Photograph and Camera talk

[Fadez]

Okay friends. The time has finally come to replace my Nikon D40x. It’s been with me for well over a decade. At this point my iPhone 15 Pro Max can take better photos and is easier to carry. I’m looking to invest in a mirror less camera and decent lenses. I’d really like your help in deciding on something I can use for years to come. So thank you in advance to anyone who chimes in!
First up - budget. Ideally I’d like to stay under $3k total for body lenses. Looking to finance through a major chain like Best Buy, Walmart, etc. looking at some holiday deals.
Uses - Landscape / Nature photography and Street / Fashion Portraits
Body - probably not going to get away with full frame, but is it really necessary for my purposes?
Lenses - I’d like to get one nice prime lens either 35 or 50 mm. And one that can zoom in a little bit 24-70?
Research so far - looks like Sony A7 III and Canon EOS R7 are some notable choices from some online searching.

What I’d like some help deciding is what would be the best body and lenses to choose from within this budget. Is one brand better than another for future lens purchases? I’ve used mainly an 18-55mm lens on a crop sensor body for the past 10+ years and have been quite happy with results. I’d like to have better auto focus along with bokeh with my photography. And for landscape, Larger photos with higher resolution.

Again. Thanks a million for reading this and offering any advice. I’m going to sell a lot of IH Gear and some guitars to get this! Just want some inspiration to get my sales threads stated

[indigostiff]

[Jett129]

@Fadez I would recommend scouring the used departments at B&H and Adorama. You might be able to get a full frame body that’s within your budget. Sorry that I can’t offer you anything more specific. I would start with a camera store over Best Buy.

[Jett129]

@Fadez After reading your post again,if you’re not locked into mirrorless,the Nikon D850 would check a lot of boxes for you,or even a Canon 5D Mark4. They’re both heavily discounted these days.

[weftyarn]

@Fadez Mate! Great to hear you’ll dive deeper into the photography game. Already looking forward to some posts here.

Obviously I’m a heavily biased Fuji user, but here’s my two cents:

1. 3k€ is a very decent budget. Depending on what system and lenses you want you can maybe even keep some of your IH clothes haha

2. do you need full frame? Not unless you want to pixel peep or hang your printouts on Times Square. Going APSC will save you a lot of money, a lot of weight and a lot of hard drive space

3. Some Fuji suggestions:

• Fuji XT4 (1.5k) with 16-55 f2.8 (1.1k) & 35mm 2.0 (0.4k) or 50mm 2.0 (0.4k) = 3.0k. The pre Christmas deals will only help here. Perfect setup if you want to have a phenomenal zoom together with a lightweight waterproof portraiture prime.

• Fuji XT4 with 18-55 kit (2k) and 33 1.4 (1k) = 3k. Decent zoom lens paired with great and flexible portraiture lens that can be used for low light street too.

• Go for XT3 if you want to get both 16-55 and a fast prime

• Go for 18-55 and f2 prime if you want to save money

4. generally I would suggest to go “glass over body”. Nowadays basically all bodies offer great image quality and auto focus etc. that’s why I suggested to go XT4 rather than XT5. Same with other brands…
   A bad lens on a great body never works… A great lens can get much out of an older body!

5. I know that Fuji and Sony both offer an incredible variety of lenses and bodies and I would consider these to be the most future proof. You will not regret either one of them

6. there’s probably even more options (Nikon, Panasonic,…) but I don’t know enough about them so I won’t give any recommendations here

Hope this helps

[Fadez]

Thank you @Jett129 and @weftyarn ! Really appreciate those responses.
I’m looking into calling into B&H to look at the used department and get some recommendations

I appreciate the full sets @weftyarn too. Maybe getting all of them used can get all upgraded kit together.

I’ll do some calling and researching and get back to you all. This is very exciting!

[Jett129]

Really great post @weftyarn Getting a Full Frame camera was a game changer for me as all my photography, by design, allows for a lot of cropping,especially any of the surfing photography I’ve done. Even landscapes, sometimes, to get the right perspective and to hone into what’s really interesting, I’ll need to crop an image,and once again the full frame feature helps to that end.

[weftyarn]

You’re welcome @Fadez

And @Jett129 is absolutely right: If you want crop flexibility going FF makes sense. Or go for a high res APSC like the XT5

It really comes down to what your personal preference is

Btw I bought all of my gear used and never regretted it!
There’s oftentimes “good as new” gear at killer prices if you do the research and make sure to find a seller you can trust.

My setup:
XT4 incl. 3 original Batteries and 2x 128 SanDisk Extreme PRO UHS-II (1.350€)
Fuji 23mm 1.4 (400€)
Fuji 35mm 1.4 (400€)
Fuji 56mm 1.2 (550€)
Fuji 90mm 2.0 (700€)

[dinobarnesberlin]

@weftyarn really nice set up you've got there. Im looking hard at Fuji after shooting Nikon for years.
Ill be going to NY for Christmas/New Years and will see what B&H have.
I keep looking at the FS20 --I just really want to check out the fuji recipes to be honest.

[Jett129]

Surfing pic that I liked better in B&W.

[pechelman]

@pechelman said in Photograph and Camera talk:

For folks who've been to Japan or similar places, will I regret bringing a monochrom camera as my only camera?

I'll have a cell phone too take quick snaps and have done other big trips with only this camera. Bringing both I guess is an option but really wanting to streamline and also considering just bringing a 50mm.

It's been almost a month since we got back from Japan and a couple weeks ago I got through all of my photos but neglected to follow up here. The color camera stayed home and I brought the mono instead. Overall, I think I might have preferred bringing the color camera to help with how contrasty most scenes I ended up shooting were, but I'm still happy with what came home on the sd-card. And I had fun and didnt care about "missing shots" and liberally used our cell phones to capture things in color or for more "casual" shooting. Here's a semi-random low-rez sampling from the ~150 photos I deemed worthy to share with friends/family from the ~2k taken. Hopefully not too much of a spam/overlad.

[ARNC]

@pechelman thanks for sharing these - looks like you had a fun trip. I particularly like the first bamboo forest shot.

[weftyarn]

Amazing pictures @pechelman

I also absolutely love the bamboo shots!

[Jett129]

@pechelman These are all really,really great. Hard to pick a favorite, but the shot in the bar,ad the one of the bicycle,and of course the bamboo forest are stand outs for me.

[pechelman]

@arnc, @weftyarn, and @Jett129 , thanks! It was an amazing trip. We're ready to go back. That first bamboo forest was up the road from Arashiyama where we had the whole place to ourselves. It's hardly a secret, but hit me up if anyone ever wants to know where. I thought sharing 2 bamboo forests was too much, but really thought the contrast of people was worth it. Also if you're interested, I'd be happy to share the link to the whole album over chat.

[Jett129]

Cool Wipeout shot.

[weftyarn]

Surreal snow scenes in Munich

[Jett129]

@weftyarn Loved scrolling down on the last shot and seeing the woman on the right. I love that moment in your photography when i get,pleasantly, surprised like that. Happens a lot.

[weftyarn]

Much appreciated as always, @Jett129
Here’s some pictures of Saturdays photo walk with Pipo. I hope y’all forgive me the lack of color lately

[Jett129]

@weftyarn Never apologize,at least not to me,for B&W.