- Messages
- 2,490
- Name
- Andrew
- Edit My Images
- No
Warning - long post !
Hi all. Not sure if this will be of help to anyone, but I’m in the very lucky position to own all three systems above, and so as I’ve had my latest system (the Fuji X) for about 4 months now, I thought it was time to express my thoughts / opinions on all systems.
A little bit of background. I’ve been shooting for over 40 years now and the vast majority of that has been solely with Nikon (first film then digital) with a very brief spell in the late 70’s early 80’s with Pentax. Whilst I’ve always (luckily) been fully employed outside of photography, I have over the years done many weddings (up to 20 a year at one time), christenings, portraits etc. although I’ve stopped much of that and these days shoot purely for personal pleasure.
I won’t get into why I have 3 systems, but I just do, and have started using each of them for specific uses (more later). So, my systems surround the following – Nikon D500, Olympus OMD EM1 MK11 (and MK1) and a Fuji X-T2. Each body is arguably the top of its particular niche. I’ll break my “review” down into sections for easier reading.
Body Size and handling
For me (and surprisingly) the Olympus is my favourite body in the hand. It’s just beautiful to hold, with a perfect weight and great hand grip. The Fuji X-T2 second, and relegated to second due to the grip not being quite big enough for my hands (slightly remedied by the optional Arca small grip for the X-T2). The Nikon D500 is last, but for a DSLR, is beautifully crafted with a fantastic grip, but is obviously much larger and heavier than the Olympus or Fuji body and it’s that which relegates it to last place.
System lenses and accessories
It’s close one this, but once again, I would have to put the Olympus first. It has a massive range of lenses (both consumer and professional) from both its own and Panasonic stables, starting at 14mm (7-14mm F2.8 Pro) equivalent right the way though to 800mm (Panasonic 100-400) and everything in between. It also has a full suite of flash guns, battery grips, extension tubes, etc.
Second would be the Nikon system, it’s a very mature and massive system and the only one available with the exotic fast primes (300, 400, 500 & 600 if that’s your thing), whereas the Olympus only has the 300mm F4 (600mm eqv), and at present Fuji nothing, as well as PC lenses. The downside of the Nikon system is that dedicated APC-C lenses of pro quality are very thin on the ground, and Nikon certainly hasn’t done much to push APS-C as a professional format in recent years, and is pretty much forcing users to switch to FF lenses, which are both very large and heavy. Not really something you need when the body is already bigger and heavier than it’s mirrorless counterparts. However a plus is in addition to Nikon own brand, lens manufacturers like Sigma, Tamron and Tokina make a huge suite of lenses for the Nikon F mount (and other DSLR brands too).
The Fuji is last, but that is really only down to the lens choices. Now to be fair, the Fuji X-System is the youngest of the all, so Fuji have to be applauded for getting as many lenses as they have available in such a short space of time. The real pain for me though is the “standard” zooms, with Fuji forcing you to the expensive and heavy 16-55 F2.8 if you want the “24mm” wide-angle coverage that all other systems give you as a starting point. The Fuji “consumer” lenses (albeit good ones) – the 18-55 and 18-135, all start at 27mm effective meaning I usually need to take a wide lens (my Fuji 10-24) with me on trips, rather than just my superb Olympus 12-100 F4 IS (24-200 effective) on the EM1 11. Of course this is personal and YMMV.
Handling & Features.
Now then, this is going to polarise opinions, as I’m sure everyone will expect me to say that the Fuji X-T2 with its external dials would be the best handling camera, but for me (and just me), it’s the worst. I know lots of people love the external dials and retro handling, and the aperture around the lens ring, but for me it just sort of gets in the way. I much prefer the Nikon and Olympus handling and being able to change aperture, shutter speed, ISO and even EV valves using the main and sub command dials I find much more intuitive. Between the Nikon and the Olympus, I’ve have to give the Olympus the nod on handling just due to the size and weight, the fully articulating screen and the absolutely mind blowing array of the buttons that can be programmed to make the camera operate exactly as you like.
