Best Pic Quality sub$500 camera for simple but excellent studio product shots

While this doesn't seem like the exact forum I want, it does seem to have many of camera geeks who know a lot (more than I do).

My situation: I make furniture and do my own product shots in a dedicated corner of the showroom with three strobes, currently using a fifteen year old Canon G8 (inherited from my mom). After a few years of ongoing practice I have topped out on lighting and scene setup and now see the camera as my bottleneck. I seem to have maxed out on my photo quality given my current budget and time. Yes I do post process each shot to be used for the max look. See the attached sample file. And remember, pictures are not my focus nor my business even though I am striving for excellence.

 

If I were to upgrade my camera, what would the best cam be for these needs? I don't need bells and whistles but they are unavoidable. I just need a great single shot cam with the best possible picture/colors in the under $500 price range.

 

I understand that the bigger the sensor the better the picture which makes sense.

 

But DSLR, mirrorless or whatever?

 

I was quite into photography back in the 70s and am well versed in film camera functioning. But the array and potentials of Dig cams is overwhelming. Advice??

While this doesn't seem like the exact forum I want, it does seem to have many of camera geeks who know a lot (more than I do).

My situation: I make furniture and do my own product shots in a dedicated corner of the showroom with three strobes, currently using a fifteen year old Canon G8 (inherited from my mom). After a few years of ongoing practice I have topped out on lighting and scene setup and now see the camera as my bottleneck. I seem to have maxed out on my photo quality given my current budget and time. Yes I do post process each shot to be used for the max look. See the attached sample file. And remember, pictures are not my focus nor my business even though I am striving for excellence.

 

If I were to upgrade my camera, what would the best cam be for these needs? I don't need bells and whistles but they are unavoidable. I just need a great single shot cam with the best possible picture/colors in the under $500 price range.

 

I understand that the bigger the sensor the better the picture which makes sense.

 

But DSLR, mirrorless or whatever?

 

I was quite into photography back in the 70s and am well versed in film camera functioning. But the array and potentials of Dig cams is overwhelming. Advice??

 

I'm sorry I can't see any file attached?

I've been absolutely blown away by the quality of the more advanced "bridge" cameras, you could probably get a good one off somewhere like E-Bay for well within your budget. This table top was shot at 3Mp setting, but I can go up to 9Mp for even more detail.

Bridge Camera such as the Panasonic Lumix or Fuji FinePix? What type of a camera was used for your attached picture- it has wonderful tones and sharpness. My goal is rich wood grains and color, as wood is challenging to capture accurately on film.

 

That's my old Finepix S7000. I've recently upgrade to a FinePix S9100, but not for reasons of image quality.

The big thing is all digital's to a lesser, or greater extent, manipulate the image internally, (Unless you want to post-process RAW) so you need to pick the settings that do the least damage during that process. The S7000 will go much higher (12Mb "fine") but the image quality actually drops because of the amount of processing involved. Just Mp isn't really a "quality" metric, but a size metric. 6M, or 3M is fine because its compressed less & processed less. But there is a negative side too. Basically the more pixels the bigger a hardcopy print can be! You need 300PPI to get a decent Printed image. Viewed is a different story,so to an extent it depends on what your final product will be.

Final use is not very demanding- typically 1200 px square for viewing on our ecommerce site, maybe printed at 300 pix 2" x 2" but print media seems to have died out.

I'm just trying to get a clean image (my current camera creates some artifacts as well as having mold on the lens). The old camera also has a nuisance color gradation between edges, like a ghosting or shadowing. No matter how I set the lights it won't go away.

Your statement about internal post processing and RAW images makes me think I should be shooting RAW and doing my own postproc as necessary.

Sorry Yahoo doesn't recognize your e-mail addy even swapping the "@" into it.

OK I think they went through, let me know &* if not I'll resend.

For your use I'd drop down t lower resolution, 6Mp is really showing off the optics, but would render down to about one at those sizes.

Sorry, while I understand the challenges they aren't relevant in my own work so I am not entirely informed.

1st question: Which aperture are you currently shooting at and what is your flash setup capable of delivering? - Switching from tiny sensored compact to a crop(APS) DSLR will cost you a lot of DOF that you might have to compensate with stopping down and more light. - I'm shooting products of a printshop with all cameras set to f16. I think back in the days when we only had compact cameras those could only be stopped down to f8?

 

If you want more subtle wood tones rendered, try to get hold of a camera with a huge color depth, according to DxOMark's ratings for example. They don't list Canon G8 but G9 is quite at the bottom of their list, if that indicates anything. - Some Nikon D3000 series budged DSLR might score pretty well and be within your budged.

