Can a dedicated mirrorless shooter find true happiness with a DSLR?

A lot of it does have to do with having live view on all the time. Even if you turn the camera off between shots, then you are powering up and powering down though I have gotten more shots per battery that way. Pretty sure on my Canon I've gotten more than 500 (haven't shot with it for a while) and that's usually in RAW-- but no live view. When I was doing macro I would do so in mirror lock-up to help reduce vibration as well as to refocus from time to time but that wasn't done all day long. That did involve live view. On a full day of shooting with the X100s I've never needed more than a second battery though I carry a third. Even less often do I need to switch memory cards but sometimes I do as I change the battery. If something should fail on the card I still have half of my shots. At any rate this is so not helping me study.. so off I go and hopefully I will do well on today's test. Later!
 
I'm fairly confident in saying that batteries lasted longer when I was shooting with my Canon DSLRs, but I have rarely been able to drain a battery in a single session of shooting to get a proper handle on exactly how many shots I might expect out of a charge (DSLR or mirrorless).
 
I'm not sure how we can come up with "should be the bare minimum".

500 is the number for which I feel a camera has "good" battery life. Less than that and it bugs me. I think I'm still traumatized from the Fuji x100 I had :) Of course even that wasn't quite as bad as the little DP's from Sigma.

I have a thing about battery life in general on devices. I need to charge my iPhone nearly every day, my Blackberry was once every 4 days. So to me, the iPhone is a step backward. I don't care that it offers me unlimited apps and a camera to boot, for me, as the purpose I use if for, email and phone, the Blackberry kicks it's backside.

I'm sure as battery technologies improve mirror-less camera's will get better battery life.
 
I wish I had not read this thread after my first comment. :)
Now I am very tempted again, especially after having read your remarks about using the Df in the streets (and the beauty of your photos). There is something special about that sensor. I've studied quite a few photos lately comparing shots from various cameras and photos looks less digital. I realize this is a very personal thing.

One thing that bothers me is that the only type of lenses that are both affordable and high-quality are the G-lenses (28mm 1.8, 50mm 1.8, 85 1.8). Works fine on a D800 but on a Df you have to use a front wheel rather than an aperture ring. takes the fun away. ;-)

This afternoon I will pick up a Leica APO Elmarit 180mm 2.8 R lens (and a 2x extender on the way). If I am not extremely happy about the results with my x-pro, I may switch to the Df and buy a smaller second body with a fixed lens as always-with-me camera. The photos I've seen of Canon/Nikon FF with the Leica lens are absolutely stunning. It is my understanding that the extender does not lead to visible quality loss, so the combination will give me a nice reach without having to carry a big telelens.

Anyway, thanks for keeping us posted about your findings, Ray.

Peter
 
peter i think limiting to G lenses is perhaps too narrow. certainly there are some excellent non G lenses and of course leica R are easily adaptable.
 
Thank you. I will look more carefully. BTW: today I found that ROM versions of the Leica R APO Elmarits require a different adapter than non-ROM versions. So no 180mm yet. Just some test shots with the 3.4 APO Telyt R 180mm. A nice lens but no in the same league, as far as I've been able to compare the two.

QUOTE=rbelyell;169564]peter i think limiting to G lenses is perhaps too narrow. certainly there are some excellent non G lenses and of course leica R are easily adaptable.[/QUOTE]
 
ive heard the R 28/2.8, 60/2.8 macro, 90 cron and 100/2.8 macro are interesting as well. i think the zeiss zf 28/2, R 60/2.8 macro and some version of the nikkor 105/2.5 and your 180 would be a killer Df kit.
 
I wish I had not read this thread after my first comment. :)
Now I am very tempted again, especially after having read your remarks about using the Df in the streets (and the beauty of your photos). There is something special about that sensor. I've studied quite a few photos lately comparing shots from various cameras and photos looks less digital. I realize this is a very personal thing.

