Hi all, I’m after some opinions please to help with my decision. I’ve been into my local camera shop and a salesman after his commission.
Some of them are very knowledgeable, others not so much. You can use them as a means of accessing and holding the gear you are interested in. Getting first hand experiences is useful.
i currently have an old Pentax Kx with the kit lens, a 50-200 Pentax lens and a Sigma 105 lenses all K-Mount. I’m looking to switch to mirrorless as I find them comfier to hold than a DSLR.
Mirrorless is a very broad range of gear. Quite a few have inferior grips and ergonomics while others are quite comfy. The k-x is a well designed body, and your lenses are mostly pretty light.
My quandary is do I invest in a Fujifilm with a KMount adapter (all owned by Ricoh), then I can still use my old lenses until I can afford to replace them.
Your comment about Ricoh lost me. Fujifilm has no relationship to Ricoh. Ricoh doesn’t make any adapters to use k mount lenses on other brands either.
Almost every adapter for k mount lenses on Mirrorless is fully mechanical and loses autofocus and aperture automation. A pseudo aperture ring adjustment is available on some adapters, without that you lose aperture control as well with lenses without an aperture ring.
Or, do I just park the lot and start again with Canon or Nikon, as the lenses I have are all budget.
Canon and to a lesser degree Nikon are less friendly to third party lenses than Sony. Fujifilm is probably the most apsc centric and consumer oriented. I shoot both Sony apsc and full frame and Pentax apsc.
My advice, go handle some bodies and lenses. Use camera size sites to visualize them size and weight differences; they aren’t going to be very large. Budget out the cost of a body and lenses in various brands. Try them in person, using an EVF isn’t always comfy for everyone. I never had any problem with using an EVF but I’ve known people who couldn’t stand them.
Looking at your gear above, the k-x is apsc, the 18-55/50-200 combo is fairly ok optically but slow and the 50-200 is weak on the long end. The 105 sigma is optically nice.
In Sony, apsc lens selection can be a challenge. Let’s say You bought an a6700 and a Sony 18-135. Add a 90mm Tamron or Sony Macro, and you’re most of the way to replicating the same range you have today. But the 18-135 may be larger on camera than the 18-55 or 50-200. The Sony 16-50 has a poor reputation. The 16-55/2.8 is a good but heavy and expensive lens.
I’m not advocating buying Sony btw. I’m just illustrating what you’re going to need to think about.
Another thing to consider is used gear. The a6300 is virtually the same optically as the a6600 which is almost the same as the a6700. The improvements are things like tracking autofocus etc.
Finally there’s full frame. On the Sony side there are loads of options. The a7iii is still a reasonably great camera. The tiny 28-60 and a 70-300 rxd Tamron makes a light kit. Add any macro and you will have fully replicated the capabilities you had.
I’m less familiar with current apsc gear from Canon and Nikon and Fujifilm - but all of these have options that could work. The Canon R7 offers a 32mp sensor and good ergonomics from what I’ve seen. Fujifilm makes some models that have 40mp sensors. The Sony offering is 26mp. Mp isn’t the only metric to go by, but you should know about these differences.
