p.5 #2 · Battle of the walkabouts: NEX 7 faces off with 5D II....
FlyPenFly wrote:
While I can benchpress 225lbs all day and am outrageously fit, I find carrying a lot of gear just gets in the way of the fun of shooting. It's annoying and all that bulk makes it awkward to try interesting angles or positions.
If you're traveling and planning to do a lot of photography and hiking, forget it, it's really a not fun experience.
p.5 #4 · Battle of the walkabouts: NEX 7 faces off with 5D II....
I'm quite a ways past 50.
No spine surgery tho!
PS: I wanna see a self portrait of PenFly... I'm not believing him till I do either...
FlyPenFly wrote:
While I can benchpress 225lbs all day and am outrageously fit, I find carrying a lot of gear just gets in the way of the fun of shooting. It's annoying and all that bulk makes it awkward to try interesting angles or positions.
If you're traveling and planning to do a lot of photography and hiking, forget it, it's really a not fun experience.
Lotusm50 wrote:
Just think of all the stuff Ansel Adams used to carry around with him. We're all girlie-men in comparison.
Tariq Gibran wrote:
He did have a mule and a woody to help him.
p.5 #5 · Battle of the walkabouts: NEX 7 faces off with 5D II....
Bifurcator wrote:
I mean you're talking to some people (takes a bow) who carry the nFD 300/2.8 L with them everywhere they go and consider that a perfectly acceptable "walk-around" solution.
Then a NEX or GXR or similar camera is not for you. You could fit several NEX with lens mounted into the volume occupied by your 300mm plus camera! My camera and four Zeiss primes might weigh less than your lens alone.
Your needs dictate the lens required and by extension the camera needed on the back.
My photographic needs don't make those demands. I could use anything from a GXR with some small but excellent Zeiss primes to a big, heavy, Rolleiflex 6008i with three Schneider lenses in the kit which together barely fits into a large Lowepro backpack and weighs 20 some odd pounds. Wait a minute... I did that for many years. Productivity? Relatively low. A DSLR upped my productivity / throughput by eliminating the darkroom and scanning (yay) but never did travel with me day in day out, much as I'd hoped it would.
After many years I feel like I've come full circle to the days when I used to carry a small 6x6 Zeiss Ikonta folder everywhere, plus a small Contax SLR and two lenses. The GXR and four or five primes fits in a surprisingly small and light bag. I carry the gear this way about half the time. The other half of the time it's the GXR and one 18mm or 25mm prime in a tiny and inconspicuous bag, is always with me.
For a while I thought I'd like to split the difference and use the X100 to fulfill my every-day-carry wants and continue to depend on DSLR for everything else. What using the X100 taught me about myself is that I'm willing to carry just a little bit more to get a lot more flexibility. A NEX or GXR with some primes or even an AF lens or two is a very flexible, portable, high IQ system. For me. Not for you.
For me the development of compact system cameras capable of high IQ has been a real win, an enabler. It isn't just raw dimensions and weight that make or break my ability or desire to carry a system every day. And now that I can get high IQ in a small package I question why I'd want to do anything else, unless I need something that only a DSLR or other system can give me that the compact cameras (or a rangefinder) can't.
p.5 #6 · Battle of the walkabouts: NEX 7 faces off with 5D II....
Bifurcator wrote:
I'm quite a ways past 50.
No spine surgery tho!
PS: I wanna see a self portrait of PenFly... I'm not believing him till I do either...
Not always tho:
Yeah, he's traveling light there! It is true though, after hauling 4x5's, SLR MF and so on...to complain about small DSLR's is sort of funny in the grand scheme of things. On the other hand, it is such a free feeling to carry something super light and small that you don't even have to think about if you should bring it or not.
p.5 #7 · Battle of the walkabouts: NEX 7 faces off with 5D II....
Bifurcator wrote:
So to me (and I surely can't be alone in this!) the carry difference between the 5d2 and the nex is negligible. I don't mean to change anyone else's opinions; only to point out it's subjective nature.
