National Geographic posted the list of “Top 10 Compact Cameras for Travelers”. Fuji, Olympus, Panasonic, Sony and Ricoh have been picked up by National Geographic Travel’s Director of Photography Dan Westergren as best cameras to carry on travel. Interesting to note there is no Canon and Nikon camera on the list!!!
–
found via Imaging Resource.
25 Responses
I agree about Fujis and Sonys. Gh4 is IMO already too big, and so is the em1 (but the zooms are smaller due to 4/3 sensor, so overall size could be OK).
I see with pleasure that most of the rangefinder like cameras on the market are in that list (x-e2, gx7, a6000). Those are indeed the cameras that IMO are best suited for travelling purposes.
Well… for me GH4 and E-M1 are the only properly sized m4/3 cameras. đ
It’s all about how you use the camera. Yes, a GM1+20/1.7 is fantastic if you keep it in a pocket or in your backpack. And Canon 5D is excellent if you keep it in someone else’s backpack. đ
But what about the actual using? Today I went for a typical 2-3h Sunday photowalk. I took an old Nikon D40 with the 40/2.8 and nothing else (not even a strap). Nikon D40 handles quite well with most lenses under 500g. It’s not tiring, it doesn’t slip when your hand is wet and so on. And when I travel, I also hold it all the time – sometimes for 10h a day.
I haven’t used the M1 for long enough to have a proper opinion (it’s too expensive), but I did use the M10 while hiking. And the way I’m used to use cameras is simply not possible.
In terms of IQ and specs I could easily switch to a M10. But I need a proper grip and most m4/3 cameras don’t have it. :/
It’s up to personal tastes. I don’t like having a camera weighting at 600/700gr or more, hanging at my neck, for more than a hour.
Gx7 is really cool, and a6000 is probably my ideal aps-c camera, but for the lenses.
So don’t hang it on your neck. There are so many other options!
As said before: I hold a camera in hand most of the time.
If I need both hand, it starts to rain and so on, I put it in the bag (which also doesn’t hang on my neck, obviously).
Or, if I have a backpack, I attach it to the shoulder straps. And I’m going to buy a BlackRapid.
Neck straps are generally an idiotic idea.
They worked in the past, when most people carried a simple body with a short manual prime. Small batteries, no AF motors, no IS, no processors (and cooling systems), no internal flashes etc.
Cameras were light. Even the later AF models were mostly under 500g. And 90% of the time you used a 50/1.8 which weighted 150g.
Current DSLRs (and lenses) are very heavy. A decent amateur kit (D7100+18-140mm) weights almost 1.3 kg. A good bright standard zoom (24-70/2.8) weights close to 1 kg. This is OK for most pros, but too much for most amateurs. Also, a Nikon FM2+50/1.8 is actually pretty small – you can easily put it in average woman’s purse. Try doing that with a Canon 5D with any zoom…
I’m not surprised that people got fed up and smaller MILCs got so much attention. But currently this is just an idiotic race of “who can make a smaller body”, while most of them are already to small to comfortably use. Human hands are not shrinking after all. At some point the trend will change and people will want SLR-like MILCs (as it was with compacts some time ago). I can wait. đ
I feel that it is a waste of cash and space to dramatically increase the size of your carrying kit just to alleviate the stress of DSLR kit weight or the unnecessary added cost of buying bulky body accessories, bulky backpacks or whatever just to be able carry your gear comfortably.
GH4 + 12-35mm f/2.8 = 865grams or 2 pounds
Canon 6D + 24-70mm f/2.8 mk2 = 1575grams or 3.5 pounds
Shooting a wedding all day with 3.5 pounds is a significant toll on the back, wrists and neck versus 2 pounds. However, a casual shooter will not care about the additional 1.5 pounds since it wonât be used extensively for long periods of time.
You realize the title is the top 10 compact cameras, not the top 10 cameras.
The article then quickly says “Most photographers working on assignment for National Geographic use full-frame digital cameras and fast zoom lenses that prepare them for almost any photographic problem they may encounter in the field.”
In other words, for those who don’t want or need the best, here are some other models to choose from.
Let’s look at just one possible example of a model the “top 10” (e.g., interweb ad click-through bait) cameras that NG ignored:
The Nikon D3300 is narrower and weighs 20 grams more than the Fuji X-T1.
The Nikon D3300 is narrower than the Olympus OM-D EM1 and weighs LESS. Oh, that Nikon is SO HEAVY.
The Nikon D3300 has better resolution, faster performance, better battery life, superior resolution and performance in viewing than either of the two others.
Most significantly, the D3300, with lens, has a price WITH LENS less than half of that of the other two cameras.
