Finding the perfect camera (for me)

[themarce]

Hello first!

My name is Martin and as far as I remember this is my first post ever in the dpreview forum. Normally I am the classic "consumer" who reads posts but never posts anything myself. I recently bought a new camera, more precisely a new system, and since there are countless guides in the vastness of the Internet that explain why you should buy a certain camera, but usually do not help at all in individual cases, I thought I'd start a series of posts that should show how I came to my current camera, in the hope of helping others.

I plan to split this story over several posts, hopefully thematically all reasonably self-contained, to make it easier for those interested to read and for me to write.

First to me:
I'm in my mid 30's and from Austria (not Australia), so if my English is a bit bumpy here and there please forgive it. I'm practically married, have no children and a relatively well-paid job that leaves me with an average amount of free time. I studied mechanical engineering and work in this field in the broadest sense. Like so many tech-savvy people, I went through a long and tiresome phase of heavy GAS, but we'll get to that.

So this is my story:

 

[themarce]

How it all began:

I have been taking pictures since I was little. Taking pictures and later filming was always an important part of all family celebrations. I remember my first cameras were the typical disposable cameras of the 90s. When I got older, my grandparents gave me a compact camera, also classic for the 90s. After this I had my first experience with GAS, because the cameras of course were limiting. So over the years my grandparents gifted me several compact cameras (I still darkly remember having a camera with a fixed focal length, one with a zoom lens from Agfa and a spy camera from Minox). I was quite good at taking snapshots, so at some family gatherings, my grandfather would give me his Nikon F3 for a short period of time to take candid shots.

At this point I have to say that my grandfather was probably the most influential person for me in connection with photography. He has been shooting Nikon since the Nikon F and had an F90x (N90s for all Americans) and an F3 in the 90s, as well as about 8-10 lenses from different eras. There was nothing else but Nikon for him back then, everything else was toys.

My father was taking pictures at that time with a Nikon F2, which he had received as a gift from my grandfather when he bought the F3. My mother, on the other hand, was a loyal Minolta photographer and my other grandparents were happy with regular compact cameras. So we were a rather Nikon heavy family, but there were other cameras as well.

During this time I have photographed and tried out a lot. Like most people of my age, I can still remember what it was like to drop off a film at the drugstore and come back a few days later hoping it hadn't been lost. The feeling of flipping through prints for the first time and how cumbersome it was to order new prints. At the time, sharing pictures meant actually giving a print that had cost money to the other person. So you had to think carefully about who you wanted to give a print to.

All of that finally changed in the year 2000.

 

[themarce]

The digital era:

In the summer of 2000, my grandfather gave me a Nikon Coolpix 950 as a present. For those who don't know: It's a compact camera that's anything but compact and has a weird panning mechanism, basically the forerunner of the tilting screen, and also has a small viewfinder and a zoom lens.

As excited as I was when I received the gift, I never really got to grips with it. The memory cards were large enough for a handful of pictures and I had to take much more care of this high-tech toy than I did with my old point-and-shoot cameras. Also, to see the pictures, you had to start the computer (it took a while back then), plug in the card reader, and painfully slowly transfer all the pictures to the PC, where you never looked at them again because you didn't make prints of them.

As anyone who once was a teenager can imagine, this was all unconvincing to me and the camera ended up in a closet pretty quickly, and with it my interest in photography for a long time. My grandfather, on the other hand, continued to take pictures for a while (first analogue and later with a D70) but gradually started to film instead of taking photos, for which he bought several Sony camcorders over the years. The rest of the family also gradually lost interest in photography as a result of the transition to digital photography, until everyone only had a small compact camera for snapshots.

It stayed that way until 2014, when everything suddenly changed again.

 

[AstroVagabond]

Can you distill your story down to 3 to 5 succinct key points that led you to your perfect camera?

Or maybe create a video which you can share that tells your story?

 

[themarce]

2014, the year of change:

In 2014, like most people my age, I had become a classic cell phone photographer. I had a mediocre phone (for the time) and for the few snapshots I took, I was completely happy with the results.

But in 2012 together with my wife I started mountaineering again, which I stopped doing around the same time I stopped doing photography. Our tours quickly became more spectacular and we soon realized that our cell phones were not sufficient for nice memories. So we started borrowing compact cameras from relatives (especially my mother-in-law). The results weren't perfect, but definitely better than anything my phone could do.

