What to Buy?

[FalkirkEagle]

Hello all,

I'm in the midst of simplifying my camera gear in hopes of getting one camera that does video as well as it does stills.

I currently own the following:

Sony NX80 camcorder

Canon XC10 camcorder

Canon EOS M6 Mk II with EF-M 18-150 and 11-22 lenses.

I bought the NX80 last summer (brand new) and found it was too much camera for my needs. I also bought the XC10 used and found I didn't like it that much. I like the M6, but don't care for the 4K video it produces, and it seems like Canon are going to be discontinuing EF-M lenses and EOS-M series cameras soon.

I did try to get a trade-in value for all this from a retailer, but what they offered was insulting and disrespectful - like they wanted to steal my stuff while still making big profits on what I was interested in trading for. 

I won't try to sell my stuff on eBay. Their listing fees are extortionate and if you list but your item doesn't sell, you lose money. Plus, eBay are flooded with listings for Canon EOS M6 and M6 Mark II cameras, so I'd likely not be able to sell my M6 camera and lenses without practically giving them away. And forget selling on Facebook - tons of tire-kickers, losers who expect you to give your stuff away for nothing, or people who have no intention of buying anything but use the buy and sell feature to try and harvest your personal details like home address, email address and phone number. 

So what could I buy to simplify things and be reasonably future-proof? Without losing my shirt on what I've bought? And give me decent stills and quality?

 

 

[webrunner5]

You need to state what plans you intend to do with it. Fun stuff, YouTube, Doc etc. One camera can't do it all. And yes you will loose you ass on video stuff. It is Expensive as hell to get into it in any serious way. Tech is moving crazy fast these days to break even.

[kye]

On 2/4/2022 at 3:57 AM, FalkirkEagle said:

Hello all,

I'm in the midst of simplifying my camera gear in hopes of getting one camera that does video as well as it does stills.

I currently own the following:

Sony NX80 camcorder

Canon XC10 camcorder

Canon EOS M6 Mk II with EF-M 18-150 and 11-22 lenses.

I bought the NX80 last summer (brand new) and found it was too much camera for my needs. I also bought the XC10 used and found I didn't like it that much. I like the M6, but don't care for the 4K video it produces, and it seems like Canon are going to be discontinuing EF-M lenses and EOS-M series cameras soon.

I did try to get a trade-in value for all this from a retailer, but what they offered was insulting and disrespectful - like they wanted to steal my stuff while still making big profits on what I was interested in trading for. 

I won't try to sell my stuff on eBay. Their listing fees are extortionate and if you list but your item doesn't sell, you lose money. Plus, eBay are flooded with listings for Canon EOS M6 and M6 Mark II cameras, so I'd likely not be able to sell my M6 camera and lenses without practically giving them away. And forget selling on Facebook - tons of tire-kickers, losers who expect you to give your stuff away for nothing, or people who have no intention of buying anything but use the buy and sell feature to try and harvest your personal details like home address, email address and phone number. 

So what could I buy to simplify things and be reasonably future-proof? Without losing my shirt on what I've bought? And give me decent stills and quality?

@webrunner5 makes good points.

The resale value of tech is minimal.  I also have an XC10 that lies unused and I should sell, but I have accepted that I will only recoup a small percentage of what I paid for it.

In terms of what you should buy, it really is dependent on what you shoot, how you shoot it, and what you're planning to do with the images.

Lots of knowledgable people here willing to give you advice, but the more you can tell us about your needs the more useful and tailored that advice will be.

[MrSMW]

What both of the above said.

Otherwise, if what you currently have is not working for you and cannot work for you, bite the bullet, take the hit and offload it to someone like MBP if UK/EU or KEH if US.

But nothing is ‘future proof’ when buying current tech.

Leica or Hasselblad probably hold their value best for no other reason than their heritage, but as for the rest…

The single best way to minimise the cost though is buy used.

I try and buy as much as I can used these days…

A colleague of mine bought a brand new Panny S1R a couple of years back at full retail price of around 3500 euros, plus 2 genuine batteries.

Barely used it in those 2 years and sold the lot to me for 1500 euros.

The S1R is still I believe one of very few cameras that has a score of 100 on DXO.

Used ‘like new’ S1H for 2250 euros last year.

Find me a combo like that for under 3750 euros!

Now I am not saying that the S1R or S1H is the camera for you, but simply highlighting that there are many stupidly good options out there if you don’t buy used.

But as above, what do you need it to do and any preferences over 4/3, APSC, FF etc?