As far as features, well it’s the Olympus (by a country mile). It does everything the other two does, but adds in, Focus stacking & bracketing, Live Time and Live Bulb modes, Perspective correction (though only for JPEGS), pro-capture, built in focus limiter mind blowing in-body image stabilization and the fab High Res mode. The Fuji is good, and the EVF probably just bests the one in the Olympus, but I do love the way the Fuji moves the viewfinder settings when shooting in portrait mode, and the manual focus aids. Also, credit goes to the Fuji for USB charging and when using the optional power grip, charging the batteries via the AC adapter without having to remove the batteries. Next to the two new Mirrorless upstarts, the Nikon’s feature set is pretty limited and is pretty much pure DSLR, and relies on its stunning AF module (the best of the bunch) and image quality (more next).
Image quality
For me the Nikon gives the best image quality and certainly at High ISO. It’s very slim between the Nikon and the Fuji, but above ISO 6400 I find the “grain” in the D500 images just much more acceptable. I tend therefore to use the Nikon more for wildlife shooting where the 10fps, blindingly fast and accurate AF is almost bordering on AI, and the superb high ISO (for a crop sensor), means I can shoot regularly at ISO 12,800 (and above) and still get cracking images.
The Fuji is second, but with a caveat – Lightroom. Lightroom is my default image processor and has been for many years, and both the Olympus and Nikon raw files are handled superbly in this package, however the Fuji RAF files take much more to get the best out of them, and really demands another raw processor (Capture 1 etc.) to see what the Fuji is really capable of, and I just don’t have the inclination to learn a new piece of software. However given some time and careful processing the Fuji is capable of stunning results, and the film simulations are much more useful than I first though would be.
Lastly it’s the Olympus, but not by as big a margin as you would think. A lot of people say that M4/3 is at least a stop behind the best APS-C, but I’m just not consistently seeing that. Sure APS-C is better (pure physics), but at best in the “standard” ISO range up to and including ISO6400, I would put it at nearer ½ stop at best. Once past 6400 into 12,800 and 25,600 territory, then yes, about a stop is what I would see then, but again, if that’s the case I would use the Nikon. The Olympus partly makes up for this with its world beating image stabilization, which for non-moving subjects, allows me to shoot MANY stops slower than I would normally - with ANY lens.
So which would I pick as my winner. We’ll surprisingly it’s the Olympus, as whilst not the very best on image quality, bests the other two camera for handling (IMO) and feature set, and is catered for by some stunning lenses in both the Olympus and Panasonic ranges.
So, then runner up – Nikon or Fuji ? We’ll as a Nikon man I’m bound to say the D500, but in this instance I’ll pick the XT-2 for two reasons. One, firmware updates. Like Olympus, Fuji seems to really reward their loyal base with many updates and new features (it took Nikon nearly 18 months to fix Snapbridge and it’s still flaky). Secondly, lenses. Whilst the Nikon arsenal is bigger, like I said earlier Fuji have designed all their lenses around an APS-C sensor. This means that the tradition lenses such as the 35mm, 50mm and 85mm, are much smaller and faster than their Nikon counterparts. Couple that with price. For example, a Fuji 35mm equiv F1.4 (23mm F1.4) is currently £699 with the Nikon equivalent (24mm F1.4) £1,499. The 85mm equivalent is similar – The Fuji (56mm F1.2 R) £768, with the Nikon equiv (58mm F1.4 – so not even as fast) is £1,347.
So for me, I use the Olympus as my everyday system. The Fuji for landscapes and where I have time to compose and take my time, and the Nikon for sports and wildlife.
Most of what I've written is probably completely at odds with on line reviews and most other peoples experiences, but having the opportunity to compare them all side by side, I stick by my findings. Apologies for the long post but I thought it might help some people starting out.