Then, in the summer of 2014, we got to the point where we decided to climb the Großvenediger. Anyone who has seen this mountain knows that you want good photos as a souvenir. So I spoke to my grandfather about if he had a better camera to lend me for this tour. He thought about it for a moment and since he had just bought a Sony A6000, he gave me his old Nikon D5000 with the 18-55 kit lens as a gift. I was incredibly happy and suddenly started taking pictures again.

My D5000 was always there for every mountain tour we undertook and many meetings with friends. I loved this camera because it is relatively light yet quite versatile, has a screen you can rotate to hide the screen, has a small flash, and the kit lens zoom range covers a big range. In addition, the camera makes quite a robust impression. I never felt like I need to wrap it in cotton. The pictures I got from the camera where really good as well. Right from the beginning I was able to take pictures that made my relatives ask me whether I really took these pictures myself. Of course this made me really proud.

I was happy and couldn't wish for more. Well, probably besides of a wide angle lens..

 

[themarce]

No, I can't. I'm sorry, but the point for me is to explain how I came to my conclusion. As I already tried to lay out in my first post I think the problem with many buying guides is that they are very subjective, therefore I think the whole story is important. But I totally understand your point.

 

[AstroVagabond]

No, I can't. I'm sorry, but the point for me is to explain how I came to my conclusion. As I already tried to lay out in my first post I think the problem with many buying guides is that they are very subjective, therefore I think the whole story is important. But I totally understand your point.

OK thanks! But isn't your story also subjective, like the buying guides, based on or influenced by your personal feelings, tastes, or opinions?

Anyway good light!

 

[themarce]

The GAS starts to hit:

I often felt that I lacked a true wide-angle lens to capture the incredible beauty of the mountains in a photo. So I researched what options there are for me.

Lenses like the Nikon 14-24 or the Tamron 15-30 seemed unattainable to me (also financially). So on the one hand there were some options from Tokina that seemed relatively heavy to me, but appeared to be very good optically, and on the other hand the Nikon 12-24 which is said to be far from good optically. Like any beginner, I delved deeper and deeper into reviews and watched Youtube videos until one day in 2017 I read about a 10-20mm lens that Nikon had just released and was said to bee really good. I was sure: This is my lens, but found out pretty quickly that the new AF-P lenses are not compatible with my old D5000. But since I really wanted to have an ultra wide angle, a new camera had to be found.

Being so happy with the D5000 so far I tried to stick with the 5000 series and after some searching I found a relatively cheap D5500 with an 18-140 kit lens which I bought right away. The 18-140 went into the closet and the 10-20 became my new go-to lens.

I ended up using the D5500 quite a bit and took some of my favorite pictures with it. The dynamic range was just incredible for such a small, compact camera. I also liked the 10-20, but found it increasingly limiting, especially when trying to photograph people, so I started walking around with the 10-20 and the 18-55.

At that point, however, I had already read so many reviews and watched so many YouTube videos, that I always had the feeling that I was missing out on something with my small APS-C camera and that I could only take really good pictures with a full-frame camera...

 

[themarce]

Exactly! And that's my point. I don't want it to be a regular buying guide, but more of a story about how I found my camera. It was more about showing people who feel kind of lost in all the reviews how I got to my conclusions. And hopefully it helps someone not making the same (sometimes expensive) mistakes that I did. So take it more as a travel-story than an actual buying guide .

 

[themarce]

Going full frame:

Now that I was convinced that only a full-frame camera can take truly excellent pictures, I set out to find the right camera. Like most people, I checked the major sites (dpreview, dxomark, imaging-resource,...) and came to the following conclusion:

Nikon makes excellent cameras (D810 & D850) that don't have good video AF.
Canon makes good cameras with modern interface, but the dynamic range is nowhere near the competition.
Sony (then the A7 III and A7RIII) are good but expensive, especially the lenses too. Also, the colors are terrible.
Pentax has poor AF.

Please keep in mind that this was from the perspective of early 2018. Everyone can see at a glance how simplified I imagined the camera world to be back then. Especially since, apart from trade shows, I had only ever actually used Nikon APS-C cameras and Sony's A6000. But of course I was an expert because Youtube.
Since video was never important to me, I started heavily leaning towards a Pentax K1. It performed excellently reviews for landscape photography and I wasn't interested in anything else. Unfortunately, my budget was extremely limited, so I had to look for bargains and on online marketplaces Pentax K1s are rather rare. So in parallel I also looked around for bargains for Sony A7R II/III and Nikon D810 (a D850 was my dream camera but illusory).

