Sony A58 w/ kit lenses and 50mm f1.8 lenses or a Nikon D5300 with kit lenses?

[Nineshadow]

Pretty straight-forward question.The options come at the same price.

 

I'm also open to other suggestions.

[dizmo]

Not really.

Photo or video?

Are you asking about price?

What kind of pictures are you taking? Action? Macro? General?

[Nineshadow]

Not really.

Photo or video?

Are you asking about price?

What kind of pictures are you taking? Action? Macro? General?

Both photo and video. Mainly photo, but I want to do more videos as well.

General pictures and the occasional macro.

[vembutech]

Nikon is good choice.

[ShadowCaptain]

Pretty straight-forward question.The options come at the same price.

 

I'm also open to other suggestions.

 

I vote for the A58, ive grown particularly fond of sony cameras, had an SLT A33 and my A7 - great cameras

[ExcitezR]

i own a nikon D5300 and its a great camera all round and what kit lens are you on about the 18-55 or the 18-140 because the 18-140 is a good lens for a walk around. i have used my camera for weddings with my tamron 70-200F2.8 and the images where fairly good 

 

[Nineshadow]

i own a nikon D5300 and its a great camera all round and what kit lens are you on about the 18-55 or the 18-140 because the 18-140 is a good lens for a walk around. i have used my camera for weddings with my tamron 70-200F2.8 and the images where fairly good 

18-55mm.

[ExcitezR]

18-55mm.

when i was looking to get a camera about 2 years ago i was considering the sony A58  but from what i remember is that it has horrible autofocus and you get a darker image because it has this weird shutter that stays in front of the sensor causing a darker images and and because of that you get a electronic viewfinder so you get slow and laggy when looking through it. there is a reason that when people say they have a sony camera everyone laughs... also with sony you get no where near the amount of lenses as nikon or canon. even though you are getting the 18-55 i would still highly recommend it over the sony.   if you want an idea of the images you would get with the nikon camera you can have a look at my facebook page https://www.facebook.com/georgesphotography96?ref=aymt_homepage_panel

[handymanshandle]

I think you'd be better off going for an a6000 with a 16-50mm lens (or another kit that you could afford.). The a6000 with 16-50 on Amazon France cost €658,33 [VAT included] (Not sure if it would cost the same in Romania and if Amazon France would deliver to Romania.)

[LAwLz]

Just a little warning. I bought an A58 for about half a year ago so I might be a bit biased. I don't have that much camera knowledge either (the A58 is the only DSLR I've ever had) so some of the things I say might be wrong. Hopefully someone will correct me if I am wrong.
 
 
 

when i was looking to get a camera about 2 years ago i was considering the sony A58  but from what i remember is that it has horrible autofocus and you get a darker image because it has this weird shutter that stays in front of the sensor causing a darker images

I can't comment on the auto focus (other than "I haven't had any problems with it") but I can explain the "darker images" part.
 
The A58 has a translucent mirror.

 
What it means is that instead of having the mirror be 100% reflective and move out of the way when you take a photo, the mirror stays down at all time but still reflects some light up for use it the phase-detection auto-focus. I guess you could say it's a hybrid between a regular DSLR like the D5300, and a mirrorless camera.
 
Benefit: good phase-detection auto-focus. No need for a mirror to go up and down (no blackout while taking a photo and potentially higher burst rate). A huge benefit is also that the camera is essentially in "Live View" mode at all time, without any drawbacks. On other cameras if you want to use the LCD screen on the back you can get worse auto focus, or the screen goes black when you take a photo and stuff like that. That's why most DSLR users rarely use the LCD on the back. You don't have to worry about that with a translucent mirror.
 
Drawback: You lose about 1 stop worth of light, which is why you said the photos are darker. If you were to put both the A58 and D5300 on the same shutter speed, same ISO and same aperture then the D5300 would be brighter, but if you get a Sony camera you will just offset the light loss by changing one of the aforementioned settings. You do not have to worry about your photos getting darker unless you are in manual mode and at the same time don't understand the settings. The worst that will happen is that you will have to bump the ISO up a bit more when taking photos in a dark room. Outside during the day there is more so much light you still have to keep the shutter speed in the thousands of a second.

 

 

because of that you get a electronic viewfinder so you get slow and laggy when looking through it.

I am not sure if Nineshadow knows what an electronic viewfinder is so I'll explain that too.

An electronic viewfinder means that instead of looking at a set of mirrors and out though the lens, you will instead be looking at a screen that's continuously fed info from the sensor.

Benefits: You will see exactly what you get since what you see is what the sensor sees. You also get 100% coverage. On low and mid range cameras you usually see ~95% of what actually ends up in your photo, not a big deal but it's enough for high end DSLRs to point it out in their marketing material.

 

Drawbacks: The viewfinder is turned off (to save power) unless you put it up to your face, and it takes some time for it to detect your face. So if you quickly put the viewfinder to your face it will just be black for a brief moment. If I had to guess the delay I'd say it's about 0.2 seconds. It's not long on paper, but it gets pretty annoying in real life.

Another drawback is that the contrast is crap if the sun shines into it. The LCD on the back seems to go a lot higher in terms of brightness so if it's really sunny outside you might have to use that, but even the LCD won't be as visible as an optical viewfinder would be.

 

I've probably found myself thinking "wish I had an optical viewfinder" more times than I have thought "it's a good thing I have an electronic viewfinder".

 

 

 

there is a reason that when people say they have a sony camera everyone laughs

That's only true if you talk to Nikon/Canon fanboys.

 

 

if you want an idea of the images you would get with the nikon camera you can have a look at my facebook page https://www.facebook.com/georgesphotography96?ref=aymt_homepage_panel

You could get the same images with a Canon or Sony camera as well... Might sound cliché but it was not Nikon that took the images, it was you.

