Bridge camera vs MFT camera

[jerry1]

Hi,
I would appreciate any advice you can give me. I bought a Fuji HS35EXR bridge camera. I am wondering
what the difference in image quality between this camera and say a micro 4/3 camera. I bought the cam-
era in hopes to get bird and wildlife images. I know the Fuji an advantage for distant ( 720mm ), but my
concern is image quality. If I make prints, say 11x16, is there much of a difference in quality? My thought
is maybe selling the bridge camera and getting something like a Panasonic G5 with maybe a 45-200mm lens.
I hope I have explained this correctly.
Thanks for responding.
Jerry1.

[Inkanyezi]

You need not worry about "image quality" really. You can get very good quality out of the HS35EXR. The caveats are other.

As the sensor is small, its high ISO performance is not as good as that of a larger sensor, and at the long end, the zoom is not as bright as some long lenses for other sizes. AF performance is rather slow, and there is a rather long lag after pressing the shutter. Those are properties common for all bridge cameras.

Particularly for shooting birds in flight, a µ4/3 camera is somewhat better, with focusing and lag quicker, so you're more likely to get the shot. However, some DSLR cameras might work better for that, particularly as they often have access to faster glass and faster focusing at moving objects.

For birds sitting still, the bridge camera will of course work.

The 45-200 for µ4/3 is not a bird photography tool, unless you can sneak up upon them; works for mallards.

When everything is done right, you probably won't notice the quality difference between the bridge camera and a µ4/3, but it should be remembered that it is not the camera that takes the images, it is the photographer. The bridge camera is more difficult to get good shots with than a DSLR, but it is not easy by any count with either.

So what advice I could give is that you try the camera you have, and when you run into problems, ask about how to solve them. You'll learn underway, and maybe won't fall into the trap of buying more gear that maybe won't help you all the way.

[chauncey]

Jerry, you ask a question that is essentially unanswerable...
how deep are your pockets/what is your level of commitment?

Perusing the "bird images" on this site, by those that dabble in that genre, will show the level of experience necessary as well as the gear needed to meet those desires.

Heed Urban's input, for he is spot-on.

[csa mt]

Urban, your entire post is excellent advice! Nothing can be added that you haven't said, so well!

[Manfred M]

Jerry - the best advice I can offer you is that the best camera is the one you have in your hand. Unless you consistently find that it limits your ability to take the picture you want, why would you upgrade. A higher end camera, with better lenses will certainly provide a tool to create better images; but only if you have the ability and skills to make optimal use of these features.

Case in point; we were on the island of Borneo a few years ago, and the best still camera we had with us was a 5MP Panasonic bridge camera. We were heading upstream on the Kinabatangan River, perhaps 3 hours out of Sandakan, when we came across a small herd of extremely rare and endangered Borneo Pigmy elephants on the banks of the river (nicely said, people almost never see them)..



Enough said, I hope.

[jerry1]

T

You need not worry about "image quality" really. You can get very good quality out of the HS35EXR. The caveats are other.

As the sensor is small, its high ISO performance is not as good as that of a larger sensor, and at the long end, the zoom is not as bright as some long lenses for other sizes. AF performance is rather slow, and there is a rather long lag after pressing the shutter. Those are properties common for all bridge cameras.

Particularly for shooting birds in flight, a µ4/3 camera is somewhat better, with focusing and lag quicker, so you're more likely to get the shot. However, some DSLR cameras might work better for that, particularly as they often have access to faster glass and faster focusing at moving objects.

For birds sitting still, the bridge camera will of course work.

The 45-200 for µ4/3 is not a bird photography tool, unless you can sneak up upon them; works for mallards.

When everything is done right, you probably won't notice the quality difference between the bridge camera and a µ4/3, but it should be remembered that it is not the camera that takes the images, it is the photographer. The bridge camera is more difficult to get good shots with than a DSLR, but it is not easy by any count with either.