One thing that bothers me is that the only type of lenses that are both affordable and high-quality are the G-lenses (28mm 1.8, 50mm 1.8, 85 1.8). Works fine on a D800 but on a Df you have to use a front wheel rather than an aperture ring. takes the fun away. ;-)

This afternoon I will pick up a Leica APO Elmarit 180mm 2.8 R lens (and a 2x extender on the way). If I am not extremely happy about the results with my x-pro, I may switch to the Df and buy a smaller second body with a fixed lens as always-with-me camera. The photos I've seen of Canon/Nikon FF with the Leica lens are absolutely stunning. It is my understanding that the extender does not lead to visible quality loss, so the combination will give me a nice reach without having to carry a big telelens.

Anyway, thanks for keeping us posted about your findings, Ray.

Peter

Peter, you can set it to use the rear wheel rather than the front when using G lenses. That's how mine is set.
 
A guy on DPR had a great idea for a firmware fix for those of us who tend to use A mode with auto-ISO a lot. Since it would be user selectable, it shouldn't affect anyone who didn't want to use it or anyone using the camera in a mode other than A with auto-ISO enabled.

In it's normal state, when in A and with auto-ISO turned on, the ISO dial on the left shoulder of the camera establishes the base ISO and both the maximum ISO and minimum shutter speed are changed through the menu. For a quick change between common groups of settings, you have to set up separate "banks" of shooting commands and switch between them (which can be done fairly quickly by enabling one of the programmable buttons to go right to them. But if you just want to tweak the minimum shutter speed for a few shots, you can't. If you want to set the ISO above the current maximum, you can override the auto-ISO max by setting the ISO dial to a higher value, but that doesn't set a new max - it just establishes THAT ISO as though a manual setting.

His suggestion is to provide an option so that when in A mode with auto-ISO turned on, the base ISO (which most people don't need to change much on the fly anyway - the only reason to do so would be to force a higher shutter speed and that's already done with the minimum shutter speed setting) would be controlled by the menu, but the maximum ISO could be controlled by the ISO dial and the minimum shutter speed could be controlled by the shutter speed dial. I'd personally LOVE to be able to set the camera up that way. As it is, I use the exposure comp dial a fair amount but I pretty much never touch the ISO or shutter speed dials - they're essentially decorative items the way I use the camera the vast majority of the time. With that option, they would both become highly useful tools that I'd use reasonably often - not shot to shot, but often when changing the kind of shooting I'm doing or the lens I'm using.

Probably never happen, but I thought it was a good enough idea that it was worth passing on...

-Ray
 
I've really been liking the Df a lot, but have had some pretty serious apprehensions about selling the RX1 in order to be able to buy one. I finally got around to doing a back to back comparison to see if I could see any quality difference without 100% pixel peeping. I'd done a few comparable shots a few nights ago with snow covered trees and street lights. This morning I went back out to my favorite agricultural preserve to do some landscape shooting and see if the detail in the Nikon "D" lenses I've been using were adequate against the downright amazing Zeiss lens on the RX1. These are all shot with the Nikon 35mm f2.0 "D" lens and the RX1 35mm f2.0 lens, although the RX1 is quite clearly wider than advertised, probably closer to about 32mm than 35. The night shots are both at f2.0 - the Zeiss is clearly sharper wide open than the Nikon, but the Nikon is good enough wide open for my standards. Stopped down to f5.6 or f8, as the landscapes are, the differences are somewhat difficult to see even at 100%, let alone in any sort of normal viewing size. I find that viewing shots at full size on a 27" monitor is a pretty good test - it will down-sample the 24mp RX1 file to the same basic resolution as the 16mp Df file, is not quite a pixel peeping resolution, but is large enough to mimic any sort of printing I ever do (generally 12x18 - once in a great while at 20x30). And based on these, I've come to the conclusion that I'm fine with the Df even against the very high standards established by the RX1. As such, I'm going to bite the bullet and put the RX1 up for sale and buy a Df at some point when my loan period runs out. Here are a handful of back to back shots - you can click through to see higher res versions if you'd like. In each case the Df file is presented first, the RX1 second. Apertures are identical for each and shutter speeds and ISO's are identical or quite similar...

