Amin, that is a great comparison!!!
May I ask two questions?
First one is easy, do / did you own a DSLR?
Second one is more difficult though. Which of these mirrorless camera's does have to you opinion the best balance of good handling for candid kids portrait applications vs compactness gain over e.g. a Pentax K-x?
Maybe I should split the second question up as follows:
- Which mirrorless camera has best handling for candid kids portrait applications?
- How does handling of this camera compare to a (small) DSLR?
- What is the compact gain of this camera compared to a small DSLR?
Thanks, Joep. I no longer own a DSLR but have owned many in the past (most recently Nikon D700, D5000, Canon 5D, 30D, Olympus E-420, etc). For candid kids portraits, I think it depends on which angle of view you prefer. If you like working with a "normal" lens, the MFT cameras with Lumix 20/1.7 and Samsung NX10 with 30/2 are great choices.
The Pentax Kx with 40/2.8 is also very compact and great, but 40mm on a 1.5x body is a little long for my purposes. The 35/2.8 macro is less compact and also slower than the Samsung/Panasonic lenses (though the better sensor performance and image stabilization of the K-x body balance that equation). If you like to shoot longer, the Pentax 70/2.4 is a very nice lens and quite small. Closest thing in MFT land would be the Pana-Leica 45/2.8.
I think the Sony NEX3/5 would also be fantastic for candid child pictures, even with just the kit zoom, but more lens choice will help. I've already seen some wonderful child candids using NEX bodies and adapted manual focus lenses, but manual focus isn't for everyone. Same with MFT - tons of manual focus options being used to produce great portraits.
Lots of other personal factors come into play. For my personal needs (I take lots of pictures of my kids), autofocus speed is not critical. When I look at the times that my D700 got me the shot because of fast AF, those are few and far between. For someone whose kids do real sports and want to capture the action, DSLRs still are superior.
As far as compact gain over a small DSLR, the mirrorless cameras and pancake lenses are a good bit (my subjective impression) less thick than an small SLR with standard-size prime (eg, D5000 and 35/1.8 or XS and 28/1.8). The smallest DSLRs with pancake lenses (eg K-x and 21/3.5, 40/2.8 or E-420 and 25/2.8) come closer, but those lens choices are less appealing
to me than the ones already available for the mirrorless cameras.
These are both complicated questions which I could give a better answer for if time permitted, but that's all I can say for the time being.
Thanks so much for doing an ISO test of all the cameras, would it be possible for you to do another kinda of test?
I love to see a real world comparison, where each camera is paired with it's lens and set to P or Auto and used to take low light photos. The reason being is that not all cameras use the same ISO for low light photography, but I'd love to see which one produces the best results when the camera is left to choose. Could you also mark, the shutter speed, aperture and ISO of each photo.
Thanks for all your hard work and keep it up.
Sam, that kind of test has so many variables. I try to take a rigorous approach to comparisons, and that would be very difficult for me to do in such a test. Many sites focus on what happens when the camera is left to choose, and I think I have more to offer in terms of showing what we can get out of these cameras when we make all the choices.
I will, however, try to rigorously test some of the other factors which play into low light potential of these systems (eg, effectiveness of different image stabilization systems), so hopefully that will be helpful in complementing these data. Thanks for the kind words.