I’ve been thinking about purchasing a smaller compact or ‘microsystem’ camera now for some time, as much as I love the results I can get with my 5DmkII, carrying around a bag of gear with me everywhere is just not practical and it’s that reason alone I rarely have anything other than my iPhone 4 with me to take any photos whilst out and about.
I emailed my friend Stuart at Digital Depot to ask if I could try out a couple of cameras with the view to buying the one that suited me. I ended up borrowing 3 for one week each, here’s how I got on.
Sony NEX-5
The Sony Nex-5 seemed like a fantastic idea, basically a mini DSLR.
First thoughts were what a sturdy camera, although very small in my hands it felt like what you’d expect from a £500+ camera. To access the basic menus was very straight forward, you basically get a digital version of the top dial of an SLR camera, for me though thats where the intuitiveness ended. I noticed in certain modes I seemed to be stuck taking HDR photos with no obvious way of turning this off (I did eventually find this option, but still it *should* be straight forward).
After playing with the camera for a week, I decided this wasn’t for me. I was underwhelmed with the results. The focus seemed completely hit and miss, the colour saturation left a lot to be desired (I couldn’t help but feel the images came out very flat), using the camera indoors resulted in very noisy images and the sharpness of the images did not live up to my expectations. The only feature I’ll miss from the camera was the sweep panorama. A lot of the issues mentioned above could be corrected in photoshop or similar, but I want most of it right in the camera!
From what I understand, there have been a few firmware updates to the camera which do improve some functions and add some new features, maybe this would have helped?
Canon G12
It feels like it’s made out of old tanks! A rock solid ‘little’ camera. The first thing I liked about the G12 was the dials on the top, unlike the Sony this had the physical controls that I’m used to using, with the added bonus of the exposure and ISO settings available on the top of the camera in the same dial format.
The other menu options were very straight forward to use, I purposely haven’t read the manuals on any of these cameras but didn’t have any issues here.
The images the camera took outside were great, the colour and saturation was exactly what I was used to from the Canon DSLR’s I own and use, also very sharp in camera. Inside however the story is fairly similar to the NEX-5 unless you want to use flash, which if I can, I avoid.
The reason I gave this camera back in the end came down to the lack of flexibility around Depth of Field. Although the canon would offer F2.8 when not zoomed in, I was hard pushed to tell the difference between F2.8 and the minimum F8 that was available, the level of detail was very similar at both ends!
If however DOF effects aren’t an issue to you and you have no problem using the flash indoors then I would still recommend this camera, it’s a great addition if you’re a DSLR user, although a little bulky I could forgive that for how solid it felt.
Olympus XZ-1
I’d never really considered buying an Olympus camera before, I know they used to be big in the SLR market, but I hadn’t really heard much about them lately, but after reading some reviews on this little camera I had to have a go!
The reason I was so keen to get my hands on this camera initially was because of it’s maximum aperture value of F1.8, this is what I was missing with the Canon G12 (you could produce some fairly decent DOF with the Sony at f2.8). F1.8 on this camera has not left me disappointed!
The camera looks fantastic in white (I am a bit of a sucker for white things, including my Alpine White Les Paul Custom, yumm!) with it’s top panel and buttons in black, feels very solid to use and a good size, if not a tiny bit bulky with the protruding lens.
So, how is it to use? Well, you have the PASM menu options, Art functions, Auto etc.. in physical dial format so very easy to get started. The first thing I did was jump to aperture mode, the ring on the front which doubles up as the lens housing is used as the selector, and I dialled straight up to F1.8.
The first thing I noticed when using A mode, was unlike the Canon and Sony, on auto ISO it actually kept the value very low! Using all three in my front room the most it went to on the Olympus was ISO 200! The others leapt way above that, with the Sony even hitting over 1600 at one point! The fast glass obviously helps with this, but even at F2.8 it beat the other two on keeping the ISO down.
For me, it’s low light performance is the reason I’m going to give my bank account some pain. As mentioned above, I always try and avoid using flash if possible, people look a lot more natural when not frozen in time and a lot better without the harsh shadows (don’t get me wrong, flash has it’s place but if I can avoid it for people / animal shots I will). It’s colour saturation is a lot like the Canon, it’s as sharp as the G12 and even it’s macro performance is impressive!
Conclusion
For me, the Olympus ended up being the clear winner, the Sony just didn’t live up to my expectations, I don’t mind editing the shots I take with the DSLR, I want a more portable camera to be a bit of fun, something to take some interesting shots with without the hassle of needing to deal with RAW images etc.. The Canon was very good, but all I could really do with it was take nice ‘snapshots’ because the DOF just didn’t seem to alter no matter what aperture it was set at! The Olympus does what the Canon did, just better, F1.8 in a camera this size is fantastic and works wonderfully.
Some examples from the Olympus
Shot of the dog showing how nice and sharp a shot can be indoors without the flash, Macro (with 100% crop of detail included) and F1.8 at work with a shot of my fingers!
