Camera for occasional low light event photography.

dkh

dkh

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Dilip
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I have Olympus OM-EM1 mark I and III and these suite my usual outdoor photography for ISO up 400. I sold a Canon R6 which was fantastic beyond ISO 12800 but due to very occasional use, I sold it.

I now find myself having the odd booking for low light events for friends.

I tried using the Olympus duo over the weekend but they are pants at even ISO 800 so I'm looking at getting a cheap body which looks most likely to be either a Nikon D750 (I had two of these) or a Canon 5DM3/4 (had 2 of each of these). Main reason for looking at these DSLRs is the battery life and ability to shoot up to ISO 6400 / 12800.

Or, is there a cheap mirrorless (fuji etc) that can cope with higher ISOs and has an OK battery life? I can't see myself using Sony due to lens costs etc.
 
dkh said:
... I can't see myself using Sony due to lens costs etc.
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Sony mirrorless has the best 3rd party lens support of any of the brands producing FF mirrorless cameras, so lens costs are lower with a Sony body if you take that option
 
Do a low light trial and run through topaz denoise or similar to see how far you could push the envelope on iso
 
Faldrax said:
Sony mirrorless has the best 3rd party lens support of any of the brands producing FF mirrorless cameras, so lens costs are lower with a Sony body if you take that option
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That's only half true - Sony is the best option if you want new 3rd party lenses. But there's literally thousands of reasonably priced EF lenses that work perfectly with Canon mirrorless, making that the cheaper lens option (for instance my ancient EF 70-200 2.8L is worth less than £500 and on my R6 is now an IS lens).
 
Phil V said:
That's only half true - Sony is the best option if you want new 3rd party lenses. But there's literally thousands of reasonably priced EF lenses that work perfectly with Canon mirrorless, making that the cheaper lens option (for instance my ancient EF 70-200 2.8L is worth less than £500 and on my R6 is now an IS lens).
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Agreed.
Either way it's important to know that there are alternatives to the sometimes eye-watering prices of the latest top end mirrorless lenses.
 
You say the OMs are pants at low light. 800ASA. But what lenses are you using? I often use 2500/3000 and don't worry too much about noise.

Also, how low light? And what quality required?

I use Z6ii and OM-1 in tandem. Generally the Z provides the better images, but there are many occasions when I could not tell you which camera took which image.
 
Pound Coin said:
You say the OMs are pants at low light. 800ASA. But what lenses are you using? I often use 2500/3000 and don't worry too much about noise.

Also, how low light? And what quality required?

I use Z6ii and OM-1 in tandem. Generally the Z provides the better images, but there are many occasions when I could not tell you which camera took which image.
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This clearly isn’t a matter of suitability, but one of expectation.

I’ve delivered wedding images from 20d to 7d’s shot at Max ISO at a time when some people considered those cameras unusable above 400. I never had a single comment about noise.

But the OP has previously owned cameras with superior ISO performance and isn’t happy with the output of the Oly.

I’ll add that whilst I was happy with the 7d in the past, I couldn’t go back to it after using much better cameras.
 
M4/3 definitely has it's place and use - for me that would be outdoors. Issue I and most event photographers have is that ISO1600+ is sometimes the very minimal at f/2.8 and 80-125 shutter speeds.

Software to remove noise is great if that was applied to say 30-50 images but how about 1000+ ?

And unfortunately, Phil is spot on when he says I have used cameras where the noise is not an issue until reaching ISO 6400+ and this brings about an expectation or even a certain amount of bias to a camera body that struggles with ISO800.

I might have got away with it this time as the couple hopefully only want screen res JPGs but I would not personally feel comfortable presenting them with anything bigger.

And, lenses do play a big part and in this instance, I was using an Olympus 12-40 f/2.8 pro and a 7-14 f/2.8 lens it was not the lens choice that was the limiting factor but the 4/3 .sensor
 
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