In short, the weight savings is often overrated, when the trade-off is other areas. And the Nikon weight 7% less than the Olympus, the former with a much larger format and better performance, and much lower price. You’re still carrying a heavy camera on a once-in-a-lifetime trip. Your decision on what’s more important.
No wonder Mr. Market has not jumped on the “time has changed, mirrorless on the raise!”
bandwagon
Ding ding ding on the “compact camera” thing.
The point you are missing about the D3300 as a compact camera are lenses. The only semi-decent semi-compact lens for the D3300 is the 35mm f/1.8G and that lens is a dog. In comparison, the Panasonic 20/1.7 is a fraction of the size and ten times the IQ.
As with most mFT users you are not comparing like for like to get the same total light gathering, DOF control as an F1.8 lens on APS you need an F1.2 lens on mFT. Looking at Photozone tests the 35mm F1.8 DX outperforms the 20mm at every single equivalent aperture, with much lower distortion etc. A lot of mFT lenses have some serious in camera software corrections going on { which can be easily shown by opening them in RAW convertors that show the uncorrected file} obviously you can set up a simple macro in LR or PS to automatically add correction to any lens magically improving end results. A major advantage of the 35mm is its AF performance the 20mm F1.7 a great little lens has woeful AF
http://www.photozone.de/olympus–four-thirds-lens-tests/464-pana_20_17?start=1
http://www.photozone.de/nikon–nikkor-aps-c-lens-tests/628-nikkor3518dx?start=1
Actually, you also arenât comparing like for like. An f/1.2 is an f/1.2 no matter what format because fractional stops is a certain amount of light per square unit on any given sensor. The size of the sensor increases the surface the light affects, changing the bokeh only. The f/1.2 brightness on a m43 is identical to f/1.2 on full frame. Even Tony Northrupâs own example proves this:
http://youtu.be/6Im4W_9blhY?t=20m46s
The advantage of m43 is that since you have donât have as razor thin depth of field you can shoot wide open and still achieve incredible sharpness. A fault of Full Frame is you are required to shoot no higher than f/4 in many cases to get total sharpness across the frame so you are forced to boost ISO. Luckily FF has better high ISO performance, and it damn better have. A good example is Ming Thienâs night shot:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mingthein/14879048855/
To get proper sharpness he had to shoot at f/5.6 but boost the ISO to 6400 to get proper exposure on a Nikon D810 with a Nikkor 85mm f/1.4. Put the other way if you require razor thin DOF, then m43 would not work well for you. You would have to use one of several m43 hyper-primes to achieve a similar DOF to f/2.0 on a FF camera like the SLR Magic, Mikaton or Voigtlander m43 lenses.
Finally, the Lumix 20mm f/1.7 has blazing fast AF, there is nothing âwoefulâ about it at all. In fact contrast AF is so much faster than phase detect AF, m43 users find the 20mm f/1.7 to be the slowest of m43 lenses. Tyson Robichaud proved the 20mm f/1.7 is still blazing fast and super accurate in very low light:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dR2FjrazI_8
Wow, what a bunch of crap nonsense from someone who’s seems to have never used mirrorless and can’t properly use one either. No national geographic photographer would be caught dead with a Nikon D3300 and shitty kit lens. Any full frame DSLR with telephoto zoom is well over 60% heavier and more than 3x larger than comparable mirrorless offerings.
National Geographic has been using mirrorless cameras to photograph indigenous tribes for a few years now, and most recently reporters used the E-M1 for coverage of the Ukrainian revolution and the downed plane in Ukraine as well. Not the Nikon D3300 with kit lens.
Any mirrorless camera offered today beats the D3300 on all fronts except resolution for cropping. Images are sharper, better low light performance, better built professional glass, more professional features not even seen in Full Frame DSLRS like focus peaking and silent modes, fewer missed shots through more accurate and much faster contrast detect AF and EVF, less than 40% of the weight, even high ISO is the same thanks to mirrorless sensor improvements.
You’re slightly missing the point here.
Of course it is true, that possibly not many professional photographers use a D3300. That’s because this is an entry-level camera and there are better options. So why would they?
And it’s totally understandable why pros who want a MILC choose the E-M1. It is an excellent camera and in my opinion the best MILC available (because I’m not a great fan of A7). That said, its IQ is almost identical to that of the D3300 (aside from noise at high ISO, where APS-C obviously wins).
So while the M1 is better built, better handling and much quicker, its images are similar to those from D3300. Certainly both cameras offer IQ good enough for printing in NG.