So what advice I could give is that you try the camera you have, and when you run into problems, ask about how to solve them. You'll learn underway, and maybe won't fall into the trap of buying more gear that maybe won't help you all the way.

Thanks Urban,
I'm going to take your advice. I think what it will take is plenty of patience and a tripod. I also have a Fuji x-e1
with an xc 16-50mm lens and I thought of using it for wildlife, but the only lenses I could afford would be manual focus with adapter, but weight of older lenses become a problem, and the X-e1 is not a wildlife cam-
era . I bought a Nikon series E 70-210mm f/4 lens to use, but it is way too heavy, and as you said a 200mm
lens is not ideal except for casual Mallard type images and with the Nikon lens I would need to use a lens
mounted tripod adapter.
Thanks for responding.
Jerry

[jerry1]

Jerry - the best advice I can offer you is that the best camera is the one you have in your hand. Unless you consistently find that it limits your ability to take the picture you want, why would you upgrade. A higher end camera, with better lenses will certainly provide a tool to create better images; but only if you have the ability and skills to make optimal use of these features.

Case in point; we were on the island of Borneo a few years ago, and the best still camera we had with us was a 5MP Panasonic bridge camera. We were heading upstream on the Kinabatangan River, perhaps 3 hours out of Sandakan, when we came across a small herd of extremely rare and endangered Borneo Pigmy elephants on the banks of the river (nicely said, people almost never see them)..



Enough said, I hope.

Hi Manfred'
Very good advice!
Very good images!!
Thanks
Jerry

[ajohnw]

I think I will try and answer your question in a different way.

If you can take some shots and display them on your PC screen at the size you want and they look reasonable the chances are that you can print to the same size but some post processing is likely to help even if you work from jpg's.

There is a site which kindly provides completely unretouched shots from many cameras This is the sample images from yours which should give you an idea what the camera can do

http://www.photographyblog.com/revie...sample_images/

There is one wild life shot taken at 470mm. That might indicate that they weren't happy with longer focal lengths or nothing at all but it isn't unusual for zoom lenses to have problems at their long end, I haven't read the review but sometimes on cameras like this especially the longer range zoom ones they comment on how good the image stabilisation is at the longer focal length settings. The 1st answer to that is to try a monopod. Then a tripod.

They also provide a number of raw files from the camera. The ones from this camera are significantly better than other 1/2 in sensor fuji's I have looked at but do need a fair amount of work. Camera jpg's from these types of camera are often heavily processed. It's probably better for beginners to work from those. Post processing can take some time to master and needs the right software. JPG's given that the exposure isn't too far out are easy to tidy up. Sometimes on any camera the exposures wont be correct. There are usually facilities for correcting this - exposure compensation - but it takes some experience with any camera to use it reliably.

For wildlife work on m 4/3 the to 300mm zoom lenses are needed really. That goes to 600mm when measured as your camera measures them but it can be surprising just how close birds need to be to fill the frame even with that focal length. The same site also has sample pictures from these. One wild life shot on the Olympus version and none on the Panasonic one. There is a shot of a bill board though which again can give you some idea - they are larger than many birds.

http://www.photographyblog.com/revie...sample_images/

http://www.photographyblog.com/revie...sample_images/

The shot of the moon should give you some idea how much these lenses magnify. People tend to think it will be massive.

You can click on all of the images on this site to enlarge them to a full sized view and also right click - properties on to see camera settings that aren't given in the thumb nail view. When it's a lens you should see things like saturation=0, sharpness=0 etc. Also on cameras but sometimes certain things can't be turned off on some of them. If the browser window is resized it can give an idea of what results can look like at different sizes.

You probably will see a difference in quality between your camera and m 4/3 but I would still suggest you stick with what you have until you can use it as well as the images suggest. There all sorts of aspects to photography that just relate to how and what situation the camera is used in. One popular complaint when people were rushing out and buying m 4/3 camera was it's hopeless, some areas of the photo come out very dark. They will on all cameras if conditions are not suitable. Another comment related to camera shake and blurred images - they are only as good as the image stabilisation is and past that some sort of support is needed, That aspect sometimes depends on the person using the camera as well as the IS.

