Small DSLR budget - stick with M4/3?

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ianjmatt

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Ian
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I mainly do film photography, but need to do some product shots for a client (I run a marketing agency). I have a Lumix GF2 that I mainly use for street photography, but have become frustrated with the lack of viewfinder. So I thought of killing two birds with one stone and picking up a second hand DSLR - such as Canon 20D or similar. I have a budget of £200 - the other option is to go and get a second hand G1 or G2 instead and stick with the M4/3 format.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.
 
I have a G1 and a 5D and previously owned a 20D for about 7 years.

I'd say that if pixel peeping the 20D IQ will beat the G1 but in whole images there's little in it except at the highest ISO's. The same is true G1 v 5D.

One advantage the G1 has over larger sensor DSLR's is that for the same FoV you'll be using wider lenses and you'll get slightly deeper DoF at equiv settings. That could be an advantage when doing product shots.

I guess you could pick up a G1 for something like £80-£100 and use existing lenses or if going for another lens via a £10 adapter mate it to a manual legacy lens costing £10-£40. So, you could be up and running for maybe £80-150. You may get a 20D for £100-150 and after adding a lens I think you'll be able to do it for around the £140-200 mark so cost wise the MFT system may come in cheaper.
 
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I am also mainly a film photographer. I recently bought a Nikon D3200 which I plan to use with some of my older manual lenses.

Whilst looking for options I was considering the Samsung NX10 or NX11 as these can be used with lenses from almost all other makes with adaptors. If you are doing product photography you can do it with manual focus and you might have suitable lenses already.


Steve.
 
Yes - I was wondering about that. My OM lenses would work well (the 50mm is super sharp!).
 
I was going to get a Samsung and use it with my Nikon and Pentax lenses but I found the D3200 for a good price.

If that hadn't turned up I would probably have a Samsung by now. It has the advantage of a APS-C size sensor so you get the same crop that you would with a DX DSLR rather than the smaller sensor in the 4/3 cameras.

The disadvantage might be that the viewfinder is electronic rather than optical but I think they have improved a lot since I last tried one.


Steve.
 
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ianjmatt said:
Yes - I was wondering about that. My OM lenses would work well (the 50mm is super sharp!).
Click to expand...

You can use OM lenses via an adapter, no problem. On MFT manual focus with OM's is a doddle as you can get a magnified view, I do this all the time. There's more of an issue focusing them on some DSLR's as on some isn't an easy thing to do. You can get AF confirmation adapters for use on DSLR's though and of course if the subject is big in the frame manual focus may well be a lot easier.
 
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