And it is a very similar story with the 20/1.7.
m4/3 is a new system and not many great lenses are available. And then comes the 20/1.7, which is excellent compared to other small lenses in the system. It’s easy to fall under the impression that this is a fantastic lens…
But again: Nikon 35/1.8 DX offers very similar performance. It is slightly less sharp, but with less distortion and vignetting. And attached to a 24 MPx sensor it will still produce more details than the 20/1.7 with 16 MPx.
What makes 20/1.7 great is the build quality, the quick AF and the small form factor. But it is twice the price of the Nikkor, so it is expected.
As for the rest of your post… I don’t even know how to comment it. If you think E-M1 offers better low light performance than current Nikons, you must have never used a DSLR or don’t know how to use them properly…
APS-C sensors do not automatically perform better just because they are APS-C. So you in fact haven’t compared high ISO win the GH4 or E-M1 with the D3300’s Sony NEX 7 sensor. The D3300 has noisier high ISO images than the NEX 5n and Fuji X-Pro and is slightly worse than my GH4 and former E-M1 in my experience.
I am a former Canon DSLR shooter and moved to mirrorless because of the poor consumer grade performance APS-C DSLRs offer. I started with the T2i, then SL1, later moved to the 6D, then sold all my gear after experiencing the E-M5, E-M1, the A7r, and now the GH4. I’m also a hybrid shooter and have plenty of real world experience in photography and videography as well:
http://youtu.be/UTEY5hHF364
“APS-C sensors do not automatically perform better just because they are APS-C”
With similar technology – yes, they do. Seriously, this is basic physics. You’ll find everything you need on dxomark and wikipedia.
Of course you can believe in whatever you want. Surely M1 has better high ISO than one of the best APS-C sensors available. It is a MILC, it must be better! đŽ
Here you have a comparison of D3300, M1 and the NEX 5N.
http://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Compare/Side-by-side/Nikon-D3300-versus-Olympus-OM-D-E-M1-versus-Sony-NEX-5N___928_909_737
Son, let me teach you something. Measurbating proves nothing to anyone who actually uses their cameras for semi-professional use like I do. Instead please provide me any relevant experience or skill you possess or ACTUAL real world tests. In my experience, since Iâm certain I’ve bought more cameras than you have and actually used them extensively, my former E-M1 and current GH4 have slightly better high ISO than the D3300. Period.
Steve Huff also proved this was correct using the Sony NEX 7 and the Olympus E-P3, which by the way still doesnât perform as well as the E-M1, the ISO is almost identical, with the m43 sensor edging it out slightly:
http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/2011/10/23/the-sony-nex-7-digital-camera-review-by-steve-huff/
DxOmark does everything right
You are wrong, just as Steven Huff do, you both have wrong idea. It is plain wrong to compare 600Ă600 (you can choose your favourite number) crops straight out the 16Mp and 24Mp sensors, these will be different pictures. The thing you must do the first is to downsample 24Mp image to 16Mp then take your 600Ă600 crop, this will be fair.
Ah now thatâs a load of crap. DxOmark is not the holy Quran or the holy Bible of camera ratings. Anyone worth their salt in photography knows stats on a paper mean nothing to real world use in the field. Measurebating proves nothing. You take a camera, point it at a subject, take a picture.
Then you take another camera at the exact same settings, point it at the same subject at the same distance, take a picture.
Then you zoom in at 100%. The m43 edged out the Sony NEX 7 with cleaner ISO, being a smaller sensor and all. Period. Iâm not sure what âdownsamplingâ magically reduces ISO noise because âdownsampledâ or not the ISO noise doesnât suddenly vanish. Never heard of it. Now the m43 sensor will not out perform a NEX 5n, and neither does the NEX 7.
The problem with the NEX 7 is that is has a poor pixel to surface area ratio. Too many pixels squeezed on an APS-C surface area. Fewer pixels on the NEX 5n has bigger photodiodes, which in turn processes more light, helping to reduce high ISO noise. The Sony A7s is the perfect example of this. 12MP on a full frame surface area, overnight becomes the king of low light.
The D3300 is for amateurs who are casual shooters typically moving up from a bridge camera, and is priced as such. Some consumers actually think because it has all those megapixels squeezed on that Sony NEX 7 APS-C crop sensor that itâs somehow âbetterâ. Itâs not in my experience. It just isnât, and Iâm gonna take the word of a real professional photographer like Steve Huff over yours anyway.
Its not the size of the photodiodes that counts, its the size of the chip. Compare the full images from equal size pixels from Nikon D7000 and D800. They are similar in technology and manufacturing generation too. Needless to say, the D800 performs far better because of the larger sensor.
Try downsampling both images to lets say 10 or 3 Mp. Both will get smoother from the downsampling but noise will be far less on the D800 image because it had far less less noise from the start.
