Camera advice

holnrew

Looking in the £300-£400 range, and a Nikon D5300 ticks a lot of boxes. I've had a D3200 before, so I'm fairly familiar with the system.

Are there any other cameras I should consider?

ThePrettyDamned

To be honest, not really. The d5300 is good, but doesn't give you tons of manual controls. 

A d7000 would, though. Second hand and stuff. 

What lenses do you have and what upgrades do you want over your current set up? The nikon system is actually pretty consistent with regards to crop sensors, so you'll not notice huge leaps in image quality, rather you'll get a more power autofocus system and better controls. The d7xxx range is the first one that's good for full manual as it has a front dial and you can assign iso to the movie record button. 

If you don't have many lenses or are not tied in, you could consider a fuji or a Sony a6000. 

If you want full frame, you could pick up a d700 if you're lucky but they've gone up in price compared to before Christmas (when I nearly got a d3s in decent nick for £650, now more like £1000!). D600 can be cheaper too, gets a dirty sensor though. 

Budgie

I'm looking at the moment too, with a similar budget and have pretty much decided on a Nikon D7000 or D7100. I was going to buy a D5***, which would be fine for my needs but it has no internal AF motor. I have a Nikon fit Tamron 90mm lens so am sticking with Nikon. The D7000 has a great reputation.

holnrew

I don't have anything at the moment, had to sell it. I'll have look on eBay for a D7000.

I've considered the a6000 too, kind of a little more than I'd want to spend

holnrew

Actually the a6000 might be just the ticket. It can be had for £469 new. 

ThePrettyDamned

holnrew said:

Actually the a6000 might be just the ticket. It can be had for £469 new. 

Depends on what you need. The a6000 is good though, obviously not so much for action and whatnot but if you're looking for something compact that takes great shots, it's an option. 

Used fuji xe-2 could work too. Available under 300 quid, then add either the xc kit zoom or something like the 35mm 1.4.

strumjoughlamps

holnrew said:

I don't have anything at the moment, had to sell it. I'll have look on eBay for a D7000.

I've considered the a6000 too, kind of a little more than I'd want to spend

MPB have some D7ks in budget, then you can pick up older D lenses for much cheapness.

why did you sell up in the first place? if it was a money thing then fair enough(been there).. but if it was a couldn't be bothered taking a DSLR out with you then compact system might be the way to go.

holnrew

Money, I was bad at making my student loan last. 

Can CSCs take as good pictures as a DSLR? The appeal of a DSLR is that they're a "proper" camera. Like their pictures are more authentic or something. 

Also I'm still pretty noobish at the technical stuff

randella

holnrew said:

Money, I was bad at making my student loan last. 

Can CSCs take as good pictures as a DSLR? The appeal of a DSLR is that they're a "proper" camera. Like their pictures are more authentic or something. 

Also I'm still pretty noobish at the technical stuff

I've always liked the weight of an SLR, I remember when I was a kid using the old man's 35mm film effort, a Petri Flex I think it was. I've always had quite unsteady hands (since being little, it's not the booze before anyone starts ) and, whilst it's nice to always have a camera at hand, I can't stand shooting photos on a smartphone as a consequence. 

The compact systems look appealing, but I do like my big chunky Pentax. 

RaymondLin

DSLR has gotten much heavier than film SLR days, for one main point, it's a lot more complicated inside, before it's just a shutter and dark room and empty.  Now there is sensor, pcb, heatsink, bigger battery, wifi, GPS, 2 memory card slots and it all adds up.

Which is amazing I find how something like the Fuji system can be so small.

Drew_TNBD

Just use your phone.

holnrew

What's the Olympus E-M10 II like?

Drew_TNBD

Well its a MFT sensor, so it wont let in as much light as an APS-C or a full frame sensor. It'll also have a crop factor that you'll need to take account of if you don't use native lenses.

According to my research a month or so ago when I was looking to upgrade, the Olympus stuff has pretty reasonable performance when it comes to autofocus, but the ISO noise performance isn't exactly the best in the business.

Are you looking at a camera just for pictures, or for video as well? You've not said why you want one, or what sort of stuff you're going to be shooting. So it's hard to give a recommendation.

I picked up a Sony a6500 recently, with two Nikon lenses and an adapter for a very reasonable price, but I suspect that would be outside of your budget. I think the a6000 is not quite a good.

