The Internet is a very easy place to access a very large volume of information, and thanks to its user content creation features a place to get access to the opinions of others. Sometimes this is good, other times this is maddening. The whole process of sorting though all of this can be a frustrating and stressful process as you try to sort out the good information from the bad the truth from the falsities and sort out what is important from what isn't.
There are many sources of information on the internet, and the people who produce this information can be categorized into a few groups. There are some notable types that must be understood before you can get any kind of useful information out of them.
The Pros.
These are professionals who use their equipment as a tool for their primary source of income. They have a lot of experience and really to know their stuff. Unfortunately their advice can be largely irrelevant as they have vastly different needs from the average person. They rate flexibility, compatibility with other high end equipment and the ability to produce appealing images over price, fun factor, etc. Perhaps most important is the unavoidable comparisons between the professional gear that they usually shoot with and the camera that you are thinking of buying. Comments from a pro should be prefaced with "I spend all day everyday taking photos with a bazillion dollar camera with a gazillion dollar lens and because of that in comparison this camera ...". In that context the comment of "The focus is a bit slow" seems more like a positive comment than a negative one. Think of formula one car drivers, in every day life a lot of them drive vans or luxury sedans because there is no comparison between their work car and a road sports car. It isn't just a bit slow to them, they can't even put them in the same category to compare them.
Pro photographers don't comment very often, as they are busy making money and they are more concerned about what they are taking photos of, rather than what they are taking photos with. This is probably the best lesson that the pros have to teach.
The Fanboys.
These are people who have fallen head over heals for a particular manufacturer. It is a great feeling to find a company with a similar philosophy about a product as you do. It is easy to become emotionally and financially invested in a particular company and brand. It does make it a little harder to be objective about other products with different ideas about how things should be done. The biggest groups are the canon and nikon fans who bicker continuously about who has the best way of making cameras and capturing images. These people will quite often ease their stress on a bad day by trolling the forums of other fan groups, injecting negative comments about their cameras. As a lot of their comments are based on emotional motivations, they should not be considered as reasonable people and be for the most part ignored. Their brand is not better because camera X has a slightly higher number in some specification. If you agree with the ideals of the brand, buy the product. Don't be swayed by these tiny numbers, they will all have changed before you will think of replacing you camera anyway. My understanding of the brand philosophies is as follows:
Canon: Make appealing images
Nikon: Make accurate images
Pentax: Have dual personality disorder, K7, K5, K1: Serious persons camera
Kx, Mirrorless camera: Stylish persons camera
Olympus: Good photos easily
Sony: Electronics first.
Panasonic: Make electronics good enough for a Leica
Leica: No compromises
The Pixel peepers
Pixel peepers focus on the science of photography. The measure, quantify and analyse in detail every aspect of the images that come out of a camera. They look for the minute but absolute differences in the images in the hope of ranking the image producing capabilities of every camera on earth. Please understand that I think that these people are important in keeping the manufacturers honest. The sample images and specifications that a seller produces are always going to be optimized to show the good points of that camera. These guys get into the tedious work of making sure that the companies products actually reflect their claims.
In a practical sense however, the level of abstraction and detail makes these comparisons largely useless. Don't sit about worrying about the fact that this camera had slightly better low light noise performance (less of a snow effect) at ISO 128000 than that camera. I can remember with film cameras, buying film of anything more than ISO400 was a major investment. The fact is that if you consider all of the elements that contribute to taking a photo, that information becomes less important.
Let us say that Camera A has better high ISO performance than Camera B. However, camera B comes with a lens with a lower F number and has a image stabilisation system in there somewhere. in the same conditions as camera you wouldn't have to raise the ISO to that level to achieve the outcome. Maybe Camera A performed better at ISO 6400, but in the same situation camera B needed only ISO 800 and the photo had even less noise.
Encourage the pixel peepers, but know that they are very scientific and take the information with the understanding that it is very finely splitting hairs.
The Gearheads.
These people have the hobby of buying equipment. They enjoy the researching of new cameras, buying the latest thing, posting an unboxing video on youtube, bathing in the attention of others who are curious about this new thing, then selling it on ebay so as to acquire the newest thing. They are not interested in taking photographs, they are interested in the cameras themselves. If they ever manage to get themselves a 'classic', they will horde that camera like Golum and take photos of it with their newest purchase. This is the only way of explaining the obscene number of photos of Leica cameras on the Internet. These people are not to be trusted, as they do not value the same things that you do.
I did in the end decide on a camera. Mothers advice of 'go with your gut' was a deciding factor.
My base requirements were:
Big sensor: APS-C, I like having flexibility for depth of field and I hate using a flash.
Metal: I like metal. It dints rather than cracks and it feels better. My last camera was metal.
Travel suitable: I take most of my photos while travelling. any features that make it better for travel are a plus.
Good screen and a Viewfinder: I usually use the screen because I can't wink on the left eye easily, and because it is important to be aware of what is going around you while you are taking a photo. However, taking shots in very bright light with a screen is painful.
Useable manual mode: I wan't to be able to all of the settings straight away, no menus no multiple button presses. Film cameras had this direct adjustment, why step backwards?
I steered away from the canon as the models in my price range didn't have enough dials for me. I like adjusting things with dials not buttons. Also not metal until the pro models. Very comfy and the 600D is a great camera. Also I didn't really like the sound of the shutter, thats a very personal thing though.