Stick with it and learn to use it is the best answer because it can clearly take decent pictures. To give you some idea this is the squirrel jpg shot crudely post processed probably spoiling some areas a little as I didn't keep an eye on the entire image when I did it.. Some noise removal, contrast enhancement, reduction in size and mild sharpening. For ISO 1250 it's not bad really.



John
-

[jerry1]

I think I will try and answer your question in a different way.

If you can take some shots and display them on your PC screen at the size you want and they look reasonable the chances are that you can print to the same size but some post processing is likely to help even if you work from jpg's.

There is a site which kindly provides completely unretouched shots from many cameras This is the sample images from yours which should give you an idea what the camera can do

http://www.photographyblog.com/revie...sample_images/

There is one wild life shot taken at 470mm. That might indicate that they weren't happy with longer focal lengths or nothing at all but it isn't unusual for zoom lenses to have problems at their long end, I haven't read the review but sometimes on cameras like this especially the longer range zoom ones they comment on how good the image stabilisation is at the longer focal length settings. The 1st answer to that is to try a monopod. Then a tripod.

They also provide a number of raw files from the camera. The ones from this camera are significantly better than other 1/2 in sensor fuji's I have looked at but do need a fair amount of work. Camera jpg's from these types of camera are often heavily processed. It's probably better for beginners to work from those. Post processing can take some time to master and needs the right software. JPG's given that the exposure isn't too far out are easy to tidy up. Sometimes on any camera the exposures wont be correct. There are usually facilities for correcting this - exposure compensation - but it takes some experience with any camera to use it reliably.

For wildlife work on m 4/3 the to 300mm zoom lenses are needed really. That goes to 600mm when measured as your camera measures them but it can be surprising just how close birds need to be to fill the frame even with that focal length. The same site also has sample pictures from these. One wild life shot on the Olympus version and none on the Panasonic one. There is a shot of a bill board though which again can give you some idea - they are larger than many birds.

http://www.photographyblog.com/revie...sample_images/

http://www.photographyblog.com/revie...sample_images/

The shot of the moon should give you some idea how much these lenses magnify. People tend to think it will be massive.

You can click on all of the images on this site to enlarge them to a full sized view and also right click - properties on to see camera settings that aren't given in the thumb nail view. When it's a lens you should see things like saturation=0, sharpness=0 etc. Also on cameras but sometimes certain things can't be turned off on some of them. If the browser window is resized it can give an idea of what results can look like at different sizes.

You probably will see a difference in quality between your camera and m 4/3 but I would still suggest you stick with what you have until you can use it as well as the images suggest. There all sorts of aspects to photography that just relate to how and what situation the camera is used in. One popular complaint when people were rushing out and buying m 4/3 camera was it's hopeless, some areas of the photo come out very dark. They will on all cameras if conditions are not suitable. Another comment related to camera shake and blurred images - they are only as good as the image stabilisation is and past that some sort of support is needed, That aspect sometimes depends on the person using the camera as well as the IS.

Stick with it and learn to use it is the best answer because it can clearly take decent pictures. To give you some idea this is the squirrel jpg shot crudely post processed probably spoiling some areas a little as I didn't keep an eye on the entire image when I did it.. Some noise removal, contrast enhancement, reduction in size and mild sharpening. For ISO 1250 it's not bad really.



John
-

Thanks John,
The picture of the squirrel looks fine to me. I think you are right, I need the patience to learn how to use the
equipment I have and deal with any shortcomings I have. I also need to get and learn photo editing software,
something that is going to take a lot of patience, as I am slow to catch on to new things!!

[inkista]

Jerry, this is just me, but I shoot birds in flight for fun sometimes. I also shoot micro four-thirds most of the time. I don't use micro four-thirds to shoot birds in flght--I use a dSLR body with a $1100 lens.


