Compact camera recommendations

Do you really need the zoom? I think the 35mm equiv on the X100 series is perfect for most amateur/casual/whatever photography - friends and events and so on, documenting travel. It encourages you to get in close and it's not the end of the world if you find yourself cropping a bit to a 50mm perspective. Everything else about the X100T is top shelf IMO - the EVF is excellent, as is the optical viewfinder, AF is fast, menus are good, the Fuji JPG profiles beat anything anything I can do in RAW with color (B&W is different but the Fuji is good there too).

<3 my x100, no regret at all

These are great posts, thanks everyone. Glad to know the 1" sensors hold up. I basically don't print anything these days but I always say I'm going to pick up the habit again, cause I do love having physical albums to flip through and stuff.

I probably don't really need the zoom. My nostalgia is for a fixed-length, film-type Olympus Stylus - god what a great camera that was - and yeah, can always crop when you have a high quality image. By the same token, I don't really see myself ever buying additional lenses for an intechangeable-lens, or making any use of a hot shoe, so I worry that I'm adding bulk or cost unnecessarily - though yeah, $400 for the DMC-GM5 with kit lens is pretty appealing.

That size comparison site is great... How portable/pocketable do y'all find the X100T in practice? It's bigger and heavier than my current "keep it in my backpack just in case" camera, so it could just take up that role - but something I could actually keep in a pocket would be really nice for social photos and things, I think. Things were simplest as a college freshman when I still was willing to be seen wearing cargo pants. Those days being gone, I'm starting to feel like I'm in denial trying to convince myself I won't ultimately regret buying anything much bigger than the RX100 (III, but maybe II - review/comparisons I've read suggest the difference isn't big enough to justify the price difference). I'm gonna go to the store tomorrow and see how these things feel in my hands though.

Only thing I think I've definitely ruled out though is the Leica D-LUX 109. As far as I've been able to tell, it's just overwhelmingly similar to the DMC-LX100 (which is $400 cheaper), except the Leica usually comes bundled with Lightroom, which I already have. So...no. I was also looking at the Canon G7X for a second but then realized it doesn't have a viewfinder?!?! so I cut that from the list easy. Camera shopping is so complicated! Feel like I could easily get almost to the checkout counter and realize I've totally forgotten to check whether the thing I'm buying can shoot RAW, or whatever.

it doesn't fit in any of my pockets :-(

I totally forgot that the GM5 has a viewfinder! It's so tiny. When Pam was looking at cameras we briefly considered its predecessor (GM1) but it seemed almost too small to navigate. Also, the 20/1.7 prime actually stuck out at the bottom - you needed the extra grip to make it flush. I guess that's still the case with the GM5. I don't think the smaller-form 14/2.5 was available then.

I guess if you have it set up the way you want (aperture priority, f-stop on thumb-wheel, auto-ISO, fast prime), you never have to fiddle with tiny buttons anyway, so it becomes an ideal pocket cam.

But, as you know, you get an interchangeable-lens camera, you WILL end up with more than one lens. It's inevitable ;) Sigma do some affordable primes for micro-4/3rds, at 19/30/60mm.

The X100T is definitely backpackable but not pocketable. It's light but the overall size is similar to a film rangefinder with small lens.

The Ricoh GR II might be a good option - bigger sensor, no viewfinder but you can get aftermarket options I think. I had an older GR when they used smaller sensors and even that one was nice (until it was lost with some luggage).

Hmmm, looking at that one... don't think I can seriously see myself doing anything where you have to clip on a viewfinder though - defeats the pocketability/ready-to-go-ness I fear. Thanks for the tip, though.

I think I have it down to this:

GMC-DM5 ($400, 4/3) - by far the best price/size for seeing how I feel about an interchangeable-lens cam
RX100 II ($500, 1") - for size, weight, and flash when you need it - most portable of these and seemingly best in its class*
LX100 ($700, 4/3) - "halfway" b/w the RX100 and X100T, bigger sensor and more features than the former, plus zoom
X100T ($1100, APS-C) - serious enthusiast mode, big beautiful camera everyone raves about, no consumer-friendly frills like flash or zoom

* - seems like the differences with the RX100 III and IV aren't big enough to justify the price leap - III gains a full stop at max zoom but...

Kind of a wild range of types of cameras and price (and used prices for some of these do change the picture a lot - now seeing X100Ts at $920)... but since I'm trying to compromise around a few ineffable factors maybe that's what I need to do. Gonna head to the store today and at least try 'em out, maybe make a purchase! Thanks again everybody.

X100T has a really great flash! No zoom though.

why not get an x100s or x100? much cheaper.