I bought a Nex because of the size and weight difference to my 5DII , and the sensor is still big enough for decent results .
I'd take the Canon over the Sony any day for shooting anything, if it wasn't for those two things .
The 5dII, in my opinion, does everything better than the Nexs, fits better in my hands - only I used to leave it at home a lot, unlike the Nex, for the above mentioned reasons .
I'm curious : if you find the difference negligible re. carrying gear, why use a Nex ?
I certainly wouldn't if I felt that way .
p.5 #9 · Battle of the walkabouts: NEX 7 faces off with 5D II....
Tomser wrote:
I bought a Nex because of the size and weight difference to my 5DII , and the sensor is still big enough for decent results .
I'd take the Canon over the Sony any day for shooting anything, if it wasn't for those two things .
The 5dII, in my opinion, does everything better than the Nexs, fits better in my hands - only I used to leave it at home a lot, unlike the Nex, for the above mentioned reasons .
I'm curious : if you find the difference negligible re. carrying gear, why use a Nex ?
I certainly wouldn't if I felt that way ....Show more →
For myself, I believe that I have very large hands, but since I bought the Contax G2 have greatly preferred small cameras. I wouldn't have returned to large SLRs were it not for the convenience of digital.
p.5 #10 · Battle of the walkabouts: NEX 7 faces off with 5D II....
I just had my N7 in my jacket pocket where my 40D without lens might fit.
I totally get the need for a small kit, which is why I got the M-Rokkor set,
but that's not the only reason for a Nex type camera, for me the shear freedom
to mount what ever glass you come across.
p.5 #11 · Battle of the walkabouts: NEX 7 faces off with 5D II....
i never understand all this talk about weight. unless your going on a serious hike weight is not an issue (for me). bulk is – i don't often get to go out on dedicated photo expeditions, and i don't want to have a visible camera when i'm doing whatever with my family and friends or just taking a walk to the store and isn't intimidating when i do take it out. i want something that i don't have to think about when i'm not using it as well, this means it has to fit in a coat pocket.
everybody is different and some people are happy with a camera aound their neck all the time, or like bif a bazooka over his back (i did have somebody ask me if i was "going to take out that tree" when using a telephoto in the city for birding).
since this is thread about using a camera for walk about it would seem smaller size would be an advantage. ergonomics matter too though, and philippe talked about that as well. for myself the NEX-7 actually seems marginally better ergonomically than a 5D would be, but that is a matter of taste probably.
as far as the images go, i'm not getting much out of them for comparison. the color and exposure varies to much and i think the NEX shots lose something (aesthetically) by having less vignetting than the canon shots (due to cornerfix). i don't know where people are seeing obvious sharpness differences as i'm seeing the same scenes look sharper in different parts depending on the camera. i wouldn't pretend to be able to judge sharpness without seeing a larger image. i would expect that the canon should be sharper at the pixel level, but i can't judge anything at these sizes.
p.5 #12 · Battle of the walkabouts: NEX 7 faces off with 5D II....
It's more about volume than weight, for me, but both make a difference. Fitting 4 lenses and a NEX body or two into a bag this size makes a significant difference over carrying my DSLR setup in various bags that I've tried:
Of course, this only matters to me with my everyday, carry around camera. In other shooting situations, I may not necessarily mind the size of larger format cameras.
I actually got to meet Mr. Adams and hang out with him. In his older years. We met him up at Yosemite near the park entrance. He approached my father and I and asked if I would like my portrait taken for $50 or something. I had no idea who he was and kinda shined him as a kooky old man at first. He was dressed like a gold miner in his sunday cloths - western shirt, vest, string tie, beard and miners hat. He said he was "kinda famous" and asked several times about the portrait offer. Instead we ended up talking about cameras, then on to park politics, which turned into a lunch, a peek at some B&W prints he had in a silver briefcase and so on till the day came to a close and we all hicked over together to watch the firefalls - which I just discovered recently were discontinued year and years ago. Shame that! By the end of our time together I had gown to like the guy quite a lot.
