Camera Buying Mistakes
Derek Smith • 19 April 2022
NT Belton House
Photo By: Derek Smith
Sony Alpha A7ii + Samyang 24mm lens
Sand Racing
Photo By: Derek Smith
Sony Alpha A7ii + 70-300mm lens
The Glory Days are Over
Photo By: Derek Smith
Olympus OM-D E-M5iii + 12-40mm Pro lens
Snow Bunting
Photo by: Derek Smith
Fuji X-T3 + 70-300mm lens
Choosing the right camera is such a hard job, harder even, I would contend, than choosing a wife, husband, or significant life partner. You’ve got size, weight, and features to consider (that’s the camera!!), as well as price, and lens selection.
For me buying the Sony A7ii full frame camera was a huge mistake, I had owned Sony APS-C cameras for a number of years, starting with the Sony NEX 3 in 2014, upgrading through the Sony A6000, until the Sony A6300, I knew Sony, the tortuous menu system, and the flawed ergonomics, and I had several Sony lenses, including one designed for the full frame Sony cameras, which was the Sony FE 70-300mm OSS f/4.5 – 5.6. So, it made good sense to upgrade to the full frame Sony A7ii, it was being advertised at the time at a “cashback” price of £800, (you have to pay full price up front, then claim the £200 cashback after a month). The camera was weatherproof, had “in body image stabilisation”, and better controls than the Sony A6300, what could go wrong?
I hated the Sony A7ii camera from the very beginning, I had problems with the Sony website, and didn’t receive the promised £200 cashback. The lens mount was so close to the front hand grip that my fingers were tight against some lenses, the front control wheel was placed under the on / off switch and I invariably ended up turning the camera off rather than making any adjustments. I bought the Sony FE 85mm f/1.8 lens to use for portraits, and wasn’t happy with that lens either, the depth of field was so shallow, almost razor thin, at f/1.8 and while YouTube reviewers where almost shouting from the rooftops “get the 85mm, and use it wide open”, I hated using the lens wide open, it was also a big heavy lens at 371g. I had also kept the Sony A6300 as a backup camera, and the trouble with that plan was that I was using full frame lenses with an APS-C sensor camera, and my 35mm full frame lens suddenly became an effective 50mm lens on the A6300, and the 70-300mm full frame lens, became a 105-450mm lens. The mental agility of having to calculate effective focal lengths when changing lenses between cameras became very wearing.
I sold all the Sony cameras, and lenses, getting a good price on MPB, but what to buy next?
Looking at the options, the choice came down to the Fuji X-T3, or the Olympus OM-D E-M5 iii. I had owned an Olympus camera before, and had been very pleased with the handling, and image quality. Olympus had the 5 axis “in body image stabilisation”, and the lenses that I wanted, the 12-40mm f/2.8, and the 40-150mm f/2.8 both constant aperture weatherproof lenses. The Fuji didn’t have the “in body stabilisation”, the lens choice of 3 approximately effective 24-70mm focal length lenses was confusing, and the long focal length zoom lens of 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6, was a hulking great monster of a lens at 1436g. The Olympus was a known camera system, the Fuji was a leap in the dark, so I chose to buy something I knew.
I’ve been extremely pleased with my Olympus camera system, and taken some great photos with the camera, however as my photography skills grew, I desperately wanted a joystick to move the focal point quickly onto the subject for more accuracy, and I needed a camera with two SD card slots, one for RAW, and the other for the JPEG images, to speed up my workflow.
In the intervening two years that I had owned the Olympus, Fuji had introduced the X-T4 camera with “in body image stabilisation”, but more importantly the lens selection had markedly improved, with the new 16-80mm f/4 zoom (24-120mm full frame equivalent), and the 70-300mm f/4-5.6 zoom (105-450mm full frame equivalent). So, selling the Olympus gear, and buying the second hand Fuji X-T3, with dual SD cards, and joystick, the second hand 16-80mm f/4 lens, and a brand new 70-300mm f/4-5.6 lens, became an easier choice to make. It’s been a steep learning curve with the Fuji, but I’m comfortable with the camera now, and getting some great images.