I have an X10 because the X100 was too expensive at the time. I appreciate it more than I did when I bought it, but the lack of a real viewfinder and bulkiness are down points. I think it's a rung or so below what you're looking at here, though.

haha oops yeah, i had so many inky scribbles on my page that point that I got mixed up (re: X100T and flash).

So! Here's how it went down:

GMC-DM5 ($400, 4/3): Glad I looked at this, but didn't seem like it really made sense; with the lens on, it fits so awkwardly in a jacket pocket that the advantage of the tiny footprint fades away and the disadvantages (thumb/button size ratio, limited controls) loom large.

RX100 II ($500, 1"): Realized only the III actually had the viewfinder - oops. So, looked at the III ($750). Thought the overall feel was pretty good! Size is great obviously. However, I didn't realize how finicky the pop-up viewfinder actually is - you have to pull down a little switch to pop it up, and then grab its front element between thumb and forefinger and pull it towards you 1/8" to 1/4" til it clicks, at which point it actually works. It's possible I could get used to that, but then on top of it - and maybe it was the display model being a little loose or worn out - but I found that even in just taking a few shots around the counter, my glasses would bonk into the viewfinder enough to push it back in and thus turn it off. What a pain! Just couldn't imagine that ever being pleasant or natural, in the "camera as an extension of my hands and eyes" kind of way.

LX100 ($700, 4/3): Just got nowhere with this. The zoom lens makes it quite bulky, but I thought it generally just had surprisingly bad feel, particularly in handling the aperture ring and the other dials and controls. Nothing I could really describe to you now and maybe I would have eventually gotten used to it, but it just didn't seem to naturally "work," if that makes sense.

So that left the X100T, which I loved from the moment I picked it up. The greater size and weight are obvious negatives for my "pocket cam" goals - but even if it remained a "bag cam" it just seemed obvious that I would enjoy shooting with it more than my current bag cam, and get photos I liked better out of the process. While I thought I was being seduced only by the aesthetics, it turns out it was also by the design - the dials and controls are all nearly exactly where I'd put them and I can just see myself, after I have all the custom settings worked out, being able to point-and-shoot with it. However... by the time I got back to the used counter where I'd been checking it out to see how it did with pockets (inside jacket pocket actually a passable fit!), the used one had actually already sold online. At this point, the gentleman behind the counter thought to do a search and found that he had an X100S in the back (which I swear they didn't have when I was searching yesterday) - sold for $600 plus memory card, tax, etc. Considering what I was considering as an uppermost price point when I walked in the door, it feels like a steal - not much more than i paid for the utilitarian and tiny-sensored G15 two years ago.

Savored the manual on the way home, have the battery charging now. I'll be shooting with it on this next trip down south, so will report back on results. Thanks to everyone on this thread for really thoughtful responses - feeling much better about this purchase than I would have otherwise.

Hurrah! Welcome to the Fujifamily. One of us, etc

good deal :-)

an annoyance: they included the strap, but no triangular clips or the clip-on device! so it goes with used. will just have to grab them at the first camera shop i encounter on my trip i guess.

With the money you saved buying the S instead of the T, you can buy the tele and wide lenses

yikes, no thanks! desperately avoiding carrying around any extra items, and AFAICT the teleconverter brings the lens up from a 35mm equivalent to a ... 50mm equivalent, which isn't really all that exciting right? like would the results be meaningfully different (in most situations) from just cropping the regular image? i say this as someone who lived for a long long time on my first film SLRs with only a 50mm normal lens (and was probably a better photographer for it) (though i did find it a bit cramped), while having a ball with the original olympus stylus's 35mm lens...

My all-time strap recommendation: http://www.streetstrap.com/
Amazon has them - sort of pricey but worth it.

I know Schwantz has posted on another thread about X100T battery life. Is there a way to configure it (like the X-T1/T10, I believe) so that the LCD is always off (except for image review) and the EVF only powers up when your eye is up to it? That's always going to be the problem with mirrorless - the batteries are physically smaller and there's continuous drain if you're using the LCD to compose.

I Instagrammed a snap of the menu display on my 6D a few months back - I'd done a couple of events back to back on a single charge and the shutter count was up to 1800+, with battery level finally down into single figures. DSLRs aren't going anywhere as long as they have that advantage.

Does the View Mode button not control that? On the X100S it cycles you between LCD, LCD-until-you-hold-it-up-to-your-eye, and EVF-only, though I keep bumping it accidentally and I need to look in the manual and see if there's a simple way of locking that setting...

Yeah, it does have eye sensor mode. In any case, the battery life is still not great. OTOH, you can get batteries on Amazon for like $10, and they are pretty small. Easy to carry an extra. Or, you can use one of those portable phone chargers to charge the camera via USB.

