body sizes of any cameras suggested by people, take a look at

http://camerasize.com/
 
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Minstadave said:
You could go m43 with a GX80 or G80 and start with the Panasonic 100-300mm (prob worth spending the extra on the mk ii version).

A GX80 and a 100-300 ii would be under £1K. Although the G80 would be much nicer and isn't hugely more, I'd pay the extra personally.
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Surprisingly there doesn't seem to be much of a price difference looking at used lenses on the bay, £230ish for the MKI and £270ish for the MKII. With the GX80 costing £430 or £330 used, could have setup for as little as £600 there!


Actually more surprised at how relatively expensive the primes are there tbh! 50mm f/3.6 equiv for £290 seems very expensive compared to the Nicanon's 50 f/1.8 lenses!

Sorry, maybe I should have stressed the importance of a compact body more, G80 or Olympus OM-D M1 are are large as an SLR.
 
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G80 for 670 w/ kit lens from john lewis w/price match and camera trade in offer which they dont chase up.
then just find some good lenses.
 
This isn't something I would normally recommend but......

I would look at some sort of bridge camera.

Something like a Sony wx500 would fit the bill.
£300 compact with 750mm equivalent zoom.

My gf dad has something like this and in good light the photos are pretty good.

He may find trading some image quality for cost and size is worth it.

If he gets on OK with the bridge but wants something better for birds you could then look at more expensive options.
 
Minstadave said:
You could go m43 with a GX80 or G80 and start with the Panasonic 100-300mm (prob worth spending the extra on the mk ii version).

A GX80 and a 100-300 ii would be under £1K. Although the G80 would be much nicer and isn't hugely more, I'd pay the extra personally.
Click to expand...

The EVF on the GX80 is the same one from the old GX7 and many people don't care for it. The G80's EVF is very good indeed, better than the one in the G7.

Early user feedback (on DPR anyway) on the 100-300mm MK2 from people that have owned both is the AF performance is a huge improvement over the MK1.
 
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