"OK" but much cheaper camera body and invest in a good lens or good body with kit?

Mike Loanzon wrote:

That is a relief. i'm curious though, my friends who use fuji create some pretty impressive detail in their photos which I Find a little soft on the m43 samples i've seen. Even the lower-end fujis seem to provide this, like the X-a2 which ... seems to be marketed as "better than your smart phone selfie camera" type. How would you describe m43's ability for image detail in that regard? From what i've seen some m43s can* be a little softer than the aps-c sensors- again, this may just be a lack of understanding on my part which is why I would like the opinion of someone who seems well versed in the m43 system.

Soft isn't how I would describe the images at high ISOs.  But they do lose detail due to noise and also will start losing colour depth and dynamic range.  But as I said, I find the results to be useable up to ISO3200.

Looking at the sample image comparison tool on DPreview, I only see about a half-stop advantage in high ISO performance between the Fuji cameras and M43.  And I wasn't trying to be negative towards Fuji...in fact, I was hoping there'd be a much bigger difference because I like the idea of a similarly compact system but with much better high ISO performance.  I don't want to have to deal with the bulk of lenses for 135 format sensors in order to get significantly better high ISO results.

As for the rest of your comments, thank you! great insight esp for street photography. Would love to see your samples (or shots) if you're up for sharing! I think I learn a lot from observing haha thanks again!

I've got a few low-ish light samples from my GX7 in my gallery:

If you look at them at 100% size, they'll look terrible.  But if you view them at typical print sizes, I think they look pretty good.  Also don't forget that DPreview does some crappy compression on uploaded images.  Also, the images were cropped a bit as well.