I get about 300-330 shots (with the 35/1.4 attached; maybe more with the pancake and kit zoom) with the original battery; my two third-party batteries top out at about 230 and never give any indication that they're about to die (straight from three bars to flashing red).

Don't think it's possible to charge the battery in camera (on my model at least), but, yeah, there are universal Li-Ion / NiMH chargers that will run off USB / 12V car socket / etc.

another vote for x100t if you don't need to zoom. It fits in a jacket pocket (ymmv) as far as I'm concerned but it's also small and light so you don't mind carrying it at chest level all day. I'm a heavy Canon MK3 user so I don't mind carrying SOMETHING but I don't always want to carry the big mama

I also think the 100-series will have a long practical life, for lack of a better word. Metal body; solid construction; wears well. I'm an every-other-generation buyer so I worry about things like a panasonic whatsit that is made of blue plastic and has a sliding shield door for the lens and so on

Still getting my bearings with the X100S. I think I like a lot of things about it, but one thing has been really frustrating - the playback image (like, the "just taken" photo) in the electronic viewfinder always has just crazily hideous and incorrect white balance and exposure. Like, if you look at the same image on the back screen it's a lovely frame, in the EVF it looks blown-out, washed-out, and often very different in color temperature. Kinda defeats the whole purpose! If I'm trying to shoot a candid or something, I don't really want to be pulling the camera away from my face, checking the screen, bringing it back up... plus I don't want to have to go through so many extra exposures to save just the good ones later. Is this normal for this camera, or do I have a glitchy one or something?

Perhaps related - the brightness of the digital display elements in the EVF will often kind of 'flicker' or cycle between brightnesses if I'm doing something like wheeling through different ISO settings. Very distracting...

Finally, sometimes for no reason I can perceive, I only have the choice of a few ISOs but maybe that's me getting into some mode I don't mean to be in or something...

The EVF will flicker in certain circumstances, like the refresh rate is too low - I encounter it with very long shutter times (which would be inappropriate for using the viewfinder anyway, most likely).

No idea on the white balance issue and ISOs, I haven't encountered that with the 100/S/T so I'd bet on settings issues (unless the former is a problem, which might be the case).

Confirmed - it was the EVF brightness setting! I just couldn't figure it out because when you go to that setting, if you happen to be looking at the LCD, it will ONLY show the LCD brightness control and nothing you do seems to let you fuck with the EVF. Kind of a "duh" thing but it threw me. Anyway, the EVF was set to +5 by the previous owner and things now are muuuuuuuch more WYSIWYG. Whew! With that and a new, non-defective battery, I'm ready to start keeping this in the backpack and see how I do!

Also glad to figure out where the Fuji film settings are buried in Lightroom - way down in "Camera Calibration." Without turning them back on, you default to your basic RAW image, which makes sense but is still a little annoying. Frankly I'm not sure I buy most of them - Velvia is SO over-the-top saturated and contrasty (shadow detail especially just gets fucked) that it looks like a kid playing around with Saturation for the first time. I bet if I did more B&W stuff I'd appreciate the different monochrome modes though, for portraits and stuff.

(Provia seems okay though, if I want something a little more saturated and heavy than the Adobe defaults, and Camera Pro Neg Std. if I want something a little deader and flatter.)

I need a couple of cameras to be used in a production environment by non-photographers who will want to be able to just point and shoot, often in low-light situations, and extremely quickly get the photos onto their computers. Prior to now they've been using 7Ds, often breaking the pins in the CF slot, being clumsy with the flash, etc. The cameras are FAR too complicated for them. I need something rugged and no-think that can still take a good picture.

I mean they don't really get simpler than the 7D. You can go 100% the other way and just get a bunch of rebels and throw them away when they break

With Lightroom, I find that I have to dial back some of the contrast to use the Fuji profiles.

Tracer: yeah, I'm not sure... if they're breaking CF pins and damaging the pop-up flash, then maybe something with an integral (flush?) flash and SD cards? I know they were just two random examples of clumsiness and not the main issue, but maybe a good solid compact like the Canon G7X or even the Fuji X100 series we've been discussing? You can just use a DSLR like a point-and-shoot, just like you can use ProTools like a tape recorder, but I know it's probably a bit daunting if you're not handy with it. There's a "green box" mode on the 7D, right?

Dr C/Milo: I've never used the Fuji profiles in Lr, I should have a go. Lots of people have been complaining about Lr Raw conversion for the X-Trans sensor (there are dozens of side-by-side screengrabs out there on forums showing how Such and Such Standalone Convertor from Small Company totally trounces Adobe at extracting detail from the X-series cameras) but I found a blog post from someone who came up with some fairly counterintuitive sharpness settings for Fuji, and they do the trick as far as I can tell (or care). So I have them as presets. I will have a look later.

