Mirrorless Camera Recommendations Around $500 or less

I've been considering buying a nice mirrorless digital camera, as I've been wanting to dig more into photography, and not just film photography. I enjoy working with film, but given the fact I can't see how my pictures turned out right then and there is a bit worrying at times. I've been considering one of two cameras, the Fujifilm X-A7 or the Sony a6000 (both $499 at Amazon). It's been almost three years since I've dealt with digital cameras in high school, and I just remember using DSLRs like crazy, and I'm almost tired of using them . If anyone has any other recommendations, please let me know!

 

Since the current camera crowd will be chiming in, what the the best current camcorder with a long tele. 4k, of course. thanks.. Sorry to thread hijack youraveragevinyl collector

 

My wife is into photography. I asked her opinion. She said she almost bought the Cannon 8OS M50 when she was looking into mirrorless. She ended up buying a more expensive Sony, but she says the photos she’s seen that the Cannon took looked real nice. Great with low light apparently.

 

The Canon does have double the ISO range of the Fujifilm, but there's a glaring fact I can't help notice, the Fuji is only 7 months old, where as the Canon is pushing 2 years old. I do like the smaller form factor of the Fuji, though. The Canon is closer to a DSLR in size and shape.

 

If you stretch the budget a bit, Adorama has a used A6100 with 16-50mm lens for $619. Worth considering, IMO.

 

Yeah I can't go that high. That'd be pushing it for me Only reason I'm even considering a nice camera? Stimulus checks. They're a blessing in disguise.

 

Got it.

 

In that case, Adorama also has open box versions of the Sony A6000 with 16-50MM zoom (like the one on Amazon) for $439! Included manufacturers warranty.

 

Between the Fuji and the Sony, I'd get the Sony because it has a viewfinder. In my opinion, a viewfinder is essential. In bright sunlight, an LCD display becomes invisible.

But I would also suggest considering a micro 4/3 camera, especially for traveling/backpacking/mountaineering, etc. The m4/3 lenses are much smaller than equivalent APS or FF lenses. I have a Panasonic GX7 which I most often use with an ultra-compact 35-100mm zoom (FF equivalent: 70-200mm), and the whole thing fits easily in my jacket pocket. And the image quality is excellent. The newest version, the GX9, is a bit over your price range... but there's a lower-budget option, the GX85, which B&H is selling for $499 with two zoom lenses. And Olympus has some m4/3 options as well.

 

What do you want most in a digital camera? Nice images? They all do this as long as you understand exposure in relation to the dynamic range of the scene being captured which the cameras made in the last 5 years do quite well even with incamera jpeg processing.

If high ISO settings is the most preferred you'ld better get a camera with a large sensor, minimum size at least an inch across APS-C in relation to megapixel, the less megapixels the better the picture due to lower noise to detail captured in shadows shooting at high ISO. Canon's I've seen do the best job at incamera processing of high ISO noise.

APS-C - Wikipedia

Photographyblog.com allows downloads of straight out of the camera jpegs and Raw for the model of camera you're interested in. It's an easy site to navigate and find what you're looking for.

I use a used $150 6MP APS-C sensor Pentax K100D and K200D DSLR and shoot RAW and process in Adobe Bridge CS5.

 

High dynamic range and neutral colors. I know I'd have to go way up in price to really get those two qualities in a very good way, and I'd love to shoot in raw format but I simply don't know of any editing software that I can use to edit it that isn't too pricey. As I said, I'm still somewhat new to digital photography, as I know the boundaries of digital are endless. The Sony, despite being a couple years older than the Fuji, seems to keep up pretty well, but to my eyes, it seems the Fuji has the edge in low light and higher ISO, at least to me. Can't view the raw files, just get a 404 error

 

Lots of extremely capable free open-source software for RAW and advanced editing, I use "Raw Therapee" for RAW, and GIMP for general editing. Darktable is another one, and there are many more. These programs have all the capabilities of Photoshop/Lightroom/etc, but often there's a bit more of a learning curve.

 

In addition to what Kamchatka said a Raw converter comes with the camera. Some camera brands' converters are quite robust in their tool set with often superior demosciacing algorithms to squeeze out as much detail as possible. It's a sliding scale in Raw converter quality among brands of course. You'll have to research it online.

Adobe offers a pretty good color engine. Also you can always look into purchasing a Lightroom licensed version (I did for $140) instead of a subscription arrangement which is around $10/month with some Adobe packages. Adobe software includes very good digital asset management (DAM) software to organize and quickly find photos for quick editing if that's important.