In mid-2018, Nikon and Canon suddenly started launching their mirrorless systems. While the Canon system disappointed me immensely at the beginning, the Nikon didn't seem quite mature, but not that bad either. I began to consider if and how I could afford a Nikon Z. And then what I had hoped for happened:
Suddenly, at the end of 2018, DSLRs dropped in price and so I suddenly got the opportunity to get a D810 at a reasonable price. After the first test photos, I was completely convinced by the image quality. In the comparison photos with my D5500, you could already see the difference on the screen. So I sold my beloved D5500 and the lenses and bought the Nikon 18-35 for my new D810.

I was happy for a while...

 

[themarce]

It doesn't feel right:

I started taking my D810 with me on all mountain trips and was always thrilled with the image quality. I was convinced that I had made the right choice. The fact that the camera with lens weighs about 1.4kg I can somehow get over I thought, and so I took almost exclusively my 18-35 with me. Another telephoto or normal lens would have been too heavy for long, difficult tours.

But as good as the image quality was, there was always something that bothered me about the camera. Somehow I always felt that the grip didn't fit in my hand, the layout of the buttons annoyed me and the weight also became increasingly a problem on trips and difficult tours, partly because it meant I was very limited with the 18-35. In addition, it sometimes drove me crazy that the camera's resolution was not forgiving of camera shake. This forced me to choose correspondingly fast shutter speeds, which caused the ISO to go up. A tripod is not an option on many mountain trips, which left me in the strange position that in low light, sometimes friends of mine who have an APS-C camera with image stabilizer took better photos than I did with my full frame.

This led to me loving the pictures the camera takes, but not enjoying the camera itself.

At this point I started to think more and more about switching to a mirrorless system with IBIS. But in general, I was enjoying photography less and less.

When I told my grandfather about it, he smiled mildly, walked me into his office and said he had a surprise for me.

On the table were three full suitcases with his analog photographic equipment, including his beloved Nikon F3, Nikon FM and all his analog lenses. I knew what this equipment meant to him, so at first I didn't want to accept it, but he insisted, saying that he's old and doesn't use it anymore and he's sure it will give me more pleasure.
I took the F3 in my hand, smelled it and pressed the film lever. The sound alone sent shivers down my spine. If you've never experienced that, you've missed something important.

The next day I bought some Kodak Gold..

 

[themarce]

Going analogue:

Ever since I got my grandfather's equipment, the F3 has been my favorite camera and it will probably remain so forever. This is something very personal, which is connected with some emotions, but I am of the opinion that it was and is also objectively a very good camera. The next year I started to shoot side by side with the analog equipment and the D810, often I even had both cameras with me (I know, exciting how the weight suddenly didn't bother me there).

Apart from the sheer joy of using a camera with mechanical settings (the Fuji and Nikon Zfc photographers know what I'm talking about), I learned so much about composition and exposure from the analog cameras that I probably never would have learned from a digital camera. That's simply because the camera is not forgiving of mistakes. If the exposure is 2 stops off, the slide is useless and if I forget to set the correct aperture, I can't just take a new picture and delete the old one. The fact that you only notice many mistakes when you hold the pictures in your hand after developing, forces you to think more about the picture.
I even started to set up a darkroom and make prints myself.

But also here I had at some point the desire for a larger format and after I have a good job in the meantime, I bought a Voigtländer Perkeo II for mountaineering and later a Mamiya RB67 for portraits.

And then came 2020...

 

[themarce]

Everything changes:

In the meantime, I had also bought a Nikon 14-24 to take even better photos, but all that came to an end in 2020.

In 2020, the world has probably changed a lot for each of us. We were more at home and traveling became difficult to impossible. I tried to occupy myself with portraits during this time.

In the middle of the year, my grandfather was diagnosed with cancer and it was clear that he didn't have much time left. I tried to visit him as often as I could and started to work with videography to record all the funny and exciting stories he told me so often and somehow capture them. After I once tried to film an interview with my D810 I was happy to have the camera but annoyed by many little things like the video autofocus. Up until that point, I didn't think I would ever need it. So, since my D810 wasn't particularly good for video, I considered buying a new camera, or at least a camcorder, just for that. Unfortunately, I didn't have the opportunity to do that anymore and my video project was over after one appointment.