Out on a limb here, since I know nothing about your profession/situation/etc., but would there be any possibility of, or percentage in, putting these staffers through some really basic photo courses? Dunno if it'd help with them being cavalier/clumsy with equipment, but I have to figure even a few tutorials or 1-2 classes at the local store (or wherever?) would lead to people being more comfortable with something like a 7D, or even get better pictures out of it! Just an idea.

Wonder how much, these days, even REALLY basic camera-handling techniques might be fading out. If you really only ever shoot with an iPhone than even the kind of grip amateurs would have learned to use with an Instamatic or latter-day point-and-shoots, or the small gentlenesses of unloading film, memory cards, or batteries, might be on their way out.... though we're probably a long way from that being a ubiquitous condition.

^ yeah basically. I have no clue how you bend a CF pin tbh. One of the things I remember my dad harping on about when I was little is that "you shouldn't have to force _____ in order for it to work." in these modern times you should assume that if a CF card isn't going into the slot it's user error and not the problem of the machine eg THINK, CHILD.

...speaking of which how old are these people who keep breaking shit bc really...

They are like 25 years old and yes, even the really basic camera handling techniques are like some ancient art to them.

They break the pins by shoving the card in the wrong way. Then they shove it in the RIGHT way, which damages the card itself. Then that doesn't work, and they leave the card lying on a desk, which someone else then tries to use in another camera, and the broken card then breaks the pins in THAT camera.

We have provided classes but only the motivated ones take the classes and/or pay attention, and they're not the ones we need to worry about anyway.

I have had a vote for the Fuji X10/20/40 series, so will go down to a shop and see how they feel.

Memory cards are going to be an issue with every camera - I guess an SD card slot is less breakable, but they'll be snapping the cards themselves left and right.

this is so weird to me tbh - how many cameras exactly have they broken? feel like just learning the "don't force things" rule and maybe like, idk, marking the cards and cameras up with brightly-colored electrical tape or paint or something to give you an "orange lines up with orange" type system might be cheaper than buying a new set of cameras.

or have another, separate person in charge of all memory card loading/unloading

lol

marking the cards and cameras up with brightly-colored electrical tape or paint or something to give you an "orange lines up with orange" type system might be cheaper than buying a new set of cameras.

Oh believe me we've done all this sort of thing. Colour-coded stickers, big clear arrows drawn with Sharpie, the works. That's why we're not letting these particular folks borrow the 7Ds anymore. They will be buying their own cameras, probably 2 of them, and I want to give them a recommendation about what to get.

what... class is this?

Maybe one of these?

http://m.thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-mirrorless-camera-under-1000/

I love my X100t, but there are many cameras for much less that are pretty close in image quality, and probably easier to use.

It's a radio station, Jimmy :/

Fujifilm X-A2 looks pretty nice. Do you need the ability to connect different lenses (like big zoom lenses for example)?

aaaaah I see...

If they need to use your existing EF lenses, a cheap Rebel makes the most sense. Familiar handling too, if they've been using the 7D. Dead-simple EOS M also an option, given how low their sale prices have gone in the past.

Awesome, thanks! EOS M is WAYYYY less expensive and looks super simps..

X-Pro2 announced from Fuji - more megapixels, better faster stronger etc..

X200 coming soon, then?

So over the holidays i traveled to visit family and didn't even bother to bring my big camera. I did miss it a few times but I just dont ever want to travel with it again so I resolved to slim down. I found an excellent original X100 on eBay (for cheap) which is arriving soon and will report back on whether it can at least partially fill the Canon's shoes.

So far, I think I'm really digging the X100S. Haven't Flickred anything from it yet but just from some preliminary poking in Lightroom I'm really impressed. The biggest thing is just how well that sensor performs - I can shoot at ISO 2000 and the images look good. I can shoot at 4000 and if I got a good exposure the images look good. If I have to boost overall brightness or shadows, I do start seeing some noise, but compared to where I would start on my previous camera, I mean, ISO 4000 looks like ISO 400 or something.

I do wish it were a little quicker on the draw, or maybe I just don't have my technique down yet. Need to read the manual through again and see what other kinds of shortcut/customization options I have. There's this very slight delay between pressing the topside function button and the associated menu popping up which is maybe part of my issue. Would love an actual physical dial for ISO just for maximum speed of being able to set that, but obviously there are strong reasons not to go that route. Overall though I'm feeling good about this camera and these images.

it's not you it's slow on the draw