BTW, if you want to save a bit of cash, just don't buy new. B&H for example, has a very nice 10mp Nikon two lens kit right now for $400 with a used body and $479 you can get it with a Nikon refurbished body instead. Coverage in 35mm terms is 27-300mm, and you'd have enough money left over to buy another 3 or so HS20s.
I am not sure I would feel comfortable getting that sent to NZ, and anyway, wouldn't that camera have limited cropping ability for those bird shots you keep telling me about?
I wasn't suggesting that you buy from B&H, just letting you know what's available here, what's available in most other countries and what's probably available in you home market. It's up to you to find what's in your own back yard, not me.
Two bodies with two lenses and not a single body with two lenses? I don't think that the scenery moves so quickly that you'd miss a shot in the short amount of time it takes to switch lenses. And when birders are busy, they rarely need to reach for a wide angle lens.
I am not a dedicated birder, and when shooting in the golden hour (which I often do) switching lenses back and forth would drive me nuts.
Come on Daniel, aren't you exaggerating? That's only a very short drive.
But if you really think that a two body solution would be the way to go when you're birding is suddenly interrupted by a scenic vista, not all two body solutions have to be large and heavy. Get two 1 Series Nikons with the 10-30 and 30-110mm lenses and you have coverage from 27mm to 300mm. They also have sensors much larger than the one used in the X10 and X-S1 and despite their 10mp sensors, probably provide more detail in their photos. I don't even need to mention their superlative DSLR-like high speed, accurate autofocus performance. You probably know all about that by now.
Well Bill, that actually makes sense and to be honest I was thinking about those new Samsung cameras for a similar set up. That new 20mp Samsung could possibly be a great landscape camera with the right lens. The problem is there are limited lens options.
It's only limited compared with Canon and Nikon DSLR systems. Compared with NEX and the m4/3 systems it already has quite a lot to offer, and all of Samsung's lenses are very good to excellent. Not so for the NEX lenses which a number of NEX owners have complained about. The lenses that it doesn't have are super wides and super teles, but lens adapters are available that let you use lenses from most manufacturers, including high quality, old, very inexpensive lenses. It's manual focus for these but that's no problem for the super wides, and no problem for the super teles unless you're shooting sports or active wildlife, but then you'd probably want to use a fast DSLR or a V1 anyway to get really good AF performance.
There are three pancake primes with another on the way, a macro lens, an 85mm f/1.4 lens, impressively large, but not as large as the beasts from Nikon and Canon, because it was designed for an APS-C sensor. There's also an 18-200mm lens optimized for video, and while I don't expect to see it, and Samsung hasn't mentioned it in its roadmap, one of Samsung's videos has their engineers/designers in a few shots with a very large 300mm f/2.8 lens, the kind that usually sells for about $6,000 from the usual suspects.
You make such a huge deal about the difference between 24mm and 28mm, yet don't ever consider that many landscape photographers need lenses much wider than 24mm. DSLRs with APS-C lenses can use wide angle zooms having focal lengths as short as 10mm and 8mm, which is equivalent to 15mm and 12mm, territory that your Fuji bridge camera will never approach, even with huge, expensive wide angle lens converters. Nikon's 10-24mm lens is very popular and provides excellent image quality. I'd like to see how it compares with Fuji photos shot at 24mm, which is where Fuji cameras get blurry and smeary, even at low ISOs.
Ok, I'm listening. I also see there is a Tamron 10-24 for reasonable money, I think in a short while I
may be able to get an APS-C landscape camera for a steal the way prices are dropping. The other thing about landscapes is that AF speed etc is not all that important, so less than stellar performance from the body is not so much of an issue.
I am looking at my options here for sure Bill.
I'd avoid the Tamron because I've seen quite a number of posts like this :
I'm wanting a wide angle for my D5100, 10-24 looks ideal. I've tried the Nikon 10-24 in my local store, the images look fine.
How does the much cheaper Tamron 10-24 compare?
Any information welcome.
I went to my local dealer to buy a wide angle for my D300 and he suggested the Tamron 10-24. So I bought it and took some pictures, as one might reasonably do.
Horrible lens. Lots of chromatic aberration, poor sharpness everywhere but dead center. I returned it and grudgingly forked over the extra $500 for the Nikkor. Worth every penny. The Nikkor is sharp and contrasty. It doesn't flare in normal use. It's part of my 3-lens landscape kit (10-24, 16-85, 70-300) that I carry all the time.
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1030&message=40420697
There are wides from Sigma that should be much better than the Tamron and that don't cost nearly as much as the Nikkor. Tokina's highly regarded 11-16mm f/2.8 is about to appear in an "AF-S" version so it will no longer need a motor drive body to autofocus, but as a super wide, it can easily be focused manually. So the screw drive version should soon be available for even less on the used market.
Some people are quite knowledgeable in tweaking their camera settings to produce decent jpgs. I respect that. I’m confident that once Adobe supports the X0S1 it will shine, given what I’ve seen here so far.
