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Comment by albatross13 | Hacker News Reader

I shoot wildlife using a combo of DSLR and Mirrorless and I have to say, I almost always reach for my R5 (mirrorless) over my 5d mark4.

One of the things I love most is seeing exposure in real time, it's a nice little quality of life thing you don't think about until you experience it. Over the years I think anyone who takes photography seriously has gotten pretty good at gauging exposure, but to actually see it change in real time when you adjust ISO or Aperture is pretty slick.

But all of that being said, I'll hold onto my DSLRs forever too- as one person pointed out the battery life is far better and when you're out for 10 hours at a time that really matters.

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I bought a Fujifilm X-T4 for my first "big boy" camera last year and the deciding factor in my head was that the best camera is one you want to carry. The 18-55mm kit lens is one of the best + the X-T4 has easy knobs and settings for great snaps out of the box.

I shoot everything JPEG, usually 16:9, immediately download to phone, and basically delete the raw as soon as the edits are done in Snapseed or VN. Photography in the age of social media is highly ephemeral. It's there for a day and then people are onto the next story or snap dopamine hit. I prefer a form of photography that is more like blitz chess, which is to see how quickly you can snap something good and create/post a decent edit.

">I shoot everything JPEG, usually 16:9, immediately download to phone, and basically delete the raw as soon as the edits are done in Snapseed or VN. Photography in the age of social media is highly ephemeral. It's there for a day and then people are onto the next story or snap dopamine hit."

Different take here.

I do show some photos to family / friends and keep web album for that. But mostly I photograph for my own viewing on large 4K screen. Photos from smartphones just do not cut it for me so I stick to mirrorless. The fact that most are happy with smartphone is irrelevant to me. It is my hobby and as long as I am happy the rest does not matter.

Why not RAW?

Fuji's JPEG colors are great, and if you're willing to spend the time to get it right in the camera they are sufficient for personal work. Especially if your personal interests are being out shooting instead of sitting behind a computer editing.

I mostly agree but I find modern software algorithms with "automatic" adjustment on the RAW tend to do a good job for the stuff I'm happy to have a lower quality JPEG anyway. It allows me to spend less time adjusting settings on my Camera, just load it into lightroom, auto-wb and auto-color tone and the jpg is "ready" to send.

I do almost no editing beyond crops and occasional WB / color correction, but holy crap you're leaving SO MUCH on the table by marrying JPEG on the camera.

Came here to say this. Holy.

Having autofocus focus in the same plane as the photosites is a big win too.

EVF is much more convenient for near vision glasses wearers too.

That said, I think you need an R5/R6 generation body to not be annoyed by mirrorless readout slowness and VF lag.

Yeah, as resolutions climb autofocus not being aligned exactly to the sensor is a bigger and bigger problem.

I have a very high res (mirrored) medium format system and keeping the “focus trim” set correctly to align the AF system with sensor seems impossible, seemingly changing with temperature or other conditions.

> seemingly changing with temperature or other conditions.

Focus also shifts with aperture, it's impossible to have an open loop system that works accurately. Some lenses will front focus wide open, be spot on at f4 and back focus after that, or the opposite. Or be spot on wide open and oof when you stop down.

Also can change with what focus point is used, distance to the subject, focal length (for a zoom). It's a huge source of frustration, and while mirrorless cameras aren't perfect at this, they're so much better than DSLRs. I do still love the shooting experience of an optical viewfinder though.

> EVF is much more convenient for near vision glasses wearers too.

How so? I use diopter adapters in my DSLR eyepieces, since the built-in adjustment doesn't suffice and I hate to shoot through glasses that prevent me seeing all of the viewfinder.

I wouldn't have thought an EVF could natively improve on this, but now you've got me intrigued.

I sold all my DSLRs over the past 18 months and jumped into the deep end. The lens systems are better, the cameras are better. I love having a histogram in the viewfinder. There's very little reason and battery life has never been an issue (it is for video but that's a different story).

When I went back to photography I put quite some thought into the next gear, obviously the old D70 I ahd lying around wasn't going to cut it. And I wanted full frame, so the D200 I borrowed from ky dad was at best a back up.

In the end I ended uo using, and loving, my dad's D700 I switched the D200 for (he's on a D750/200 combo now). I came to the conlusion that, regardless how good Nikon's Z cameras and lebses are, I prefer to spend the money on vacation and trips to places to shoot great pictures. So I am going to stick with the D700, with a mint, used D300 as a back-up. Some additional budget will go into a 400mm and a 20mm lense. And maybe a spare D700 body as long as those are still available with <50k shots taken. Honestly, this camera gave me the fun in ohotography back, I love using it. For my use as an artistic tool it the perfect camera.

As a pro so I would go mirroless, no doubt about that.

I've been doing a lot of research recently on the D700 and from everything I've read and heard is that it's a fantastic camera. It seems that it has all the right ingredients to produce stunning images. Additionally, it seems to be highly regarded for its ergonomics. Lucky you!

Ergonomics are great, picture quality has something special about even in RAW. The body is sturdy as a tank, feels a lot like a F4. Which already means I love it, back as 13 year old I was allowed to use my dad's back-up F4 to learn photography on film, slides and B&W. Another benefit is small files it creates, it makes post processing so much easier.