View attachment 85585
Df Night Snow-6 by ramboorider1, on Flickr

View attachment 85586
RX1 Night Snow-6 by ramboorider1, on Flickr

View attachment 85587
Df at Stroud-15 by ramboorider1, on Flickr

View attachment 85588
RX1 at Stroud-13 by ramboorider1, on Flickr

View attachment 85589
Df at Stroud-5 by ramboorider1, on Flickr

View attachment 85590
RX1 at Stroud-4 by ramboorider1, on Flickr

View attachment 85591
Df at Stroud-31 by ramboorider1, on Flickr

View attachment 85592
RX1 at Stroud-29 by ramboorider1, on Flickr


-Ray
 
in the end ray, is it the lens interchangeability that is driving this for you? with the IQ so close, i assume thats the main point...

i personally am very curious about your thoughts generally on comparative IQ at 6400+, as overwhelming consensus is Df is the best there ever was...

also wondering what PP program you use. i use LR4+, but am now comparing Capture One Pro 7.

in any event, best of luck in executing your plan!
 
in the end ray, is it the lens interchangeability that is driving this for you? with the IQ so close, i assume thats the main point...

i personally am very curious about your thoughts generally on comparative IQ at 6400+, as overwhelming consensus is Df is the best there ever was...

also wondering what PP program you use. i use LR4+, but am now comparing Capture One Pro 7.

in any event, best of luck in executing your plan!

Yeah, absolutely. 35mm is the longest focal length I'm comfortable with as an every day walk around lens and I actually prefer something a bit wider. The fact that the RX1 is actually closer to 32mm than 35 is probably part of why I learned to like it as much as I did. When I was in Italy in July, I walked around with the RX1, the Nikon A (at 28mm equivalent), and the Fuji XE1 at 21mm equivalent. I shot with the RX1 the most largely because of it's IQ, but I preferred the focal length of the Nikon A and I liked having the 21mm equivalent available, but it was a pretty big camera/lens combination to get it. I also had an m43 body with a couple of longer and zoom lenses along for the ride, but rarely carried them around except if I was heading to shoot something specific that I wanted a longer lens for. I'd have loved to have had all of the wide to normal focal lengths in one body. My question with the Df was whether it would be too big and, if not, whether the lenses that would keep it from being too big would be up to snuff. Well, it turns out the Df isn't too big - I'm very happy to carry it around. And the smaller D lenses I've been using are more than adequate to me. They're not as nice as the Zeiss on the RX1, but they're fine for me. So, yeah, at that point, the ability to walk around with a camera with RX1 level IQ and low light capability with 3-4 small prime lenses is very very compelling to me. I also like a couple of the shooting characteristics of the Df more than the RX1 - primarily the auto-ISO implementation which means I can use the Df for street shooting if it's what I happen to have with me. I did my share of street work with the RX1, but I didn't really like it for that.

I haven't done any real specific high ISO comparisons. I was more than happy with the RX1 at high ISO, so I wouldn't have bought the Df just to marginally improve on that. I was very happy shooting with the RX1 at 6400-10000 and took it to 12,800 a few times without any real drama. That said, I took a few 12,800 shots with the Df that really NEEDED the high ISO and the color rendition and detail that it delivered at that ISO was sort of hard to believe. So that's a net positive, but not a huge one - the RX1 was already so good in that respect. The following is one of the shots I put up in the first post in this thread - shot in a VERY dark hallway at 12,800, and I just can't believe the detail and color rendition in this scarf given how little light was actually present when I shot this:


DF testing-60-Edit by ramboorider1, on Flickr

I'm in the process of selling my GX7 and two m43 prime lenses (which replicate what I'll get for the Df) and assuming the RX1 get's me even close to what I want for it, I can do this without any real pain. So then I'd have the Df with a few primes as my primary walk around kit. I'd have the EM1 with the 12-40, 35-100, 75mm, and 7-14 (with the rear UV filter installed) for ultra-wide, long lenses, and occasional use of a zoom where only a zoom will do. And I'll have the Nikon A as a pocket / street camera when I want to carry next to nothing.

