Mirrorless cameras and lenses
Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2021 11:59 am
Would welcome any thoughts on the following. I currently use a DSLR (with APS-C size sensor) and 100mm macro lens. This works fine, but advancing age and decrepitude means that I’m the 1.5kg combined weight is increasingly inconvenient to lug around. So I’m looking at mirrorless options.
Although I’ve used Canon for some years, their mirrorless camera range doesn’t attract me because their offering of lenses tailored to a lightweight camera body is so limited. Using my existing EF lenses with an adapter would at least partly negate the object of the exercise weight-wise, and a heavy lens on a light camera body would feel unbalanced.
The Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mk III seems to have a lot of plus points, but the longest compatible macro lens in their range is a 60mm one, which with the four-thirds sensor they use gives a 120mm full-frame equivalent field of view. This falls a bit short of replicating the 150mm 35mm equivalent FOV I get with my present camera + macro lens, which I rather like. Apparently their teleconverters aren’t compatible with the 60mm macro, so can’t try that as an option. I gather that there is a sort of “digital zoom” function where the camera effectively crops the photo for you from the RAW image when saving the JPEG, but have no idea of how well that works in practice.
Does anyone have any other suggestions on mirrorless solutions which might enable me in effect to replicate what I’m using at present whilst carrying much less weight around?
Incidentally, from a recent look at the Canon website both of their 100mm macro lenses seem to have disappeared, as well as the 300mm f/4. It seems curious that they should be reducing their EF range without making corresponding enhancements to their mirrorless-tailored offering – any thoughts as to why this is?
Although I’ve used Canon for some years, their mirrorless camera range doesn’t attract me because their offering of lenses tailored to a lightweight camera body is so limited. Using my existing EF lenses with an adapter would at least partly negate the object of the exercise weight-wise, and a heavy lens on a light camera body would feel unbalanced.
The Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mk III seems to have a lot of plus points, but the longest compatible macro lens in their range is a 60mm one, which with the four-thirds sensor they use gives a 120mm full-frame equivalent field of view. This falls a bit short of replicating the 150mm 35mm equivalent FOV I get with my present camera + macro lens, which I rather like. Apparently their teleconverters aren’t compatible with the 60mm macro, so can’t try that as an option. I gather that there is a sort of “digital zoom” function where the camera effectively crops the photo for you from the RAW image when saving the JPEG, but have no idea of how well that works in practice.
Does anyone have any other suggestions on mirrorless solutions which might enable me in effect to replicate what I’m using at present whilst carrying much less weight around?
Incidentally, from a recent look at the Canon website both of their 100mm macro lenses seem to have disappeared, as well as the 300mm f/4. It seems curious that they should be reducing their EF range without making corresponding enhancements to their mirrorless-tailored offering – any thoughts as to why this is?