{"id":26041,"date":"2018-03-22T07:11:14","date_gmt":"2018-03-21T23:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=26041"},"modified":"2018-04-03T11:06:50","modified_gmt":"2018-04-03T03:06:50","slug":"changing-camera-systems-maybe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2018\/03\/22\/changing-camera-systems-maybe\/","title":{"rendered":"Changing Camera Systems &#8211; Maybe?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We post a sample of photos &#8211; whether of our kids or our travels &#8211; on our blog here, but our Flickr album is where we&#8217;ve been putting up our larger collections over the years now. I typically access these curated albums from mobile devices &#8211; the two iPads and Samsung S8+ that I now use. Oh, it&#8217;s entirely possible to use cloud storage services like OneDrive for online photo browsing, but these services typically do not display photo EXIF information.<\/p>\n<p>Our Flickr albums have been hidden from public view for several years now &#8211; apart from our Minton and pet albums &#8211; largely to protect our kids as they grow older.\u00a0 But a quick check there notes that our first photos were posted almost exactly ten years ago in June 2008. And over that time since 2008, as Flickr reports it, a total of 10,011 photos have been posted across all albums.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s been one significant change over all these years of putting up photos though against the increasingly higher display resolutions offered on newer mobile devices. The first photos I posted &#8211; of our 2008 trip to Ayara Hilltop in Phuket &#8211; was at 1280p resolution. And since then, in order to match the higher video resolutions on mobile devices, I&#8217;ve had to keep up by also increasing uploaded photo resolutions to 1500 horizontal pixels, then 2000, to 2500 last year &#8211; and starting this year, 3000 &#8211; and just to give me that bit more of headroom, selected pictures are now also uploaded in 3500pixels.<\/p>\n<p>An image of 3000 pixels across is about right for my iPad Pro 12.9&#8243;, but not for higher 4K resolution devices that are starting to be commonplace. The larger file sizes from higher-resolution images aren&#8217;t a problem &#8211; since the subscription account I&#8217;m on offers unlimited storage, and the three separate photo backup storage devices I use &#8211; two Seagate 4TB 2.5&#8243; externals and a 6TB D-Link NAS &#8211; have sufficient storage for at least 3-4 more years (about the life-span of hard disk drives too).<\/p>\n<p>No; the real challenge is that my three 16MP m4\/3 cameras &#8211; the E-M1, GX85 and E-PL6 &#8211; are now finding it harder to keep up. The RAW images I take are at 4608 x 3456 pixels &#8211; which are\u00a0 sufficient <em><strong>if<\/strong><\/em> I get my framing exactly right. In reality, especially when our kids just won&#8217;t remain still for photos, I don&#8217;t have the luxury of taking time to frame shots as exacting as I&#8217;d like. Which means I routinely compensate in framing and crop at least 15-20% of an image off in post-processing. In short, my m4\/3s are still doing OK here and now, but in a few years, I&#8217;m gonna be in trouble!<\/p>\n<p>Which is why the recent Sony announcement on their newest iteration of their A7 full-frame mirrorless cameras was such a bombshell for me. Industry observers for the last several weeks now have been buzzing with excitement over <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sony.com\/electronics\/interchangeable-lens-cameras\/ilce-7m3-body-kit\">Sony&#8217;s A7 Mark III<\/a>. This new camera is, paraphrasing here, basically Sony&#8217;s way of muscling past every other mirrorless camera manufacturer &#8211; with a very well-featured, high-performance full-frame mirrorless camera at a relatively affordable price. And to rub further salt to the wound, Sony even calls its newest entrant their <em><strong>entry<\/strong><\/em>-level camera. Such audacity LOL.<\/p>\n<p>Oh sure, it&#8217;s a wake-up call for Nikon and Canon.\u00a0Simply put, Sony currently is still the <em><strong>only<\/strong><\/em> player in the mirrorless full-frame space, and the new A7 III is going to further entrench that monopoly. I reckon CaNikon is going to rush to release their own versions of mirrorless full-frame camera systems now. Though I really doubt if they&#8217;re going to hit the ground and run past Sony. Nikon killed off its cropped-sensor mirrorless line a few years back, and Canon is still struggling to gain traction on its own mirrorless line. And Sony has a four year head start now with this its Alpha line of mirrorless full-frames now.<\/p>\n<p>Changing camera systems though are always huge undertakings. Especially since I&#8217;ve been on m4\/3 for 8 years now, and have a well-filled dry cabinet of lenses and accessories for it now. And there are still photographic situations where I reckon the m4\/3 standard is still better suited to than full-frame equivalents: specifically, long focal length shots.<\/p>\n<p>Still, if it indeed comes to changing camera systems from m4\/3 to Sony full-frame mirrorless, it&#8217;ll involve a lot of selling on Clubsnap and Carousell. And from my quick accounting, the offloading of pre-loved m4\/3 equipment should be sufficient to pay for at least half of the cost of changing to Sony with roughly the same prime lens outlay as I currently use on the m4\/3. I probably won&#8217;t have the 24-70mm and 40-150mm f.2.8 capabilities though at the onset &#8211; and that&#8217;ll be a real loss.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_26042\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-26042\" style=\"width: 800px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-26042\" src=\"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/blog-a7iii.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/blog-a7iii.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/blog-a7iii-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/blog-a7iii-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-26042\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The just-announced Sony A7 Mark III.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>So, hard decisions to make &#8211; if at all &#8211; at some point this year. More to come, probably!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We post a sample of photos &#8211; whether of our kids or our travels &#8211; on our blog here, but our Flickr album is where we&#8217;ve been putting up our larger collections over the years now. I typically access these<\/p>\n<div class=\"entry-read-more\"><a class=\"read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2018\/03\/22\/changing-camera-systems-maybe\/\">Read More<span class=\"cleanwp-sr-only\">  Changing Camera Systems &#8211; Maybe?<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,16],"tags":[609],"class_list":["post-26041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-photography-cameras","category-toys-technology","tag-m4-3","wpcat-13-id","wpcat-16-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/blog-a7iii.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}