Hi all. Not sure if this will be of help to anyone, but I’m in the very lucky position to own all three systems above, and so as I’ve had my latest system (the Fuji X) for about 4 months now, I thought it was time to express my thoughts / opinions on all systems.
A little bit of background. I’ve been shooting for over 40 years now and the vast majority of that has been solely with Nikon (first film then digital) with a very brief spell in the late 70’s early 80’s with Pentax. Whilst I’ve always (luckily) been fully employed outside of photography, I have over the years done many weddings (up to 20 a year at one time), christenings, portraits etc. although I’ve stopped much of that and these days shoot purely for personal pleasure.
I won’t get into why I have 3 systems, but I just do, and have started using each of them for specific uses (more later). So, my systems surround the following – Nikon D500, Olympus OMD EM1 MK11 (and MK1) and a Fuji X-T2. Each body is arguably the top of its particular niche. I’ll break my “review” down into sections for easier reading.
Body Size and handling
For me (and surprisingly) the Olympus is my favourite body in the hand. It’s just beautiful to hold, with a perfect weight and great hand grip. The Fuji X-T2 second, and relegated to second due to the grip not being quite big enough for my hands (slightly remedied by the optional Arca small grip for the X-T2). The Nikon D500 is last, but for a DSLR, is beautifully crafted with a fantastic grip, but is obviously much larger and heavier than the Olympus or Fuji body and it’s that which relegates it to last place.
System lenses and accessories
It’s close one this, but once again, I would have to put the Olympus first. It has a massive range of lenses (both consumer and professional) from both its own and Panasonic stables, starting at 14mm (7-14mm F2.8 Pro) equivalent right the way though to 800mm (Panasonic 100-400) and everything in between. It also has a full suite of flash guns, battery grips, extension tubes, etc.
Second would be the Nikon system, it’s a very mature and massive system and the only one available with the exotic fast primes (300, 400, 500 & 600 if that’s your thing), whereas the Olympus only has the 300mm F4 (600mm eqv), and at present Fuji nothing, as well as PC lenses. The downside of the Nikon system is that dedicated APC-C lenses of pro quality are very thin on the ground, and Nikon certainly hasn’t done much to push APS-C as a professional format in recent years, and is pretty much forcing users to switch to FF lenses, which are both very large and heavy. Not really something you need when the body is already bigger and heavier than it’s mirrorless counterparts. However a plus is in addition to Nikon own brand, lens manufacturers like Sigma, Tamron and Tokina make a huge suite of lenses for the Nikon F mount (and other DSLR brands too).
The Fuji is last, but that is really only down to the lens choices. Now to be fair, the Fuji X-System is the youngest of the all, so Fuji have to be applauded for getting as many lenses as they have available in such a short space of time. The real pain for me though is the “standard” zooms, with Fuji forcing you to the expensive and heavy 16-55 F2.8 if you want the “24mm” wide-angle coverage that all other systems give you as a starting point. The Fuji “consumer” lenses (albeit good ones) – the 18-55 and 18-135, all start at 27mm effective meaning I usually need to take a wide lens (my Fuji 10-24) with me on trips, rather than just my superb Olympus 12-100 F4 IS (24-200 effective) on the EM1 11. Of course this is personal and YMMV.
Handling & Features.
Now then, this is going to polarise opinions, as I’m sure everyone will expect me to say that the Fuji X-T2 with its external dials would be the best handling camera, but for me (and just me), it’s the worst. I know lots of people love the external dials and retro handling, and the aperture around the lens ring, but for me it just sort of gets in the way. I much prefer the Nikon and Olympus handling and being able to change aperture, shutter speed, ISO and even EV valves using the main and sub command dials I find much more intuitive. Between the Nikon and the Olympus, I’ve have to give the Olympus the nod on handling just due to the size and weight, the fully articulating screen and the absolutely mind blowing array of the buttons that can be programmed to make the camera operate exactly as you like.