I learned who he was fame-wise much later at university. One of my dorm mates was a fan and showed me some prints of the Simon & Garfunkel album cover shoot he had acquired. Wow, I thought: It musta been wonderful to have met Paul Simon.
p.5 #14 · Battle of the walkabouts: NEX 7 faces off with 5D II....
Bifurcator wrote:
That's a cool shot of him!
I actually got to meet Mr. Adams and hang out with him. In his older years. We met him up at Yosemite near the park entrance. He approached my father and I and asked if I would like my portrait taken for $50 or something. I had no idea who he was and kinda shined him as a kooky old man at first. He was dressed like a gold miner in his sunday cloths - western shirt, vest, string tie, beard and miners hat. He said he was "kinda famous" and asked several times about the portrait offer. Instead we ended up talking about cameras, then on to park politics, which turned into a lunch, a peek at some B&W prints he had in a silver briefcase and so on till the day came to a close and we all hicked over together to watch the firefalls - which I just discovered recently were discontinued year and years ago. Shame that! By the end of our time together I had gown to like the guy quite a lot.
I learned who he was fame-wise much later at university. One of my dorm mates was a fan and showed me some prints of the Simon & Garfunkel album cover shoot he had acquired. Wow, I thought: It musta been wonderful to have met Paul Simon.
p.5 #15 · Battle of the walkabouts: NEX 7 faces off with 5D II....
Carrying a large kit is not only about brawn. I recently went to the US and twice to Japan, on business trips. I carried a Billingham bag, with my NEX and 5 primes, a notepad and an iPad. The Billingham bag was never spotted as a gear-bag, and felt appropriate for a business environment.
There is just no way that I could have done the same with my Lowepro bag, 5D II and 4 primes. I just don't come to a business meeting with the tools of my hobby, but not the tools of my profession, and displaying that "I have other things to do as soon as this is over". That let me shoot a sunrise over San Francisco, and countless parks, flowers,flowers and castles in Japan, many of them just before of after meetings.
In truth, I could probably have done the same with a 5D II and "only" my 50mm Planar f:1.4, which is almost pancake-sized. The IQ might maybe have been better, but the wealth and variety of shots would definitely have suffered.
But if that is your preference, be my guest! My friend Carsten, who inspired the Berlin FM meetings, never leaves his home without his D3, calls it a walkabout camera, and hates small ones. As long as he is happy that way, and takes pictures to his satisfaction, who am I to argue?
p.5 #17 · Battle of the walkabouts: NEX 7 faces off with 5D II....
This "walkabout" thing is probably not the same for all of us. Those of you that don't mind weight, are you walking around the block, or what? I'm talking about 5-10 km walks for a couple of hours a day.
p.5 #18 · Battle of the walkabouts: NEX 7 faces off with 5D II....
I also walk a lot, typically with the D3 and three ZF.2 lenses, often for 2 hours or more. Sometimes I have a tripod, and some RRS gear with me, and occasionally a flash. Sometimes my back hurts a bit when I get home
p.5 #19 · Battle of the walkabouts: NEX 7 faces off with 5D II....
There are other aspects aside from weight. In some places you simply don't want a huge FF DSLR, it attracts too much attention and/or the large mirror sounds to much. In some places it would even be directly unwise for your security to go wild with a huge pro DSLR and a pro 2.8 zoom. Discretion has gotten plenty of amazing photos during the years - as any Leica shooter would tell ya
p.5 #20 · Battle of the walkabouts: NEX 7 faces off with 5D II....
carstenw wrote:
I also walk a lot, typically with the D3 and three ZF.2 lenses, often for 2 hours or more. Sometimes I have a tripod, and some RRS gear with me, and occasionally a flash. Sometimes my back hurts a bit when I get home
And sometimes, it feels good when you reflect on the day!