 

Have you heard of:

Affinity Photo
Affinity Photo – Professional Image Editing Software

and or

GIMP?
GIMP - GNU Image Manipulation Program

These are both great options that are fairly easy on the wallet. Free in the case of GIMP and a current sale on Affinity Photo for a full purchase at 25 USD$

 

If you're referring to the Photographyblog.com site, you have to download the Raw file and view it on your computer, but then you'll need a Raw converter to view it or one that can read it or else it'll show the embedded jpeg.

And Fuji has a weird proprietary non-standard Raw format (X-tran)that has presented quite a few compatibility issues with third party Raw converters. It's been a while since I heard of this so things may have improved in the last 5 years.

Adobe Finally Improves Fuji X-Trans RAW conversion in Lightroom with "Enhance Details". — Thomas Fitzgerald Photography

 

I actually couldn't get it to download. Could get the JPEGs, but the raw files didn't even give a download prompt

 

If you end up getting a micro 4/3 camera, be sure to get RawTherapee. I love RawTherapee, but only for prying a wider angle image out of the image data. Unlike Lightroom, it ignores the manufacturer’s built-in cropping instructions (which are embedded within the RAW image file) so you can see all the way to edge of the sensor (if you shoot in RAW and your camera is a m4/3 or a Lumix LX10 or similar). Manufacturers don’t want you to see those edges because image quality falls apart at the extreme edges. So RawTherapee is the best way to get an even wider angle view than what your camera or lens claims to provide. That said, RawTherapee is an awful program in terms of usability. Its interface is primitive, unresponsive, unintuitive, sometimes purposefully contrarian... I could go on.

But it is free.

I do not know if this trick works with the (non micro 4/3) Sony a6000 that you are looking at.

Here is how someone else explained it: “Micro Four Thirds cameras have a lens correction profile (lcp) saved with the raw file, but not applied to the raw file. Many software, including some third party software like Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, apply this lcp automatically when processing the raw file. These images look like the JPEG … Other raw software ignores the embedded lcp, like DxO and RawTherapee and RPP64.”

 

I'm just glad to have a few options. Tried using GIMP to color correct some old 35mm scans I did, but I had no clue what I was doing. Just hoping I can get a decent deal on one of these cameras. Hoping if I wait just a couple months, I can get an even better deal on one.

 

Just downloaded the Fuji X-T30 Raw .raf file (last one on the far right just above video/movie samples in the Photographyblog.com link below on my 2010 Mac Mini in Snow Leopard through Firefox browser vs 48.02, an old version.

Of course that Raw file is recent and can't be opened even with CS5. I even tried converting to DNG in Adobe's DNG converter for universal compatibility with all Raw converters. Didn't recognize it. Can't even select it. This is another thing you're going to have to deal with BTW with newer digital photography stuff. It sucks and it's why I don't upgrade.

Fujifilm X-T30 Review - Sample Images | Photography Blog

You probably have a lot of security stuff turned on in I'm assuming Windows and/or in your browser.

I did extract the jpeg from that downloaded X-T30 Raw file using "Instant Jpeg From Raw". It's also a downloadable free app. The image is so good, clean and full of detail don't need to even shoot Raw.

 

I've noticed a lot of photographers, unless they're absolutely loaded, either get older cameras and find ways to upgrade them, or keep older cameras until they're completely outdated. I have a friend who has a license to Photoshop, and it's the subscription method, so hopefully I can find something out from him. Only reason I would want to use raw files? If I ever wanted to make big prints or something among those lines. But I don't make that kind of money, but, it's always nice to have that flexibility in cameras when it comes to file formats I suppose

 

I examined the ISO 2000 jpegs at full resolution from that Fuji X-T30 in that linked article and I'm going to state it right here and now you can't get any better straight out of the camera jpeg image quality than what I'm seeing even with larger sensor (full frame) camera's costing thousands but are using 5 to 10 year old software/hardware technology. And I haven't been looking for years. To hell with shooting Raw. Life's too short to deal with this compatibility crap!

Find a model of that Fuji camera that's less expensive but uses the same rendering engine and go from there.

 

I'll definitely take that into consideration. If I can save money, I will. Hoping to find an open box or used one soon.

 

You don't need to be concerned about that. Even at the beginning of this technology with 4 megapixel cameras they were making posters that turned out pretty good.

Printer upscaling algorithm technology has greatly improved so one does not have to deal with this issue. Get a modern camera like the Fuji I posted which was a random choice that came up in a search for that review site.

You don't need to make this a difficult hobby like it used to be. It's not like your buying high end audio equipment unless you like technical discussions.