After the death of my grandfather, photography was empty and meaningless for me. The joy I had with each photo in anticipation of being able to discuss it with my grandfather was suddenly gone and with the joy also my GAS. My equipment was in a closet for a long time and I didn't even enjoy taking out my F3 anymore.

It felt like the end of the road....

 

[themarce]

A new start:

In the middle of 2021, the first trips could be made again. When we flew to Sardinia, I decided to take only my F3 as a homage to the time with my grandfather. When the rolls of Velvia 100 came back from developing, I was amazed and slowly began to develop interest in photography again, but I was still far from joy.

I spent the next year primarily with analog photography. I hardly touched my D810 anymore. There were too many things that bothered me about it in the meantime. One big problem was that I felt that almost all the good lenses were big and heavy, while most of the light ones were so bad that I could take comparable photos with a small camera and a fixed focal length.

A special moment in this context was when my wife and I took almost the same picture. Me with my D810 and the 18-35 and she with her Sony A6000 and the Sigma 16mm 1.4. Yes, in 200% view you could see slight differences, but they were minimal and in no way justified the price and weight difference. And her sunstars where even better. It was then that I finally realized how incredibly important the lens is and how stupid I was to be primarily fixated on the camera.

Frustrated by barely achieving more image quality with my heavy and for me unwieldy D810, I decided to look around for a system that would meet my weight and image quality requirements better...

 

[themarce]

What you came for:

This finally brings me to the point you all probably came to this thread for: Which camera do I have now?

As already mentioned, I tried not to choose a camera, but a system. I tried to write down my requirements for it as precisely as possible, to really test all the cameras this time, so as not to experience any nasty surprises again. The first endurance test for the camera should be a Costa Rica vacation in November/December 2022. The camera has to do everything from landscape photography to wildlife, have as good a dynamic range as possible, a good weather sealing was important (there's a reason why rainforests are called that) and since we had domestic flights planned, weight was also a deciding factor. In addition, the battery had to withstand a day of shooting without recharging. But the most important point were the lenses.

First of all I needed a classic travel zoom lens for this trip with a focal length from as far as possible to as tele as possible, which itself must also have a good weather sealing and of course have as good image quality as possible. All this was important because it was clear that I will not start changing lenses in the rainforest, on the one hand because the animals are not waiting for it and on the other hand because: Rain-forest.

The second lens should be something in the focal length range of about 35mm f1.8 FF equivalent to get usable images in the evening in locales and on the street.

I also wanted the third lens to be an option that was as light as possible and around the same size as the 18-55 kit. Camera and lens of this combo should be around 800g to have a light combo for the mountain. Camera, travel zoom and 35mm equivalent were allowed to have a maximum weight of 2kg.

Image quality was very important to me with all three lenses.
With this list, I set out on my search.

After an initial preliminary search, I had narrowed my choices down to four options, although for now I'm only referring to the camera with the travel zoom:

A Nikon Z Camera with the 24-200
The Sony A7iv with the Tamron 28-200
A Fuji X-H2(s) with the Tamron 18-300
The OM-1 with the 12-100

Now many will wonder where the Canon option is. In fact, I would have been quite interested in the R5, but it fails due to three points: 1. the R5 is said to have a very poor battery life. 2. there is no travel zoom for the R5 that meets my needs (the 24-240 has no weather sealing). 3. the R5 has the on/off switch on the left side. When climbing, I often find myself in a situation where I have to operate the camera with one hand and leaving the camera on is not an option, if only because of the battery life.

Optically, the Olympus is probably the best lens and the OM-1 was also the best in my hand, but what scared me a bit was the weight and price for the fast fixed focal lengths. I had hoped that the new OM-5 would come out with the OM-1 sensor. That would have been an interesting option.

The Fuji is very appealing and felt good in my hands and was intuitive. However, the Tamron might have some optical weaknesses in the peripheral areas, which is understandable for this focal length range, and it is also quite dark, which could be a problem with an APS-C sensor. The 18-135 and the new 18-120 from Fuji unfortunately don't perform very well either, and again, the price and weight of the FF focal lengths are sometimes higher than the FF models from other manufacturers.