It’s an interesting exercise to compare the weight and size of the cameras, and lenses:
Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 Pro 880g 79mm x 160mm
Sony FE 70-300mm f/4.5 – 5.6 OSS 854g 84mm x 143.5mm
Fuji XF 70-300mm OIS WR f/4.0 – 5.6 580g 75mm x 133mm
Sony Alpha A7ii 599g 127 x 96 x 60 mm
Fuji X-T3 539g 133 x 93 x 59 mm
Olympus OM-D E-M5iii 414g 125 x 85 x 50 mm
Sony Alpha A6300 404g 120 x 67 x 49 mm
The lightest camera setup is the Fuji X-T3 at 1119g with the 70-300mm lens (maximum full frame equivalent focal length of 450mm), the Fuji lens is designed to cover the smaller APS-C sensor, and can be smaller than an equivalent full frame lens. The full frame Sony A7ii camera is the heaviest with the Sony 70-300mm. The heaviest lens is the Olympus 40-150mm, constant f/2.8 aperture throughout the zoom range, constructed of metal, and has a full frame equivalent focal length of 80-300mm.
So was it a mistake to buy Olympus? No, I don’t believe so, Fuji did not have the lenses I needed at the time, and I’ve learned a lot about photography in these last few years. I had a lot of pleasure using the Olympus cameras, and now I’m enjoying the Fuji camera, with the associated lenses.
Louth Photographic Society
Good Morning All Last week at the club we held our Print Of The Year (POTY) competition, it's one of our highlights of the year and judged by Grahame Dunkin, it proved to be an excellent night with some very good prints on show. The results are on our website under competitions but the highlights were Dave Turner being placed first in the Pictorial, landscape and best Mono print in show; Robin Begley, First in the Record section, Keith Rossington first place in Portrait, Harry Kerman first in the photo/journalism (including Street) and myself taking first place in the Nature as well as overall Print of the Year. My photograph of a Hairy Shield bug was taken at Chambers wood on a camera club outing. This week, Wednesday 19th February, we are sorting out Prints for our 70th anniversary exhibition at Louth Museum. Please bring along any local prints you may have and maybe a few further afield for selection. Please also bring along any prints you may have that you think will be ok for the LPA Foster challenge and LPA Battles. They need to be mounted on a 500mm x 400mm mount and a maximum print size of A3. Don't forget to take a photograph of water if you are doing this years project, no real excuses at the moment. Regards Graham
Our highlight competition, Print Of The Year (POTY) competition was held last night, with our judge Grahame Dunkin giving his experienced critique on the excellent images submitted. Congratulations to Dave Turner for his Monochrome image of the year: West Pier Watchtower - Whitby, and Graham Harrison for his Colour image: Hairy Shield Bug.
Good Morning All Last week we went to have a look at the Lancaster sculpture at Norton Disney, it is open for visitors at certain times and although work is still ongoing the main Lancaster is finished and a car park in place. The sculpture is full size weighing 100 tons and honours WW2 RAF crews. Last week at the club Derek Smith ran an editing night, members were asked to bring their laptops in and Derek gave us all an SD card with some images to edit and information regarding the free editing software. A different and interesting night and hopefully we all learnt something and anyone new to photography would have learnt quite a lot. Thank you Derek for running the evening. This week, Wednesday 11th February, we have one of the clubs yearly highlights, the Print Of The Year (POTY) competition to be judged by Grahame Dunkin, all the entries are now in and you should have checked the scoresheets to make sure yours are included. Dave Turner is also asking for prints to enter into the Foster Challenge and LPA Print Battles. He will ask to use prints that are in the print of the year but if you have any prints that you think would be good to enter in the two competitions please bring them and hand them into Dave Turner. The following week we are having an evening collecting everything in for our exhibition at the Louth museum, if you can sort out any prints especially local prints that could go into our exhibition please bring them in on the 18th February. Regards Graham
Last Sunday I was in Stockton on Tees working with Izzy, a favourite model of mine she enjoys cosplay, that’s dressing up as a character from Marvel, Hasbro, or film titles. This photo is of Fey, a woodland sprite, pictured against a woodland backdrop that I bought for the photoshoot. I stayed overnight at a Premier Inn, and in the morning drove to Staithes, as I had always wanted to visit this fishing village, Staithes in the February rain wasn’t much fun, and the tide was out, but I did manage to take a few photos, and I captured one for the “Water” project so I was pleased with that. I was quite surprised how vibrant the colours were in the drizzle, and misty light. Driving back over the North Yorkshire Moors in rain, and fog, didn’t allow for much photography either. Yesterday, walking along the harbour front in Bridlington the high tide, and strong winds had thrown lots of debris onto the promenade, seaweed, nets, tree branches, and cuttlefish kept council workmen busy clearing up the mess. With the right clothing, and a weatherproof camera photography can still be enjoyed even in poor conditions.