Canon 50D. EF 400mm f/5.6L USM.

I will use micro four-thirds to shoot perched birds, or walking birds. But birds in flight are very very fast, and I need a very responsive camera, both on AF speed, and shutter lag, and for me, a dSLR is the better tool.

Just my opinion, but I don't think that for birding moving to micro four-thirds would be worth it, just yet. Work on your technique and birding skillz with what you have, and when you know you absolutely have to get a better lens/camera combination, that's when you make the move. You'll know when you get there, and you won't have to ask any online boards about whether it's the right decision or not, because it's likely to be a US$2000+ type of purchase question, so you'll have done your homework.

[Manfred M]

-I use a dSLR body with a $1100 lens.

When you look around at the photographers that have the most expensive lenses and cameras, it always seems to be the seious sports photographers and serious bird photographers.

There is a message here for people who think they can repeatedly get quality shots with low end gear....

[jerry1]

Hi Kathy Li, thanks for responding, my main interest is pictures of nesting birds, birds in trees and wildlife in general. I would
be using a tripod. I live in an area that is very good for just such pictures (Puget Sound). As Manfred said the best camera is
the one in your hand.
Jerry.

[inkista]

There is a message here for people who think they can repeatedly get quality shots with low end gear....

Yeah. Don't shoot sports or birds in flight, and you'll be fine. And, of course, having the expensive gear still doesn't guarantee you anything, it just widens the areas of possibility. But BiF and sports are among the most demanding subjects when it comes to gear.

Hi Kathy Li, thanks for responding, my main interest is pictures of nesting birds, birds in trees and wildlife in general...

With a tripod, for that type of subject matter a superzoom bridge camera is liable to be pretty good, depending on the amount of light you have. The only thing going with a bigger sensor might grab you is better low-light capability for those dawn/dusk shots. And fieldcraft and bird knowledge are probably still going to get you farther than a new camera.

[jerry1]

Hi Manfred, believe me, I have know illusions about getting quality shots with low end gear.
Jerry.

[ajohnw]

I've only tried one short session on m 4/3 birds in flight. Seagulls I would guess swooping directly at me at would reckon at over 1/2 there max speed under conditions like this. When they drew level I had trouble moving the camera to keep up with them, I needed to be further back for that. Problems

Used 300mm and there was some haze about so no chance of clean shots. The haze just misted the whole shot up at that length with the seagulls occupying about 1/2 the frame.

Finding them - not too bad as I used to shoot a rifle a lot in my early days so lifting and pointing a camera at something like this isn't too bad. I did have problems a couple of times. Thoughts after that, preset the lens focal distance and see what the depth of field preview does to help. Unlike phase it should still focus.

On the face of it no real AF problems using continuous but until I try again hopefully in clear air and also probable closer with less zoom I wont know for shure.

This was on an E-M5. The E-M1 should be better. But this is not cheap gear.

One curious thing I noticed recently on the E-M1 is lack of clipping indication before the shot is taken when there is a 4/3 lens on. That's when it just uses it's phase contrast focusing. Could be the same in continuous as it uses both. The clipping indication does come up in the viewfinder pre view after the shot is taken.

John
-

[ajohnw]

An example - shows how awful the conditions were too. I don't usually post images this small but at my normal size 2x this one the mist problems would be more apparent.



Actually looking at them again they are all 1/4 frame or less in some cases. Silly me but it's the first time I have tried this.

John
-

[rpcrowe]

There are several parameters which I would be concerned with if I were choosing a camera/lens combination for bird photography...

1. The focal length of the lens that I could afford to use with this camera...
2. The autofocus speed and accuracy of the camera and lens autofocus.
3. The shutter lag which is critical when shooting just about anything that moves from puppies to kids to birds...
4. The camera viewfinder system. IMO a bright optical viewfinder is the way to go. I consider a LCD viewfinder next to worthless for moving subjects and even an EVF can also pose problems...
5. A relatively high ISO capability...

