Harry Bizzle wrote:I told him for a start, forget about Pentax. It's not worth the hassle or lack of choice if you want to play around with different lenses in the future (and why wouldn't you?). Knoyleo shoots Sony though, so he's probably got a different take on the matter.
Indeed I do have a different take on this. The Pentax Kr still uses the old Pentax K mount, so you actually have a
vast library of old lenses to choose from. If you're looking at their new lens selection, then yeah, it's very limited, and you have less third party manufacturers producing Pentax mount lenses for it too, the same as with Sony. That being said, the selection of Sony glass that's available covers all my bases, with enough lenses available to keep me interested in the future. It's nice that Canon have 70 different lenses in production right now, but I'm never going to need all of them, and there's plenty of great old Minolta lenses doing the rounds on the second hand market for me to find anything that isn't part of Sony's "current" line up. Plus, the colour reproduction on the old Minoltas is just wonderful.
I'm not going to argue that Canon/Nikon don't offer great flexibility, they do, (Canon more so, with their straightforward EF/EF-S mounting, unlike Nikon's somewhat complex world of lens/body compatibility,) but there are other ways of achieving it. In terms of ease of accessibility, however, they do trump the competition. There were other reasons I went Sony, however. At the time, the a500 handled live view much better than the Canikon equivalents, and came with built in image stabilisation, and the ergonomics just felt better in my hands. However, I know Sony are pushing those awful SLTs now, which have no optical viewfinder, and the good old DSLRs they did are seemingly discontinued. Which leads nicely on to Bizzle's first point...
DSLRs are superior to their non reflex counterparts. Although the new EVIL (Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens) cameras look to offer all the performance of a DSLR, like the large sensor, full lens selection, high speed shooting, manual control, etc. all in a tiny portable body, they're not the dreamy ultra-gadget they appear. First things first, they are electronic viewfinder only, some only coming with an LCD screen on the back. Anyone who's used a compact in bright daylight can tell you how bad that is, and you don't want to fork over all that money for a camera that offers you full exposure control, only to be unable to see what you're controlling. Others have built in viewfinders with eyepieces, that work like optical finders, but you're watching a screen instead. Again, this comes with the same issues that are inherent in compacts. What you are seeing in the finder is not live. There will be lag, and if you're trying to capture something instantly, what you're looking at will be trailing behind, you'll miss it. Also, there is viewfinder blackout. This happens in both optical finders as well as electronic ones, as the mirror flips up to expose the sensor, or the live view is switched off as the sensor is used to capture an exposure. It tends to be a longer delay on an EVF, as it is switched off before the shutter actuation, and is then not instantly switched back on. In a DSLR, you can see again the moment the mirror locks back down.
The second major drawback to EVILS concerns lenses. Theoretically, they should offer the exact same experience as a DSLR in this regard, however, there are several drawbacks. First, in order to save space, most manufacturers seem to have adopted a different mounting for their mirrorless cameras than their bigger counterparts. Sony introduced a new E mount, rather than use thier existing A mount for example. The result of this means that most EVILs have a very small selection of "native" lenses, many of which will be very basic "all round" type lenses. Most will have a short focal length prime, commonly called a pancake because of their flat shape, and a couple of small range zooms. In order to use a wider range of more interesting lenses, you'll end up using adapters, which work quite well on mirrorless cameras, because they have a very small "flange-back" distance (the distance between the rear of the mount and the film/sensor) which allows many different lenses to be adapted to them. However, depending on the adapter/lens type used, you may well lose features, like autofocus, automatic aperture control, etc.
Another lens related issue these smaller bodied cameras have is, if you try to use anything other than the super slim pancake lenses they're designed for, they begin to feel out of balance. If you want to use anything even as long as a short-tele focal length, it begins to make the camera the lens is attached to feel impractical and toylike. It very quickly reaches a point where you're mounting the camera to the lens, rather than the other way around, especially if you do end up adapting to use more lenses.
Finally, you are sacrificing ergonomics and build quality for that compact size. No grip on most of these cameras makes holding them for a prolonged period of time quite uncomfortable, and as a space saving exercise, many functions that could typically be mapped straight to buttons on the body of a full sized DSLR, get buried deep in menus, some of which must be navigated by touch screens or scroll wheels. These are also pretty delicate bits of kit. Size and weight minimisation are the priority, and that means lighter materials, and less of them, giving you a much more delicate camera to look after. Not that I'd advocate being careless with any camera, but even the most basic of entry level DSLRs can be incredibly durable, as evidenced below:
Anyway, this has gone on much longer than I intended it to.
tl;dr Get a DSLR, not a mirrorless, and stick with Canon/Nikon if you don't fancy trawling for second hand lenses or having to search harder for your accessories.