I steered way from nikon because they seemed a little uncomfortable for my hands. But lots of metal in the midrange and very solid feeling, and the manual control system is very logical . However I couldn't easily manipulate the horizontal dial on the front of the D7000. The screen is really there for post capture review, which is cool if you like using the viewfinder (which is great by the way) but not for me.
I steered away from pentax because the sellers were never at their store. I won't spend up big on something if you aren't there to support it. Shame really.
I steered away from Olympus and Panasonic because they just didn't seem to have anything with the right combination of features for me.
I decided on the sony nex-7. I don't see the point of a digital camera using so much analogue technology in the form of prism mirrors and mechanics for shifting those mirrors around. It makes sense to me that putting something between the light source is never going to help. So a smaller camera body with less moving parts and more light getting to the sensor has to be better.
It has everything I want, metal, lots of dials, good viewfinder and the screen is great too. Small, it isn't really pocketable, but it will fit in very large pockets or small bags that look too small for an expensive camera, and the lower weight makes it less likely to cause a neck injury. The tilting makes taking photo a little less obvious which is good for street scenes and not looking like a target for thieves.
I steered away from the kit lens on the advice of the honorable Tsuji, who once proclaimed that once you put a non-kit lens on a camera, you will never go back and the kit lens will just take up space and collect dust in a drawer somewhere. I went with the more flexible 18-200mm OSS Sony lens, because of the recommendation of my amazing wife who suggested (in kind and well weighted words) that I just stop faffing about and buy a lens so you can take some photos.
Love the camera so far, The controls are great. Even with frozen fingers it operated very easily. It takes photos that are comparable to better DSLRs but without scaring people off by being so obvious. It is obvious that sony really did listen to their consumer's comments about the NEX 3 and NEX 5 cameras when designing this camera. It is a bit bigger and easier to hold, it does have a built in flash and view finder, the tri-navi controls does make the menus less of an issue it does feel serious and it is very flexible. I can change from normal to black and white or sepia without going into a menu. I can adjust the Aperture, Exposure and ISO with dials while adjusting the zoom and focus by turning the control rings on the lens. That really is direct manual control. Alternatively, it will pretend to be a point and shoot if I couldn't be bothered. If I want to take a photo I press the button and it is done instantly (or close enough). If I want to take another photo I press the button again and it takes another photo, straight away. I can take 4 or 5 photos in a row, with the camera set to RAW+fine jpeg in the standard mode, without changing to semi-auto rapid fire kill mode. This is so important because if you snap a photo just before the best time by accident you can press the button again and get that photo without stuffing about.
In short new camera, very happy.
Some things are less than perfect, like:
Very expensive. No two ways about it.
The battery charger which is twice the size that it needs to be because they made one general unit and the japanese and US version has the points integrated into the box. Why would I buy a compact camera and want a such a huge charger.
It is physically possible to but the battery in around the wrong way. It won't stay in there and you will know something is wrong but to a tired mind in the dark of a morning it is a bit confusing.
The sensor for the viewfinder is too sensitive. There is a sensor that detects if your face is near the camera and it will switch to the viewfinder and turn off the screen. Unfortunately it is so sensitive that if I put the camera too close to my body with the screen flipped down it triggers the mode switch and i suddenly can't see. I hope that sony make this adjustable in a firmware update.
I too have accidentally bumped the movie record button a few times.
The menus are poorly organized. Some menus have too many things in them, others have very few. I don't have to dive into the menus often because of the dials and buttons but it is still a hassel to have to scroll for so long to find things. A customizable quick menu for things like, format card etc would be nice.
The bundled software for raw file conversion is a dog. It is completely useless. Any adjustment takes literally 30 seconds to update the preview and everything kind of stalls while you wait. Not at all useable and makes the conversion of raw files painful. Thankfully photoshops raw conversion plugin now supports the nex-7 so I can use that instead.
A side note about the high pixel density.
The sensor in the camera has a 24.3 Megapixel array.There are concerns that having so many pixels makes each of the individual pixels minute. This is a problem because each individual pixel has a smaller portion of light falling on it. this makes each pixel less efficient as it has to work harder to put a value on a smaller sample of the light.
In real life there is no problems with the low light performance, never mind what the pixel peepers and gear heads will tell you. Yes 24 Megapixels is a lot to put in a APS-C chip, maybe more than is optimal. But it works a treat. I took photos at night at 200mm in the cold (hand shake) and seem fine to me. I have a lot of resolution to play with and it is possible to produce good photos at the same size as a lower density chip. That whole argument about the ability to reduce noise though downsampling (that making an image smaller doesn't reduce the amount of noise (white specks) in the image, it just makes the specs smaller) just reminds me of an old joke about an engineer and a mathematician. When they were both posed the question " A boy and a girl are at opposite ends of a hall, each minute they move half previous the distance between them. When will they meet? " The Mathematician answers, "never, of course" To which the engineer replies, "Perhaps, but in about 5 minutes they will be close enough for all practical purposes. Downsampling the images makes the noise small enough that it isn't noticeable, unless you are looking for it, which you won't be if the content of the photo is appealing enough.
The whole experience of choosing a camera makes me think about musical instruments and guitars. You can buy the guitar that BB King uses. You could even buy the Lucille, from BB himself and take the cable and the amplifier and plug it into the wall at BB's house. When you play the guitar, it won't make the same music, and it won't sound like it did when BB played it because the magic isn't in the instrument, its in the person.
Great photographers take great photos, a great camera is one you love and want to take photos with.
This camera made me want to go out in -7 degree Celsius and take a few snaps.
Local old school bakery
It is cold
Cheongye Cheon in the old down town area.
Admiral Yi
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