A photo editing workshop was held last night, with members bringing in their laptops, and post processing sample images. Members were able to practice processing bracketed, and focus stacked images. Simple editing tasks of cloning unwanted items from images, cropping, and resizing of images were shown. The excellent FastStone photo viewer, and editor was able to accomplish most tasks apart from developing of RAW images, this free software is a “must have” for those with Windows computers. The Affinity photo editor has now been acquired by Canva, and the changes applied by Canva have made the software very confusing to use, and on my 14” Lenovo Thinkpad, it was very difficult to view the master layer to apply adjustments. PhotoScape X is a simplistic photo editor, for all that the software was easy to use, and the RAW processing was seamless. It was an interesting evening, and hopefully members will have attained some new skills in post processing, some of the images edited are shown here.
Good morning All I did manage to get to visit Gibraltar Point last week, very few birds to photograph at this time of year but I took a few and a Grey Squirrel. Last week member Dave Mann showed us photographs from his visit to Beamish, it's a great day out and Dave went round most of it and showed us some photographs from the new 1950's town as well as the farm, pit village, town and trains. Thank you Dave, and Harry for helping out with refreshments. This week, Wednesday 4th February, Derek is running an editing night, he has sent us all information on what we could download, if you have a laptop remember to bring it along. Print of the year is fast approaching, if you are entering make sure you send Dave Turner a list of your entries with which subject they are in and bring your prints along this week. Regards Graham
Fed up with watching the rain coming down, I set out yesterday into the rain to Normanby Hall to try and get a photo for the “Water Project”, I have one potentially good image, but I always like to see if I can get something better. My OM Systems OM-1 camera, and 12-40mm Pro lens are weatherproof, but obviously I wasn’t, but really lovely to get out.
Last night Dave Mann gave an excellent talk on his visit to Beamish in May last year. Dave explored much more of the Beamish site than when I visited in April last year, Dave mentioned the difficulties of getting on some of the vintage transport around the site, I experienced the same during my visit. It's a fascinating historic working museum and well recommended for a visit. Many thanks Dave for an entertaining evening.
Good Morning All Last week at the club we had our yearly project night, last year it was one photograph a month with the same focal length, there is a full report on the evening on our blog page, but four members did last year's project with newer member Sam Collet showing photographs at the club for the first time, some excellent photographs taken in Japan. It would be good if a few more members took part this year, just one photograph a month with the subject being water. Attached is my January photograph from last year, it would work for this years project as well. This week, Wednesday 28th January, our catering manager Dave Mann will be having a week off and showing some of his photographs. His presentation will be a mixed bag of photographs. Don't forget to send Dave Turner an email with your titles for the print of the year. Entries will need bringing in on the 4th February. Regards Graham
We held our "Project Night" last night, the theme being "Prime Time", one photo each month taken over the previous 12 months, using the same focal length "prime" lens. Myself, Harry Kerman, Keith Rossington, and Graham Harrison, had each completed the project and were able to show their results as projected images at the meeting. The results of the project were very interesting, seeing how each photographer had approached the theme, and their interpretation of the project. I have posted here one image from each photographer. The evening was rounded off by one of our newer members, Sam Collett, displaying some of his images taken on a visit to Japan, his wildlife photography was stunning in detail, and quality, well done Sam.