 

Right now we have a general movement from DSLRs towards mirrorless, so if you are lucky, you can find a pre-owned capable DSLR for comparably little money.

 

Detail rendering: It is usually up to the lens and lighting used. - I assume you could get away with using a kit zoom considering how small you are publishing your pictures.

 

I own first generation Fuji mirrorless system cameras, but to me they don't feel well suited to handheld studio work due to sluggish EVF refresh rates in less than broad daylight. - From a tripod they might do well enough but since I am most of the time too lazy to push that thing around I am sticking with DSLRs and rangefinders for now.

 

Sorry, I didn't try any fixed lens cameras for quite a long time so I have no clue about their current capabilities.

 

Shooting RAW files and processing those to your needs is a good idea and I totally recommend it, especially in a studio setting. If a fixed lens camera has no RAW option it probably isn't for you.

Sony NEX-6 or Olympus OM-D E-M5 (first version). Worth a thought, anyway. A Pentax DSLR might work as well, as you can get dirt cheap - but good - K mount manual focus lenses which will mount directly. You can also mount M42 lenses with a simple adapter, too.

Agreed. NEX-6 or even one of the earlier Sony models that comes with the 16-55 lens. Lighting is just as important, if not more important, than your camera for this stuff, which you probably already know.

I have a NEX 7, which is getting kind of long in the tooth in some respects, but I find that it's capable of handling most situations well. Its biggest drawback when it comes to flash photography is its blankety-blank proprietary Minolta flash shoe, which Sony chose to retain. From what I understand, models after the NEX 7 finally went back to the ISO shoe.

 

Anyway, provided it has the ISO shoe, a camera like the NEX 6 or one of the later a-6xxx series would probably serve you well. One big drawback to the APS-C Sony mirrorless cameras is a lack of native lenses for these cameras. And those that are around, with the exception of the kit lenses, are very expensive. But -- if you don't mind using manual focus lenses for your product shots -- and why would you, since they're stationary? -- then there are thousands of excellent manual focus lenses to choose from that you can use on a Sony mirrorless for the price of a $10-15 adapter. And many of the better manual focus lenses can still be had for a song -- although that is changing now that many digital users have discovered just how good some of these older lenses are. I have a rather large collection of Nikon, Canon, and Tamron lenses, and even a few T-mount lenses, ranging in focal length from 17mm to 650mm, all of which I can use on my NEX 7. Really, this is a big reason why a lot of folks have chosen to go with mirrorless cameras.

 

One aspect of my NEX 7 that I find to be very beneficial is its 24.3 megapixel sensor. I've found that once you get up to 24mp, there really isn't much call for anything greater than that. At 24 mp, you can crop a small portion of your image and still have a decent amount of resolution left in that small crop. Something that you just can't do with an 8 mp image. Also, at higher resolutions, the system isn't having to work as hard displaying things like diagonals. I have an older 10.1mp Canon DSLR and one of the things that has annoyed me about that camera is diagonals can sometimes have a stair-step look to them. This just doesn't happen at higher resolutions. So if you go with an APS-C camera, the Sony NEX-6 or any of the a-6xxx series should do you just fine.

 

Also, whichever way you go, I would strongly recommend you buy a camera that can provide raw format images. Why? Because when it comes time to do a bit of post processing, any post you can do to the raw image will always work out better for the image than if it is done to the converted image. I find this especially to be true when I use Photoshop's excellent raw converter. It is so flexible and full featured that I can typically perform most of my post processing to the raw image such that, after converting to .jpg, there is often little left to do, except perhaps resizing, etc.

 

Okay, obviously I'm blowing Sony's horn, but that's only because I'm more familiar with Sony than I am with Fuji, which also builds some outstanding mirrorless cameras, and the 4/3 crowd, which also manage to do very well despite their smaller sensor size. One of the nice things about Sony, though, is if you ever want to upgrade to a full-frame model, such as one of the a7 series or the new a9, you'll already have some accessories that should work on these cameras -- adapters and the like, for example.

 

Oops, I just noticed you're looking for something under $500 for your purposes. In that case, you might want to consider the NEX 6. I see where clean used examples are selling for less than $500 on eBay. The a-6xxx models are all above that price point, though. I wouldn't worry too much about buying used, if the camera looks to have been well cared for. I bought my NEX 7 used and I've had absolutely no problems with it.

Edited May 29, 2017 by mwmcbroom

Agree with the previous poster. Whatever you get, make sure it shoots RAW files. But most mirrorless cameras do these days.

This may interest you - a deal on the Sony A5000 with a kit lens:

 

Save $100 on the A5000 and on the A99II stabilizer kit - sonyalpharumors