Need a new camera

Lord Alibaski

Lord Alibaski

Lord Alibaski

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Joined
11 Oct 2005
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Location
Doncaster
Been using a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX9V for 7 years now purchased when the wife and I got married, so it's about time we bought a new camera. We go to Scotland every year for holiday but we have both noticed now that this camera isn't up to standard and doesn't give Scotland justice.

We have also just started visiting some English heritage sites, and also the local wild life park so it's about time we bought a new camera but don't know what, we have a budget of about £600 I've been looking at a few but can't make my mind up.

Nikon D3400 Digital SLR in Black with 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 AF-P VR Lens and Tamron AF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 Di LD Lens
CANON EOS 200D DSLR Camera with EF-S 18-55 mm f/3.5-5.6 III & EF 50 mm f/1.8 STM Lens


The Nikon cost with lens £538.99
The Canon with lens £520 after £50 cash back

I'm leaning towards the canon.

Any help and advice is appreciated.
 
Have you been into a shop and held both cameras ?

One might be better in your hands,I would go for the canon personally as I like their lens and the colour on the canon is better in my eyes.
 
Lord Alibaski said:
Is the rx100 that good, How much better is it than my old cybershot?

I'm not bothered about it being compact but would the canon take better pictures than the rx100.
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The Sony is really good,it's great as it's small and powerful and gets great reviews,not sure about the image quality between the 2 but I'm sure there sample pictures out there that show the Sony and a DSLR.
 
I'd suggest checking out the Sony E-mount range such as the A6000. It's a little bigger but has interchangeable lenses. I have an RX100 and although it's a very cool camera I find it a little limited in low light. I took it on a recent trip away and once night kicked in I wished I'd had something more capable. For me and A6000 with a kit lens is a better proposition than an A6000 unless it needs to fit in your trouser pocket.
 
Nice shot. I was thinking more handheld shots at night, street stuff etc. and gigs where the light is poor. I took a few slow exposures a month or so ago and they were OK, not up there with the A6000 though.
 
The low light performance can impact things hugely or hardly at all depending on subject and style of shooting. Some noise for creative night street photography doesn't sometimes make much impact for instance. Given you mention heritage sites and wildlife as well as presumably general purpose, I wouldn't want either of the Sony's though. There's some really good all purpose zooms available for traditional dslr 17-50mm fixed 2.8 for instance. Huge difference between those and the standard kit lens of 18-55. Wide enough for landscape and fine for portrait given you can do 35-50mm all at 2.8. You'll obviously want more reach for wildlife but it's better getting a good quality zoom and holding out on another lens rather than a cheap kit lens.
 
Lord Alibaski said:
Want to use it more often at heritage sites and the wild life park we only go on holiday twice a year but we just want better pictures.
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After quick look those heritage sites seems to be mostly old castles, monuments and such.
I guess you likely want mostly big depth of field images with lots of castle etc in focus, instead of seeing how much of it you can get ouf of focus, right?
That depth of field becomes fast important when watching shots in bigger size.

With HX9V (or camera in your phone) you've never had to consider that, because of always huge depth of field/in focus area.
But with increasing sensor size depth of field becomes smaller for same field of view and f-ratio.
Especially in system cameras you need to learn to take that into account and control camera accordingly.
There's basically "Flat Earth Photography" religion, which forgets to mention that big sensors bring their own challenges.
It's just in other areas than with small sensors.
Heck, in fact for same depth of field every format has same amount of light hitting sensor.

So it's always up to conditions of wanted image in which ways strengths of format/camera work and what you have to fight against.
With tiny sensor you don't want to rise ISO, but on the other hand you can use full aperture even for big depth of field image... While unable to get shallow depth of field.
Again with big sensor you have to always lug around bulk/weight of lenses, whose full aperture you can't use when wanting big depth of field... Forcing use of higher ISO to counter it.


For stationary things like buildings/landscapes starting point/first decided setting is f-ratio, because it controls depth of field.
Then ISO is chosen so that you can keep exposure time short enough to avoid blurring of image from handshake/other camera movement...
Unless you have way to mitigate effect of those, like always available image stabilization, which can give leeway to stay at couple steps lower ISO.
(stabilization and big depth of field of smaller sensor can allow keeping ISO low to lower light level)

For moving targets fast enough shutter speed/short enough exposure time to stop motion is the first factor.
With some minimum considerations for depth of field: Stopping motion doesn't help any if most of target is out of focus.
ISO setting is then basically forced by those to get correct exposure...


Lord Alibaski said:
Is the rx100 that good, How much better is it than my old cybershot?

I'm not bothered about it being compact but would the canon take better pictures than the rx100.
Click to expand...
DSC-HX9V is from time when marketing kept cramming too much marketing pixels to smallest sensors.
That causes lots of noise in anything but best conditions.
Even lowly ISO200 test scene shot shows signs of noise and heavier noise reduction:
https://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/HX9V/HX9VhSLI0200.HTM
For example check that colour chart in lower center and those napkins in upper left.
Besides napkins also various bottles/their stickers are good for seeing how much details survives noise and its removal.
With small/low contrast details going to major decline at ISO800
https://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/HX9V/HX9VhSLI0800.HTM

Here's same test scene with RX100 at ISO1600
https://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/sony-rx100-v/RXC5hSLI01600NR2D.HTM
https://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/sony-rx100-v/RXC5hSLI03200NR2D.HTM

Canon 200D at ISO3200/6400
https://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/canon-sl2/SL2hSLI03200NR2D.HTM
https://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/canon-sl2/SL2hSLI06400NR2D.HTM

And for comparison supposedly bad Four Thirds at ISO3200/6400
https://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/olympus-e-m10-iii/EM10M3hSLI03200NR2D.HTM
https://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/olympus-e-m10-iii/EM10M3hSLI06400NR2D.HTM


Here you can compare cameras side by side:
https://www.imaging-resource.com/IMCOMP/COMPS01.HTM
 
Some excellent advice there esat thank you very much.

Had a look at the Sony a6000 today can get it for £230 with the cashback and trade in for our Sony. We are on holiday now so going to make my mind up in the next 2 days.
 
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