The one issue I see, so, is cropping. I am not talking about cutting some sides or going to portrait format, but rather cropping out e.g. birds. That's the only time the 12 MP hinder you. In a sense a D700 forces you to shoot better pictures.

Overall, if you can, get one. There are some from places like mpb.com with below 50k shutter count in very good condition for around / less than 400 Euro. You cannot do anything wrong.

Oh, a D700 doesn't do video. No problem for me, but if you want to do video that is a missing feature.

Yep, I’ve had (mirrored) Canon DSLRs and lenses for 20+ years (since the original D30) and just this past week sold the entire system. I hadn’t picked it up since I got the mirrorless R5 a couple of years ago.

Funny, I picked up a 5D4 for a song a few months ago, while everyone sells their stuff off to buy mirrorless. The 5D4 has more features! The only real advantage of mirrorless viewfinders for me is the ability in low light. I have a Q2 and its size/quality/workflow wins most everytime though.

I stocked up on all the film cameras I couldn’t afford as a kid when the sell off happened about ten years ago. I imagine DSLRs will have a burst of retro popularity at some point once people get bored of whatever it is they’re using.

You made a solid choice, the 5D4 is an excellent body- I usually keep it nearby and constantly with a lens on it ready to go when I need it.

Have you tried the eye tracking auto focus on the R5? It's actually pretty phenomenal and can help a lot when photographing wildlife. Funny story though, if you're photographing animals with white butts and black tails (like a bighorn sheep) from behind..it's gonna track the butt as if it were a face. That made me laugh when it happened.

That is quite funny, computers are very thorough.

I knew the 5D4 would be the end of the line, and I ditched my 1DX which was just too heavy, the 4 is better in every way. I had the original 5D and the mk2, and very impressed at how refined the 4 is.

I did try the R5 and I also used the original eye-tracking Canon EOS 5 back in the 90s so I can see things have come a long way :) The deal-breakers on the R5 were:

1) Huge cost 2) Lack of GPS 3) New lenses required

And the extra value of quality and video and speed weren’t enough to compensate. On those points, I also think there’s a bunch of trade-offs.

Firstly, the file sizes. My first digital camera, the Nikon D1X, had file sizes of 5-6 Meg, and my Q2 is coming in at 85 Meg. That’s 17 times as much drive space needed to deal with this, not to mention network bandwidth to move everything around. Do I need this many pixels? Well obviously I want them, but I just sent out a 49 x 30 inch print to a client that was upsized in Topaz and was taken on the 21MP 5D2. Was it stunning? Definitely.

Secondly, the lenses. They are ridiculously good these days, as they need to be to resolve for 60+MP sensors coming up. But they are also getting pricy and heavy. Do I really want to replace an entire bag of primes? I save 100 grams on the camera to lose it all tenfold on the lenses. This was always the biggest cost involved with a system. The R5 is hardly cheap but I’d honestly rather switch to Leica S at this point.

Thirdly, at these pricing levels, we really are in Leica territory and the Q2 absolutely trounces Canon in terms of value and workflow. I’ve been running the Q2 for three years and it’s got 51 real MP to play with, a lens that makes you laugh with its ability, plus speed and control. It’s completely outgunned if we’re talking wildlife photography and long lenses, but on everything else it is camera number 1.

DSLRs aren’t being truly killed by their mirrorless replacements, not yet maybe, but by anyone who can shoehorn smartphone tech into a real camera.

Maybe interchangeable lenses are the things getting in our way?

For low light some electronic viewfinders are actually worse than optical ones. I have a (rather old) Minolta dImage 7i which does binning on the sensor in low light, giving excellent results in darkness, but my Olympus OM-D EM1 does not do so and is just cranking up the ISO so much it is very noisy when it's dark.

It might be noisy, but it definitely delivers a reasonably bright image where an optical viewfinder would be completely dark already. Especially in the high gain modes, you have like a night vision device - try pointing the E-M1 at the stars with the higher of the live view amplification modes. It is great how many stars you can see this way.

I think I never tried enabling live view boost for night time shots. I'll try it out, thanks!

> But all of that being said, I'll hold onto my DSLRs forever too- as one person pointed out the battery life is far better and when you're out for 10 hours at a time that really matters.

Aren't you better off carrying spare batteries than a whole extra camera?

It's easier to have an extra camera on hand, with a 300mm attached, than it is to switch a camera off a 600mm onto a smaller lens. Lots of weird shit happens when shooting wildlife photography, you want multiples on hand.

I picked up a couple used FujiFilm bridge cameras recently. I got them to teach my son photography but now I find myself packing the $50 Fuji over my DSLR. I'm getting some amazing shots. I'd go Mirrorless, but none of the lenses I'd want are under $2000--

What did you get for $50?

I got a bundle of a Fujifilm S9800 and S8200 for $100 on eBay. Nobody else bid.

https://www.dpreview.com/products/fujifilm/compacts/fujifilm...

It's great. It even takes AA batteries so no hassle with some specific pack & charger.

Thanks! I used to work in a camera store back around the turn of the millenium in a period when people would come up and ask for the tradeoffs between digital and film. I didn't like AA cameras at the time because they'd consume lots of them, but you make a good point about their afterlife and of course NI-MH are a lot better now too. I was afraid your recommendation would trigger me to acquire yet another camera, and it looks like it will lol. Kind of crazy how good they are compared to when I was selling them, and how those very good ones are already just about ready for the trash heap.

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