The Sony is probably the "best" camera in terms of features, but also the most expensive. It was only ok in my hand. Also, the 28-200 is not stabilized and only starts at 28mm. Furthermore, I still remember very well how the weather sealing of the A7Riii failed miserably in a test by imaging-resource. I hope they have improved that by now!

The Nikons should have a good weather sealing and also the lens has performed quite well in the tests (including cameralabs), but the AF, especially with the older models, may not be as good as that of Sony what is quite a factor in wildlife.

 

[themarce]

The decision:

To be honest, like many things in life, the decision was made more by chance. I happened to see an offer for a fairly inexpensive Nikon Z5 with a 24-50 and a 24-200 and thought I'd take a look at it. After trying it out, I bought it and thought I'd take it on a few mountain tours and see how it suited me. At worst, I'll sell it for the same price and buy another one from the list.

I've now taken the camera on about a dozen mountain trips as well as a three-week vacation to Costa Rica, which included a lot of wildlife photography, and apart from the two kit lenses I also own the 40mm f2 and the FTZII adapter.

And how satisfied am I with them?

Like everywhere, there are good and bad sides:

The good thing is that the camera does pretty much exactly what I wanted. It's quite light, extremely robust, the electronic viewfinder lets me set the exposure quite accurately, the 24-200 is certainly not a fixed focal length as far as sharpness is concerned, but it's better than most of the zooms I've owned for my D810, the ergonomics are good and the other lenses are also good to very good.

What I don't like about the camera is that the autofocus sometimes doesn't do what I want. A classic example is when a snake is behind a branch. The Z5 almost always decided to focus on the branch in such situations. You then have to manually focus close to the right plane of focus, then the AF takes over again. I've read that this is better with the new generation of cameras (the Z5 still belongs strictly speaking to the same generation as the first Z6/7), the Z9 should be great there at all. That said, I was frankly impressed with the AF on the Z5. Especially in conjunction with the 40mm f2, the camera always found the eye even in dark locales. Not bad!

What bothered me a lot was the weather sealing of the 24-200. I didn't store the camera in my back even in heavy rains, since Nikon advertises how well the lens is weather sealed. Nevertheless, on two days I had the problem that after heavy rain, the lens fogged up from the inside the next day. I'll send the lens in and see what Nikon says about it, but it's not what I expected.

What impressed me but frankly the most and what Nikon should promote much stronger: The app

To be honest, the app never had a particularly high value for me. I'm used to the Sony app from my RX100 and didn't think the app would add any value. Wrong thinking! The app has always worked without any problems. Best of all, there is an option for the app to automatically sync approximately 1.8mp jpegs to the phone and send them to the Nikon cloud automatically. So in case the camera gets stolen, at least I still have my photos.
For me, this always meant that I already had all the pictures on my phone when I got to the hotel. I then ran a standard filter i created over them in Lighroom Mobile and 95% of my pictures were ready to send to friends and family.

So, is the Z5 the right camera for me? Well..

 

[themarce]

The future:

Is the Z5 the perfect camera for me?

Kind of and kind of not.

The Z5 is a camera that can do a lot and is incredibly affordable. The same goes for the 24-200, although I'm waiting to hear what Nikon has to say about the fogging. Objectively, the Sony A7iv is certainly the better camera and probably the Fujis too, but they are also significantly more expensive. What sealed the love for this camera system for me personally was interestingly the app. It's just great to be able to send home good photos and not just blurry cell phone pictures of a bird from vacation and see how everyone is cheering along.

I for one am happy with my decision because it brought back the joy of photography. For as sad as I was not to be able to share my pictures with my grandfather anymore, the app allows me to quickly share them with my whole family and someone always responds.

The image quality of the Z5 is very good and sufficient in most cases. Nonetheless, I'm already squinting a bit at a possible Z8. If Nikon manages to deliver a baby Z9, I wouldn't pass up something like that for the next vacation, because in the end I have to admit that 24mp is sometimes a bit low for wildlife.

I would like to thank everyone who has read this far. I hope it helps at least one other person decide on a system. It doesn't have to be Nikon, but what I've tried to show with this thread is that this is something very personal and everyone has to find the right system for themselves (my wife for example loves her A6000).

For me, the big lesson has really been to always look at the whole system and weigh my needs against it. It will spare you lots of time and money.

If anyone has any questions I will be happy to try and answer them.