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Hi All,


I m not a professional photographer, but I love to click photos. I have been using my Lumix point and shoot from past 3 years. Now I want to change it and willing to upgrade it. I have been reading lot of posts on dpreview and somwhat confused about, what should be better for me.

I would have love to take DSLR, but only reason which is pushing me back is its bulkyness and weight.

From past few days, I was reading about MILC and if I am understanding correctly, those will be less weighted but still give high quality of images.


My preferences will be --

- I love to travel and really walk for long sometimes. So, DSLR may not be suitable for me to hang it in my neck and roam around whole day. I am not looking for compact, but not as heavy as DSLR's.

- My photography will not be in actions or it doesn't require very fast capturing.

- I would definitely like to have some control on fuctions and can play and experiment with them.

- Much of time, I will be clicking landscpaes, family, gathering, mountains, desearts, wilflife, so it means a bit of everything.

- Occassionally will shoot video also and expect it to be good.

- I would not like to go beyond 700$.

- Not sure, if I plan to choose a photography class sometime later, will it require to have DSLR ?

- Wifi, GPS not required.


I am new to this field and so many reviews?posts confused me. I would really appreciate if experts can suggest me what would be better according to my preferences. Hope I am clear in, what I expect.

Once I get some suggestions for few cameras, I will research more on them. Please suggest.


Thanks

Abhishek

 

Going into a totally different direction, what about a bridge camera?

 

The Panasonic LUMIX FZ72 bridge camera with 60x zoom was just announced: http://www.panasonic.co.uk/html/en_GB/12...index.html

 

What is interesting there is the 20mm (FF equivalent) starting focal length, which is getting into the ultrawide-angle area, so it

would give a good starting range for landscape, while at the tele end it is 1200mm (ff equivalent), which gives you the range

for wild-live that you are looking for. In addition it can to RAW file format. You will never find such a focal range on a larger sensor interchangeable body, and any system with multiple lenses, even mirrorless will start to add up. Of course, you will loose the advantage of the larger sensors, i.e. better control over DOF, and better sensitivity/less noise at higher ISO.

 

With respect to size/weight, ultimately it boils down to sensor size. Any mirror-less that has an APS-C sized sensor (like Samsung) gains it weight/size savings from eliminating the mirror box, and a reduced flange distance, which allows construction of lenses that are smaller and more compact in the wide-angle range.

 

A nice comparison you could do is compare the 

Canon 100D (arguably the smallest/lightest dSLR), with a Canon 10-22 UWA lens, and the 18-55 IS STM kit

with the

EOS-M, and the new EOS-M 11-22 IS STM lens and the EOS-M 18-55 IS STM kit.

This is the savings you can gain from getting rid of the mirror box.  At the long end, for wildlife, a Canon 100-400 L lens will be pretty much the same on both bodies.

 

So, the only way to reduce weight/size at the tele range is to go with a smaller sensor, it's basically digital cropping.

So, the m43 with its 2x crop factor, a smaller lenses will (apparently) give you the same reach as a bigger lens on a bigger sensor, i.e. a 200mm will give you the same field of view as a 400mm on FF (and obviously the 200mm is much smaller).

But this only holds true, as long as both sensor have similar MPs, e.g. 20Mp.  If the full frame camera had the same pixel size as the m43, you simply could crop the FF to get the same effect (e.g. if the FF camera would be 80 Mp, while the m43 would be 20Mp).    The smaller the sensor, the more noise issues. Further, you can't continue to cramp more pixels on a smaller sensor, there are physical limitations.

 

So, all it boils down to is finding a good compromise. maybe m43 is the best compromise for you at present, but maybe something like the bridge camera I mentioned above might suit you too.