Try cropping the full 36 Mp D800 image from FF to APS-C sized utilization of the sensor. The results will be equal to D7000.
Dont mess up the comparison by comparing head photos of APS-C to half body fotos from a FF sensor. Lets compare equal to equal.
Buddy, you just made all that shit up, lol.
No, down sampling does not smooth out any ISO noise. That’s moronic to embarrass yourself and say zooming into a noisy image makes it less noisy.
No, the Sony NEX 7 does not have better high ISO performance over the GH4 and E-M1.
No, the chip is not the primary variable determining low ISO noise. That’s like saying a different chip is magically going to make the D810 perform as good as the Sony A7s. It’s fiction.
In this topic you’ve really shown you don’t understand what noise is. It has been noted, you can stop now…
“Zooming” and “sampling” are different things. Please…
I don’t get the part about the chip. Chip is the key factor in noise performance… How can you write something like that?
Obviously, D810 with A7S’ chip would perform like the A7S (more or less; most likely better). And with a better chip, it would perform better. You really don’t understand this, do you?
Well Iâm confident there is no data or proof you can muster up to back up that fiction. Your spouting your opinion as fact yet you have no relevant training in advanced electronics or semiconductor technology.
First, âzoomingâ and âsamplingâ are virtually the same. Iâll enlighten you. Zooming disregards pixel count and focuses on a ratio of the frame, whereas âsamplingâ requires special software to zoom into a specific number of pixels. Thats it. Zooming, or magnifying via sampling, does not make ISO noise magically disappear. Case in point:
Sony NEX 7 is noisier than the Sony NEX 5nâŚboth have APS-C sensors and the same Bionz processing chipâŚyet the NEX 7 produces more ISO noise in large part because of the larger number of smaller photodiodes squeezed onto the sensor. Completely squashing your theory.
Also the D810âs chip is a comparable, top-of-the-line 2.13GHz processorâŚconsiderably faster than the 2.4GHz Sony A7s Bionz X chip. Nikon has always had some of the fastest chips on the market because phase detect autofocus makes three processing paths before a subject comes into focus (1. read out from sensor, 2. sends info to lens for spatial object detection, 3. sends back to processor via a two or three color channel rendering process). Hence why the Nikon D800, 810, etc excel at sports shooting. Any faster or better performing chip would require another nano-engineering miracle from Silicon Valley…which hasnât happened yet.
Second, ISO noise is a complicated subject based on semi-conductor technology, of which it seems you have little to no experience in nor have any formal training in that line of work either. Whatâs the difference between a CMOS sensor, MOS sensor, CCD sensor? Which one performs better of the three? Which one is preferred for high-end industrial imaging applications? You canât take photos with a processor chip, so over-generalizing the many parts that goes into making a camera and pinning it on a single processing chip is simply flat out nonsense.
But, you completely missed my point when you butted in this thread. In my fairly extensive experience, my former E-M1 and current GH4 has slightly better high ISO than the Sony NEX 7. Period. I even supplied irrefutable proof using Steve Huffâs own revered professional expertise and real photo samples as well. Deny it all you want but thatâs the facts based on real world use in the field.
Mirrorless cameras in top 10 “compact cameras”? No DSLRs in this category? No shit sherlock…
Yeah but National Geographic’s word carries a lot more weight than yours or mine, hence why getting this kind of press is newsworthy.
This is an article about compact cameras so no wonder why there are no DSLRs there. Even if the D3300 is smaller than some mirrorless, its lenses are bigger. I’m glad that the mirrorless cameras are gaining some respect. However, it’s funny how some of the early adopters that said we didn’t need “full frame” and APS-C or m4/3 are good enough, suddenly are jumping on the Sony A7-train.
I have had Panasonic, Olympus and Fuji mirrorless. Currently in the Fuji camp. I still have a FX DSLR but prefer to bring the mirrorless. On travels I bring the DSLR as I prefer the output of it. In particular with long lenses for brids and wildllife (that’s what we do when traveling).
The article is not about your cameras guys! I am surprised how nobody remarked what was written about the Ricoh GR digital. I guess most people can’t imagine shooting without a monster zoom lens. It was brave enough of them to mention that jewel of a camera. If I had the means, I would buy one, I can’t agree more with NG and their description. Remember, less is more when travelling or doing street photography, I guess most people aren’t from the fixed lens compact generation like the Rollei 35, Contax T series or Ricoh GR.I feel old!
Interestingly there is no RX100 in the list despite the fact that the GR is there. People will argue it is normal considering the sensor size, but having choosen at last a GR, while I was making my choice between the Ricoh and the RX100, the vast majority of the sellers where pushing me to pick up the Sony.