As far as features, well it’s the Olympus (by a country mile). It does everything the other two does, but adds in, Focus stacking & bracketing, Live Time and Live Bulb modes, Perspective correction (though only for JPEGS), pro-capture, built in focus limiter mind blowing in-body image stabilization and the fab High Res mode. The Fuji is good, and the EVF probably just bests the one in the Olympus, but I do love the way the Fuji moves the viewfinder settings when shooting in portrait mode, and the manual focus aids. Also, credit goes to the Fuji for USB charging and when using the optional power grip, charging the batteries via the AC adapter without having to remove the batteries. Next to the two new Mirrorless upstarts, the Nikon’s feature set is pretty limited and is pretty much pure DSLR, and relies on its stunning AF module (the best of the bunch) and image quality (more next).
Image quality
For me the Nikon gives the best image quality and certainly at High ISO. It’s very slim between the Nikon and the Fuji, but above ISO 6400 I find the “grain” in the D500 images just much more acceptable. I tend therefore to use the Nikon more for wildlife shooting where the 10fps, blindingly fast and accurate AF is almost bordering on AI, and the superb high ISO (for a crop sensor), means I can shoot regularly at ISO 12,800 (and above) and still get cracking images.
The Fuji is second, but with a caveat – Lightroom. Lightroom is my default image processor and has been for many years, and both the Olympus and Nikon raw files are handled superbly in this package, however the Fuji RAF files take much more to get the best out of them, and really demands another raw processor (Capture 1 etc.) to see what the Fuji is really capable of, and I just don’t have the inclination to learn a new piece of software. However given some time and careful processing the Fuji is capable of stunning results, and the film simulations are much more useful than I first though would be.
Lastly it’s the Olympus, but not by as big a margin as you would think. A lot of people say that M4/3 is at least a stop behind the best APS-C, but I’m just not consistently seeing that. Sure APS-C is better (pure physics), but at best in the “standard” ISO range up to and including ISO6400, I would put it at nearer ½ stop at best. Once past 6400 into 12,800 and 25,600 territory, then yes, about a stop is what I would see then, but again, if that’s the case I would use the Nikon. The Olympus partly makes up for this with its world beating image stabilization, which for non-moving subjects, allows me to shoot MANY stops slower than I would normally - with ANY lens.
So which would I pick as my winner. We’ll surprisingly it’s the Olympus, as whilst not the very best on image quality, bests the other two camera for handling (IMO) and feature set, and is catered for by some stunning lenses in both the Olympus and Panasonic ranges.
So, then runner up – Nikon or Fuji ? We’ll as a Nikon man I’m bound to say the D500, but in this instance I’ll pick the XT-2 for two reasons. One, firmware updates. Like Olympus, Fuji seems to really reward their loyal base with many updates and new features (it took Nikon nearly 18 months to fix Snapbridge and it’s still flaky). Secondly, lenses. Whilst the Nikon arsenal is bigger, like I said earlier Fuji have designed all their lenses around an APS-C sensor. This means that the tradition lenses such as the 35mm, 50mm and 85mm, are much smaller and faster than their Nikon counterparts. Couple that with price. For example, a Fuji 35mm equiv F1.4 (23mm F1.4) is currently £699 with the Nikon equivalent (24mm F1.4) £1,499. The 85mm equivalent is similar – The Fuji (56mm F1.2 R) £768, with the Nikon equiv (58mm F1.4 – so not even as fast) is £1,347.
So for me, I use the Olympus as my everyday system. The Fuji for landscapes and where I have time to compose and take my time, and the Nikon for sports and wildlife.
Most of what I've written is probably completely at odds with on line reviews and most other peoples experiences, but having the opportunity to compare them all side by side, I stick by my findings. Apologies for the long post but I thought it might help some people starting out.
Last edited:
) and whilst I loved having the external dials for the cool retro factor, in real world usage they're not as quick or intuitive as the Nikon and Olympus imo. Still very cool though. I really didn't like the Fuji direction buttons on the back of the XT1, have they sorted them with the XT2? They felt a bit cheap and mushy to me, even the updated ones. 