[kye]

4 minutes ago, MrSMW said:

The single best way to minimise the cost though is buy used.

+1

If you take your time and buy well you can even make money on some things.  It depends on where the product is in it's lifetime though, a 1-year old camera will go down in value over the next year, but a 40-year-old lens might stay the same or even go up.

[MrSMW]

Indeed. For anyone that doesn’t need AF, purchasing ‘vintage’ lenses can be a near zero cost…or even make a profit over time approach.

I need AF at least some of the time and being something of a minimalist, don’t wish to carry more lenses than I need so anything non-AF doesn’t work for me, but that’s just my use case scenario.

Plenty if used AF lenses at decent prices, native or adapted.

Just don’t try adapting to Panasonic and expect anything more than 1/10 AF 🤪

[kye]

38 minutes ago, MrSMW said:

Indeed. For anyone that doesn’t need AF, purchasing ‘vintage’ lenses can be a near zero cost…or even make a profit over time approach.

I need AF at least some of the time and being something of a minimalist, don’t wish to carry more lenses than I need so anything non-AF doesn’t work for me, but that’s just my use case scenario.

Plenty if used AF lenses at decent prices, native or adapted.

Just don’t try adapting to Panasonic and expect anything more than 1/10 AF 🤪

Well, I'd say more like 5/10, but yeah.  

Even then, it pays to understand your needs.  For some, AF-S might suffice, where you're filming yourself, using the remote, doing short clips, and not moving much.

Film-making really is a pursuit of perfection (of the aesthetic, not the technical) while being surrounded by compromises in every way at literally every turn.  So many things are inter-related and make decisions hard due to the complexities and far-reaching consequences.

When I was buying my GH5 for run-n-gun travel, I was also considering an A73.  On the surface the difference was AF capability, where obviously the Sony was great and the GH5 very not great, but the deeper ramifications revealed themselves the more I thought about it.
I would have paired the A73 with the 16-35/4 and used the crop and zoom functions to extend it a little, giving me a one-lens AF solution with great low-light, but would have been limited to 8-bit codecs.  The GH5 would require primes to get the DoF and low-light I was chasing, but had the 10-bit ALL-I codec options.  
In the end, it boils down to a completely different style of shooting - manual focus primes and lots of flexibility in post vs AF zoom with less.  Almost a videographer vs cinematographer style choice.  Yet, both were leading, well-liked, mirrorless cameras at the time, and were compared often on quite superficial terms, without really considering what it would do to the workflow of the user.

[MrSMW]

Meet in the middle and agree on 'somewhere around 3/10' 😜

[ac6000cw]

On 2/3/2022 at 7:57 PM, FalkirkEagle said:

Hello all,

I'm in the midst of simplifying my camera gear in hopes of getting one camera that does video as well as it does stills.

I currently own the following:

Sony NX80 camcorder

Canon XC10 camcorder

Canon EOS M6 Mk II with EF-M 18-150 and 11-22 lenses.

I bought the NX80 last summer (brand new) and found it was too much camera for my needs. I also bought the XC10 used and found I didn't like it that much. I like the M6, but don't care for the 4K video it produces, and it seems like Canon are going to be discontinuing EF-M lenses and EOS-M series cameras soon.

 

On 2/3/2022 at 7:57 PM, FalkirkEagle said:

So what could I buy to simplify things and be reasonably future-proof? Without losing my shirt on what I've bought? And give me decent stills and quality?

As others have said, we really need to know what your preferences are and what you plan to use it for?

Is size and weight important?

Do you shoot video indoors in relatively dim conditions or outdoors, sometimes in bad weather, 'run-n-gun' handheld or carefully set up on a tripod, at ordinary subject distances or distant wildlife using long telephoto lenses?

Is video or stills performance more important, or do you want a camera that can do both reasonably well?

Is video autofocus performance important, or do you mostly use manual focus/S-AF?

Is image stabilisation important?

As I'm a micro4/3 user who mostly shoots handheld... In the UK at the moment there are some very good deals (around £600-700 body only) on used Panasonic GH5 & G9 and the Olympus E-M1 mk II - all excellent bang-for-the-buck cameras with great build quality, fast operation, weather resistance and top-notch image stabilisation. The two Panasonics have somewhat better video quality (including 10-bit support) but the E-M1 mk II stabilisation is probably a bit better overall and it's smaller, lighter and is a nice, very solid feeling camera. (I own a G9 and an E-M1 Mark II).