We could've discussed all of this over some cheeky memes, but you bitched out and unfriended me on Facebook. You cur.

RaymondLin

IMO the best value compact right now is probably the Fuji XE-2 or if you have a bigger budget the X-T1 (£400).  The X-T1 can hang with the best of them, good EVF, wifi photo transfer, tile screen, good auto focus.  It's a very good camera.

ThePrettyDamned

Drew_TNBD said:

Well its a MFT sensor, so it wont let in as much light as an APS-C or a full frame sensor. It'll also have a crop factor that you'll need to take account of if you don't use native lenses.

According to my research a month or so ago when I was looking to upgrade, the Olympus stuff has pretty reasonable performance when it comes to autofocus, but the ISO noise performance isn't exactly the best in the business.

Are you looking at a camera just for pictures, or for video as well? You've not said why you want one, or what sort of stuff you're going to be shooting. So it's hard to give a recommendation.

I picked up a Sony a6500 recently, with two Nikon lenses and an adapter for a very reasonable price, but I suspect that would be outside of your budget. I think the a6000 is not quite a good.

We could've discussed all of this over some cheeky memes, but you bitched out and unfriended me on Facebook. You cur.

holnrew said:

Money, I was bad at making my student loan last. 

Can CSCs take as good pictures as a DSLR? The appeal of a DSLR is that they're a "proper" camera. Like their pictures are more authentic or something. 

Also I'm still pretty noobish at the technical stuff

I think the sensor is the a6500 is very close to identical to the a6000 in performance but you get things like IBIS. 

The olympus is good. To me, micro 4/3 makes for probably the best compact travel camera set up as the lenses are truly tiny (mostly - some of the pro ones are big, you can't beat physics sadly) and they're sharp. They also often have in body stabilisation which is nice. 

Yes, there is more noise bit even in a medium format camera if you take a well exposed photo of the blue sky you'll see noise at base iso. I certainly felt the images from the Panasonic gx80 were acceptable, with proper exposure, to iso 3200 and its not that often you need to go above that. 

The Olympus is a good camera though. Proper small, fast autofocus (in fact, the m4/3 due to the extra depth of field have probably the fastest autofocus on the planet) and good image quality. 

However, I'm going to side with @RaymondLin. The second gen fujis are extremely good cameras with excellent lenses and compromise well with size versus performance. Being apsc size, lenses are bigger than m4/3 but they're very well built. If you want a zoom for general purpose stuff, the xf18-55 is about a stop faster than your average dslr kit lens, made of metal and solidly built. If they were not such good value, I'd lean towards m4/3.

David Hobby has primarily used an xe2, x100s and a leaf medium format camera for his work over the last couple of years - and over that time fuji have improved the firmware so it's more capable than ever. The lenses may not be cheap as chips as some slr lenses can be, but the kit zoom is truly pretty good and the primes are generally excellent. 

holnrew

I will be shooting video eventually for some YouTube stuff so the mic in on the Nikons is appealing, but I could always just sync up an external recording in editing. 

I wish there was a place nearby I could try them but I live miles from anywhere useful. I'll look into the Fuji stuff now.

Low light performance is important to me as I like night photography. 

Drew_TNBD

holnrew said:

I will be shooting video eventually for some YouTube stuff so the mic in on the Nikons is appealing, but I could always just sync up an external recording in editing. 

I wish there was a place nearby I could try them but I live miles from anywhere useful. I'll look into the Fuji stuff now.

Low light performance is important to me as I like night photography. 

Okay, don't worry about the built in mic too much. You just want something that picks up sound for syncing later. If you're going to be doing Youtube stuff, you want a dedicated microphone as the ones built into cameras are absolute pony for anything related to pro audio recording.

A Zoom H6 and an SM57 would be a bog standard setup for Youtube videos.

Sony are the kings of low-light photography right now.

Wazmeister

The Panasonic GH3, GH4 and GH5 are superb for video too mate.

holnrew

Starting to feel some budget creep... Might be worth it because it's not like I'm going to have the money again any time soon and I want to get this right.

The only trouble with Fuji is the lens prices, more than double Nikon for a prime

stickyfiddle

Fuji lenses are a bit pricey, but they're really really good, and the standard kit lens dicks on anything else that's ever been called a kit lens.  I know nothing of video performance though.

holnrew

Where should I be looking for the best deals?