If I were to choose a camera and lens primarily for bird photography, yet not priced as high as to have to sell my home to purchase, I would choose the Canon 7D with a 400mm f/5.6L lens. BTW the EOS 400mm f/5.6L is arguably the best birding (especially BIF) lens available and the 7D has just about the best AF system of any crop format camera.

You can get a refurbished 7D from Adorama for $900 with free shipping. When refurbished 400mm f/5.6L lenses are available from CANON (availability varies) they run $910 but you will have to pay shipping and state sales tax if your state charges a sales tax. Used 400mm f/5.6L lenses run anywhere from $1,000 to $1,300 (USD). So we are talking about a package that would run in the area of about $2,000 or so U.S. Dollars...

[Nicks Pics]

Having a larger sensor, I don't know how the mft camera wouldn't have better image quality (less clipping, improved colors, less noise, etc.) according to general camera knowledge, but I have seen some DSLRs lately for under $500 lately, so those might be worth checking out if you were to upgrade. As others have said, I don't think 200 mm would be quite long enough for wildlife. I use 1200 mm equiv. often, but those are probably too long shots anyway, but still, more than 200 mm might be useful.

I have been using a fujifilm superzoom bridge camera pretty heavily for a while, but I'm not upgrading at the moment because (that would cost money ) and because although my camera may be limited, it still may outdo the limits of my skills. How far your experience has come though, I don't know.

I got a tripod and took it out on one wildlife watching trip before I found myself often looking silly holding a camera up to my eye with a tripod hanging from the bottom of it, feet off the ground This was because for many or most wildlife situations having my camera anchored to a tripod made it not mobile enough. Though I might use it in some situations where wildlife wouldn't be moving around too much, and for many other things besides wildlife.

[ajohnw]

The answer to a tripod is one that allows the camera to reach eye level, preferably with a bit of easy height adjustment at this height.. Ball head on the end or ideally a gimbal head especially for BIF. This is supposed to be the ultimate. Never tried it but I suspect that there would still be problems as the lens is pointed more and more towards the vertical.

I wonder sometimes if it would be better to stabilise the operator. Not a pair of crutches but a fold up seat with a back on it.

The shot I posted was taken at 3200 ISO because I wanted to know how the camera handled that on this type of shot. They vary. Some would give various types of noise through a considerable proportion of the tone range. The noise was handled as it often is. As it's mostly in the back ground. In this case I selected the bird, inverted and applied noise removal to just that. Quickly done as usual. Sometimes spatially aware noise removal software can be used that doesn't interfere with fine detail but that probably wouldn't be appropriate for this shot. On the other hand I posted some shots that surprised some taken at 25600 ISO where this was used. Layers can be used as well to control where noise is removed. Noise removal usually results in the loss of finer detail. Even reducing images to web size helps - at the size I just posted it's nigh on impossible to see how bad the original image is. Apart from mist problems it could equally well be near perfect.

The only decent source of comparative camera noise levels I know of is dpreview but they do this via Adobe Raw. I suspect this applies noise removal automatically. On this basis the cameras that really stick out are full frame ones but not all of them. My feeling is that more pp is needed as sensors get smaller but I'm not convinced there is all that much difference between mft and crop. If some one buys one and comes to a different conclusion don't blame me.

My trip to Wales is off as our dog is poorly so E-M1 BIF are probably going to have to wait.

John
-

[Nicks Pics]

The answer to a tripod is one that allows the camera to reach eye level, preferably with a bit of easy height adjustment at this height.. Ball head on the end or ideally a gimbal head especially for BIF. This is supposed to be the ultimate. Never tried it but I suspect that there would still be problems as the lens is pointed more and more towards the vertical.

No matter what kind of tripod, they all have your camera pivoted on a stationery post, which makes fallowing small flitting birds in the bushes rather difficult.