-Ray
 
Good observations Ray. My basic Df kit consists of the Voigtlander 40mm f2, and the 20mm f3.5, and the Nikon DC-Nikkor 105mm f2D. If I want to do street work there is the Nikon 28mm, and for some wildlife or sports the Nikon 180 f2.8D. I also have some macro options, but the two Voigtlanders and the 105 cover most things for me. The Nikon 28 and the two Voigtlanders are small and light, and the basic kit easily fits in a convenient sized bag. I'm thinking of adding a X100s to cover those times when the Nikon really is too big (which is not often), or when I want to carry two cameras, one with a "normal" field of view and the other with extra wide or short tele.
 
An update for those of you I haven't been chatting with elsewhere. It turns out that THIS particular mirrorless shooter could NOT find happiness with a DSLR. I'm sending the Df back rather than taking it on my trip to the Bay Area this Friday.

There was a lot to like about the Df - the sensor really is all it's advertised to be, battery life is amazing, the OVF is wonderful, I LIKE the way it feels in the hand and I like the control options (even though two of the three retro dials were little more than decoration for the way I use the camera). And of course it's VERY responsive, but I guess that's pretty much a given in the DSLR world. I'm pretty sure that if I was to end up buying a DSLR, this would be the one. And I had decided to buy it for a while, to the extent that I sold my much beloved RX1, a move I regret slightly but not enough to buy another used one to get it back given what I've learned in this process...

There were two basic factors that led me away from the DSLR world in particular, and one that's leading me away from full frame altogether. for a while at least:

1. First, as much as I love a good OVF (and I liked the one in the Df a lot), I really ALSO like having a good constant live view setup. And given the quality of today's EVF's, a good EVF combined with a good live view setup (particularly with a flip up screen) is a better combination for me than a great OVF and a barely useable live view. In a perfect world there'd be a combination of a great OVF and a great live view setup. Fuji has that with the fixed lens X100s and X-Pro 1, but the OVF in the X-Pro 1 only really works well with a small few of Fuji's growing lens lineup. So it's not a perfect world and given the imperfect options, I'm still more of a mirrorless guy in this respect.

2. Second, DSLR's require some degree of MAINTENANCE! I did not experience the need to fine tune focus on the lenses I used during this trial run and focus problems do not seem to be a particular issue with the Df (unlike the D800, for example), but this is something I assume I'd run into with a purely PDAF focus system at some point and it's not something I'd particularly want to deal with.

But the bigger deal to me is the way dust get's into the body of a DSLR and moves around, I guess because of all of the air that moves with that very high speed mirror movement. All too much of that dust ended up on the sensor and I found trying to deal with that a hassle I wasn't interested in taking on. I learned about wet sensor cleaning, something I don't think would have to be done often, but would be periodically. And using one of those bulbous air blowers to blow dust off of the sensor and, ideally, out of the camera altogether. I could temporarily get if off of the sensor but I didn't seem able to get it out of the camera body and some would always find it's way onto the sensor after taking a few shots. I'd start a day with a basically clean sensor (maybe a bit of dust near the bottom of the frame where I'd never see it), but within a dozen or so shots, dust spots would start appearing in the sky and I'd have to clone them out during processing. I talked to a number of other DSLR shooters about this and it sounds like the degree of the issue varies and not everyone has the problem to the extent I seem to. But it sounds like its not uncommon to have to clean the sensor daily or at least a few times per week when you're shooting a lot. When I'm shooting a lot, on a trip or some sort of project, is exactly when I would NOT want to have to deal with sensor cleaning. I could probably solve, or learn to manage this problem, but it's not honestly worth it to me. Photography is not my job - it's what I do for fun and relaxation. In four years of shooting a lot of mirrorless cameras I've never once even had to consider the need to clean a sensor. With the Df, it was a daily issue, at least for me. Just not something I want to deal with.

