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Simon Gilks

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Hi all,

New to this forum so hello from me.

I am by no means a professional photographer. I spend my time capturing precious family moments and I also as a hobby like taking photo's of cycling events and motorbikes, mainly WSB and MotoGP. I purchased my first 'proper' camera a few years back which was a Sony A58. My main lens has broken and Sony have discontinued the lenses because of a new mounting system.

So I am in a dilema, do I buy second hand lenses and make the most of the very small selection I can find, or do I upgrade?

I have been looking at lots of camera's both DSLR and mirrorless and most shops are pushing me down the mirrorless route. What would you recommend?

The budget I have is circa £900 body only or upto £1500 with a couple of lenses.

The shops I have been to have suggested:

Sony A7 II
Panasonic G80
Fuji XT20

Any advice on these, or something else altogether would be greatly appreciated.
 
Which lens did you have?
Sony are still making and selling A Mount lenses (which the A58 uses), so I'm not sure why you would think Sony have discontinued them (other than long standing internet rumours that 'A Mount is dead' which have existed for many years).
 
IMO, lens selection/prices are one of the weak areas w/ Sony, especially at the long end for wildlife/motorsports/sports. I would be very tempted to move to Nikon or Canon.
 
Simon Gilks said:
Sony A7 II
Panasonic G80
Fuji XT20

Any advice on these, or something else altogether would be greatly appreciated.
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sk66 said:
IMO, lens selection/prices are one of the weak areas w/ Sony, especially at the long end for wildlife/motorsports/sports. I would be very tempted to move to Nikon or Canon.
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Personally for various reasons I'd recommend mirrorless unless there's a specific reason for going for a conventional DSLR.

I think that the Sony A7x lens range is improving almost weekly but some are at the higher end of the market and (no surprise) have higher end prices. There is the possibility of adapting lenses or even using old manual focus lenses but how this will work, if at all, for the OP is his decision. I do have to say that I'm very happy with the actual image quality I get from my A7 and the three native Sony lenses I have all seem excellent and I'm also very happy with the image quality I can get when using old and cheap film era manual lenses.

I've not had a G80, I used to have the similar and previous G7 and currently have a GX80. These cameras are very responsive and the image quality is IMO very good and there are some excellent lenses some of which crop up on the used market quite regularly at reasonable prices. All but one of my Micro Four Thirds lenses were bought used and I think that it's a system that deserves a serious look.
 
General consensus is that mirrorless have relatively weaker autofocus performance for high-speed focussing needs, examples of which would be sports or children. If you want a new camera anyway, then of the selection you present I'd probably pick the A7 for the full frame sensor offering great image quality and because adapters can be bought that will allow other lenses to be used.

Your comment about used sony/minolta lenses puzzles me, because there are lots of good used lenses readily available more cheaply than you'll find for Nikon or Canon. I have an A58 and minolta legacy lenses work well, however if you were looking for more specialised lenses (i.e. 600mm f4 etc for sports) then you'd be better off going to Canikon now, because those lenses won't be coming for Sony, Fuji or Panasonic any time soon.
 
ancient_mariner said:
General consensus is that mirrorless have relatively weaker autofocus performance for high-speed focussing needs, examples of which would be sports or children. If you want a new camera anyway, then of the selection you present I'd probably pick the A7 for the full frame sensor offering great image quality and because adapters can be bought that will allow other lenses to be used.
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If you're talking the best tracking DSLR's then maybe that's the consensus but most people don't have the very best tracking DSLR's so we or rather the OP needs to be specific when comparing cameras and more realistically when comparing camera and lens combinations because that's what matters. I think that the OP should think of real world scenarios rather than theoretical possibilities of camera and lens combinations and choose kit accordingly.

And whilst we're talking focus performance your average mirrorless camera may or may not track as well as your average DSLR but it'll probably have more consistent and accurate focus with no need to micro adjust lenses. That is something to consider too. For focus acquisition the fastest focusing camera and lens combination is usually the latest mirrorless offering... but that's not a lot of use unless the OP is interested in buying that specific combination :D

Maybe the OP could check YouTube for example vids of the camera and lens combinations he's interested in being used for the sort of subjects he's interested in.

ancient_mariner said:
Your comment about used sony/minolta lenses puzzles me, because there are lots of good used lenses readily available more cheaply than you'll find for Nikon or Canon. I have an A58 and minolta legacy lenses work well, however if you were looking for more specialised lenses (i.e. 600mm f4 etc for sports) then you'd be better off going to Canikon now, because those lenses won't be coming for Sony, Fuji or Panasonic any time soon.
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One way of keeping costs down could be to buy AF lenses that'll see a lot of use and buy cheaper MF lenses for other less frequent uses or for which AF may not be necessary, such as macro, portrait, landscape etc. I don't know and I'm not going to check but I'd imagine that there could well be decent manual lenses available cheaper than some more modern cheap AF but rather ho hum options. Other than that food for thought maybe a 600mm would test the budget somewhat.
 
woof woof said:
One way of keeping costs down could be to buy AF lenses that'll see a lot of use and buy cheaper MF lenses for other less frequent uses or for which AF may not be necessary, such as macro, portrait, landscape etc. I don't know and I'm not going to check but I'd imagine that there could well be decent manual lenses available cheaper than some more modern cheap AF but rather ho hum options. Other than that food for thought maybe a 600mm would test the budget somewhat.
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The beercan is a great 70-210 f4 lens, and available in AF for around £65 - the equivalent Nikon runs around 3 times that - no need for manual focus. The Mino 28-85 (often around £40) is also good, ditto the 50 1.7, and the Sony version of the 50 1.4 can be had for around £120 and is WAY ahead of the equivalent Nikons in terms of image quality (I sent a Nikon 50 1.8G back because the image quality was so poor by comparison). There's a Sony 18-55 SAM II kit lens on ebay for 50 euros plus P&P, and that's a really good basic zoom.

Rule of thumb for minolta lenses is don't buy a zoom with either 80mm or 100mm at the long end, but otherwise the lenses are generally very good to excellent.
 
Hi all, thanks for the input. I managed to source a nearly new kit lens from LCE. However I have a new question. If I wanted a good all day lens for when out and about what would you suggest? For example I was at the zoo yesterday and found I was continuously swapping between my 18-55 and 55-200. Is there a lens I can get that will do both?

I was looking online and saw some but they didn't have great reviews and none of them had image stabilisation. Can you suggest something that for things like that it will do everything?
 
Simon Gilks said:
Hi all, thanks for the input. I managed to source a nearly new kit lens from LCE. However I have a new question. If I wanted a good all day lens for when out and about what would you suggest? For example I was at the zoo yesterday and found I was continuously swapping between my 18-55 and 55-200. Is there a lens I can get that will do both?

I was looking online and saw some but they didn't have great reviews and none of them had image stabilisation. Can you suggest something that for things like that it will do everything?
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The best 'all day' lens for the A58 is the Sony Zeiss 16-80, equivalent to 24-120mm in 35mm. Sony lenses don't have image stabilisation because it's built into the camera body so that you get stabilisation with every lens used.

I have a sigma HSM 18-250, which is more versatile, but gives lower quality images as is normal for any superzoom - the question to ask is what compromises are you willing to accept for maximum flexibility. I'd be happy to flog the 18-250 (still have the box somewhere) for a sensible price, so if you're interested then let me know and I'll bung it in the classifieds with sample shots.
 
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