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Comment by twic | Hacker News Reader

This is a lovely bit of kit, and if i had stacks of spare money, i would absolutely buy one.

But. What is this for? if you want uncompromising image quality in all use cases, the A7 is competitive with Canon and Nikon, but not clearly superior. If you want the compactness that mirrorless can bring, Micro Four Thirds' smaller sensor enables very significantly smaller lenses, requiring only the sacrifice of low-light sensitivity. It think it falls between those two stools.

Mind you, i say that as a Micro Four Thirds owner. Perhaps i'm biased. Still, if i was going to add an expensive big camera to my arsenal, i'd probably jump all the way to medium format!

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The viewfinder in a mirrorless is a full-on digital display, meaning it can be overlaid with all sorts of useful information that simply isn't possible on a DSLR's optical viewfinder. You also see exactly what the sensor is actually capturing. A lot of people (me included) consider mirrorless to be the future, whereas the writing is on the wall for DSLRs. DSLRs exist because sensors and displays didn't use to be good enough, necessitating the optical path, but they are now.

Also, mirrorless is significantly smaller than DSLRs for the same sensor size. Smaller and lighter is always welcome.

GP said they own a M4/3 camera, which is mirrorless.

I have one myself, so I'm aware -- just didn't see that part of the post properly. Fixed my comment accordingly.

Anyway, the simple answer is that a full-frame mirrorless is for people who want the features you can't get in a DSLR, and also for the size and weight advantage. If you don't already have a bunch of lenses invested in some previous system, then it's pretty obvious why you'd choose a mirrorless when starting from scratch.

Depth of field changes by the equivalent of one stop from full frame to aps-c, another from aps-c to micro four thirds. Thus, a f/2.8 zoom on mft shoots like a f/5.6 zoom on full frame.

Now if there only were fast full frame lenses for Sony E ...

What are you looking for? You have native 35mm, 50mm, 85mm at f1.4, not to mention the very sharp 55 f1.8. You have the 16-35mm and 24-70mm at f2.8. Sigma have just announced their range of primes for E-Mount.

I use the Canon 135 f2 and 35 f1.4 using a Metabones adapter. Not as good as native E-mount but pretty good.

Sony lack the range in long zooms though.

Proper conversion maths is:

Focal length x crop factor

Aperture x crop factor

ISO x crop factor squared

This is a general statement. Something like ISO performance can be affected by engineering if the sensor (BSI vs old tech for instance) but based on the underlying physics the above holds true.

It's about depth of field, i.e. getting that beautiful out of focus effect for backgrounds (bokeh) to isolate your subject. And also about megapixels.

Shooting with a portrait lens on full frame e.g. 85mm at f1/4 at 2m from a subject I have about 4cm depth of field, with everything outside of that increasingly blurred. On a micro 4/3 the closest equivalent zoom would be using a 42mm lens, say at f1.4 which would have 9cm depth of field, equivalent to a full frame 85mm at f2.8.

The advantage of mirrorless camera size then goes away because lenses with wide aperture are bigger and heavier, because of physics.

I don't know what the advantage of medium format is at this point. I have the A7R III which has 42mp and a wide range of Sony and Canon lenses available. The quality is amazing, it's a relatively light, and relatively 'affordable' compared to medium format when you take into account body and high quality lenses.

Full frame sensor has almost 4x the area of a m4/3 sensor. It seems a little hyperbolic to describe the difference as merely sacrificing low-light sensitivity; noise is also a big difference with the smaller sensor "pixels", surely?

One benefit of the larger sensor is higher dynamic range. If you want to photograph images with great contrast and details at the same time (e.g. for product photography or landscapes), you need a camera that offers you great color sensitivity. Of course, it is all depends on how maximalist you (or your clients) are. I recently switched to full-frame from APC-C, the first thing I noticed was it is much easier to make pictures with “wow” factor than with my APC-C one, but that is something I expect after spending 4-times prince on the gear. (Sony NEX-6 -> Sony A7 II, almost the same years they came out, so I don't expect much difference on camera IQ.)

Sony also has more compact offerings such as the alpha 6500 and the excellent RX100 in its fifth iteration. They also have a partnership with Carl Zeiss.

Medium format is quite another league, you're looking at an order of magnitude more expensive gear, mainly studio oriented.

I'm also a m43 owner.

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