3. More generally, I concluded that the major benefits of full frame cameras don't really come into play unless you're willing to shoot fast glass with them. And in the DSLR world at least, the fast lenses that give you that advantage are very large, very heavy, and very expensive. Maybe it will be different with the A7 / A7r once Sony has developed a line of lenses, but no indication of that yet. And even though I found the Df comfortable enough to carry and shoot with using the small prime lenses I'd decided to try it with, I found it far larger and heavier than I'd want to deal with using larger lenses. I briefly handled it with a Nikon zoom similar in size but still smaller than the fast 24, 28, and 35mm lenses I'd be interested in and I didn't even like holding the camera with one such lens, let alone carrying a bag of them around. I was FINE with the size of the camera when I was using small lenses, but DSLR's earned their reputation for being big and heavy with premium lenses and it's with those lenses that you get the biggest benefits out of the format...

Using the small, slower lenses I was willing to use, the benefits over a good APS system are pretty minimal. One quick example - the Df sensor is roughly one stop better in low light than the Fuji X-trans sensor available in various Fuji APS camera bodies. Maybe a bit more, but about that. That's significant - a big deal. But the lenses I was willing to shoot with were generally about one stop SLOWER than comparable APS format lenses. I was shooting with a Nikon 35mm f2.0 lens, similar to the 35mm f2.0 lens in the RX1 (although not nearly as nice!). This was a reasonable size lens for me to shoot with. But the Fuji 23mm (35 equivalent) is a full stop faster at f1.4. It's slightly larger than the Nikon 35 but the cameras are so much smaller that overall it's also a very comfortable setup to shoot with. And that lens with the Fuji gets you back the one stop of both low light capability that the sensor gives up and the DOF is basically the same between a 23mm at f1.4 and a 35mm at f2.0. So there's little if any advantage to full frame there. To really take advantage of the significantly better sensor in the Df, you'd need to shoot with the Nikon (or Sigma) 35mm f1.4, which then gives you a full stop of benefit. But f1.4 full frame lenses are a good deal larger and heavier and more expensive than f1.4 APS lenses - bigger and costlier than I'd be willing to buy or carry. I could give you similar examples at 24 and 28 and 85mm. Only in the "neutral" focal lengths around 50mm can reasonably fast full frame lenses be built at similar sizes to APS systems (There are Nikon 50 f1.8 lenses abut the same size as the Fuji 35 f1.4, so the full frame lens is actually faster AND smaller. But that's a focal length I almost never use, so not much benefit to me.

So, while there are clearly advantages with a full frame sensor, whether DSLR or mirrorless, at this point the lens options largely negate that benefit unless you're willing to deal with the larger, heavier, more expensive glass that brings out the full potential of full frame. Not to mention with zooms and telephotos, which are huge and weren't even remotely on my radar. The real benefits of full frame frankly comes at a cost I'm not willing to pay. The benefits of a full frame setup don't add up for me, at this point. Maybe Sony will engineer some smaller fast lenses for their mirrorless full frame system or maybe some competitor will come along and do it and maybe I'll take another look. But until that happens, the benefits of full frame aren't there for me, although if you're OK with carrying the big glass, there surely are notable benefits.

So my loaner is going back. I'm going to take the money I got for the RX1 and GX7 and a couple of m43 primes and dive back into the Fuji world with an XT1 and 3-4 primes, more or less the setup I was going to use with the Df. But Fuji has more and better prime lenses than they had when I last relied on it. The 23 and 56mm lenses are pretty stellar additions. So I'm likely to be right back where I was two years ago when the X-Pro 1 and Olympus EM5 showed up on the scene with largely the same sensors as Fuji and Olympus are still using today. Fuji APS for walk around primes, m43 for zooms and longer lenses. Still not sure where I'll end up for ultra-wide - there are good options in both formats. But the lens options are better in both formats now and I have a much better pocket / street camera (Nikon A) than I had back then.

So, another lesson learned - a chance to really experience and flesh out the pros and cons for myself. And I seem to have come full circle. But no DSLR for this mirrorless shooter...

-Ray
 
Strictly from a selfish point of view, I'm glad to read this because your soon to be next camera is the one I'm interested in - so the more points of view I read the more it will help me consolidate my G.A.S. until I can finally see one in real life.

One of my favorite things about you Ray, is that you're always open minded. :drinks:
 
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