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New camera

JohnRJohnR
edited January 2014 in Other Pastimes

I went on a while go about switching from SLRs to a mirrorless camera system. Well, the Fuji X-M1 seems to be proving remarkable unpopular (in comparison to the X-E1/2 and X-Pro), meaning that I just bought a second-hand but unused one for $600 on ebay, with the 16-50mm kit lens, with no-one bidding against me. I'm planning to get an adapter for Nikon lenses and see where it goes.

Comments

  • MALfunctionMALfunction

    Could up being a great buy .
    Cheers

  • JohnRJohnR

    He posted it today! Next I need one of these:

    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008BBI6RY/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=AG1FKBNAQKSKJ

    I've decided to bite the bullet and sell all of my film gear. In case anyone wants a good film scanner :D

  • GeeEmmGeeEmm

    What's the dif between DSLR & mirrorless?

  • JohnRJohnR
    edited January 2014

    Mostly, the mirror :D DSLR has a mirror box, with the mirror that flips up when taking the picture. Hence the momentary "blackout". The (huge) advantage of this venerable arrangement is that when the mirror is down, what you see in the viewfinder is what is coming through the lens. Focus, framing, DoF, it's all optical.

    With a mirrorless camera, the light from the lens goes straight onto the sensor with no mirror box needed - hence the distance from the lens to the sensor is smaller. So the camera is smaller for the same size sensor. Compacts have always been this way but now almost everybody is making a camera with a large (ish) sensor and interchangeable lens system:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirrorless_interchangeable-lens_camera#Systems_comparison

    However, since there's no optics, how do you see the image before you take it? One is to use the rear LCD. Another is an electronic viewfinder (EVF). The Fuji X-e1 which I almost bought a while back has an EVF. Despite reports of how good it is, I hated it and couldn't see myself using it. I tried an OMD EM5 and that was worse. So, just the LCD then. I'm thinking I'll adopt the large format method and in bright light put a black T-shirt over my head :-P

    There are some other differences. With a DSLR there's a separate AF sensor, which for reasons I don't understand uses a different focus detection mechanism that is faster. However the mirrorless cameras seem to have mostly caught up. Zoom, aperture selection and focus can (usually) be done manually, which I do prefer, whereas the mirrorless cameras are "fly by wire" in some or all of these.

    The interesting thing about the mirrorless cameras is that because the lens-sensor distance is smaller, you can get adapters for older lenses. Typically you have to be much more "manual" with these. I want to try my Nikon 300mm with the little X-M1 stuck on the back of it.

  • JohnRJohnR

    I suppose I should mention that there are some mirrorless cameras with an optical viewfinder, such as the Fuji X100/s. This has a fixed (non interchangeable) lens and a separate optical path for the viewfinder.

  • GeeEmmGeeEmm

    Thanks John. Very informative. =D>

  • JohnRJohnR

    It's here!

    Waiting for it to charge... :-W

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