It's like pointing to a house and saying "that's the kind of thing you can build with this Vaughan hammer!".

 

 

 

 

Other comments:

From what I can tell the lens selection for the A mount is very good. You will be able to find a Sony A-mount equivalences for 99% of the Nikon F-mount lenses out there. The drawback I see in terms of lenses is that the second hand market is a lot smaller.

 

The Sony camera has in-body image stabilization. Personally I think this is a huge bonus because you can have a slower shutter speed without getting a shaky shot. You can probably get about 2 stops extra worth of light from it (if your subject is fairly still). It is really nice to have for video as well.

 

It is easier to buy an extra lens later (like a 50mm F/1.8) than to upgrade your camera body later.

 

The Sony camera has a feature I really like and it's called "peaking mode". If you are in manual focus mode and has it on, it will highlight what is in focus. Here is a video demo of it.

 

 

Sidenote: The auto focus motor on the Sony 50mm F/1.8 sounds like Optimus Prime having sex with a monster truck. You will hear it if you use auto focus when recording using the built in mics. I don't know if Canon's or Nikon's 50mm F/1.8 lenses has the same problem.

[Nineshadow]

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Yeah, I looked into the A58 as well. Looks like a solid choice all around, but so does the D5300.

I'll have to go into a store and see for myself how I find the electronic VF. That's what I'm not sure about. Sure, it's better in some cases, but an optical one has a few advantages as well.I've used Nikon DLSR-s from time to time and I know how the optical viewfinder is.

 

Are there any other bad personal experiences with the A58 that you haven't mentioned?

[Nineshadow]

I think you'd be better off going for an a6000 with a 16-50mm lens (or another kit that you could afford.). The a6000 with 16-50 on Amazon France cost €658,33 [VAT included] (Not sure if it would cost the same in Romania and if Amazon France would deliver to Romania.)

Any arguments for it?

[LAwLz]

Are there any other bad personal experiences with the A58 that you haven't mentioned?

Other than the EVF having really bad visibility on bright sunny days I don't really have any complains. The aperture can be a bit of a pain to change. In aperture priority mode you change it with the wheel, but in any other mode you have to hold down a button and then use the wheel. It would have been nice to have 2 wheels, one for shutter speed and one for apeture, but I think the D5300 deals with it the same way so it's not really a pro or con in this case.

[handymanshandle]

Any arguments for it?

I would suspect that a Pentamirror is pretty much equivalent to an electronic view finder (Even in some cases an EVF can be better (provided the EVF is of good quality (I.E AMOLED))).

I'm not sure if the a58 uses the same view finder system as the d5300 or if it uses a pentaprism...Generally in most cases a pentaprism is best. Anyways the a6000 benefits for being lighter. I guess my only problem against it, is that since it does not make a mirror it does not make the lovely sound of a shutter. It does however have a faster shutter burst and it does have more focus points (and if I recall correctly most of [if not all of] the focus points are cross type.)

[LAwLz]

I would suspect that a Pentamirror is pretty much equivalent to an electronic view finder (Even in some cases an EVF can be better (provided the EVF is of good quality (I.E AMOLED))).

I'm not sure if the a58 uses the same view finder system as the d5300 or if it uses a pentaprism...Generally in most cases a pentaprism is best.

The A58 has neither a pentaprism nor a pentamirror. It has a fixed translucent mirror and EVF (OLED).

[Ruostunut kokis]

Sidenote: The auto focus motor on the Sony 50mm F/1.8 sounds like Optimus Prime having sex with a monster truck. You will hear it if you use auto focus when recording using the built in mics. I don't know if Canon's or Nikon's 50mm F/1.8 lenses has the same problem.

I don't know about the Nikon 50mm f/1.8, but the AF on the Canon 50mm f/1.8 II that I have is really loud too. I don't know how loud when compared to Sony 50mm f/1.8, but enough to interfere with video recording even with an external mic, though I haven't actually tried recording: my only DSLR, Canon 1000D, doesn't have video recording mode, and I have since moved on to Sony RX100 (and the only things I really miss from DSLRs by moving to a more pocket-friendly option, is the great grip, and the viewfinder).

 

 

Anyways the a6000 benefits for being lighter. I guess my only problem against it, is that since it does not make have a mirror it does not make the lovely sound of a shutter. It does however have a faster shutter burst and it does have more focus points (and if I recall correctly most of [if not all of] the focus points are cross type.)

It can be a bit of a preference, really. I did like the sound of the mirror flapping along with the shutter with my 1000D (and art teacher's D5100 I got to use once. It was my first time using a DSLR too), but on the other hand I prefer a quieter shutter just for the sake of not making people around me feel more anxious. Plus people pay a little less attention to a person casually shooting with a pocket camera / mirrorless camera than to a person shooting (or even simply carrying) a DSLR, particularly if it has a large lens attached to it. I learned to keep this in mind due to a bit of camera hysteria around here: people don't like seeing random strangers with cameras, especially if those are pointed at them.

[handymanshandle]

It can be a bit of a preference, really. I did like the sound of the mirror flapping along with the shutter with my 1000D (and art teacher's D5100 I got to use once. It was my first time using a DSLR too), but on the other hand I prefer a quieter shutter just for the sake of not making people around me feel more anxious. Plus people pay a little less attention to a person casually shooting with a pocket camera / mirrorless camera than to a person shooting (or even simply carrying) a DSLR, particularly if it has a large lens attached to it. I learned to keep this in mind due to a bit of camera hysteria around here: people don't like seeing random strangers with cameras, especially if those are pointed at them.

a.) True

b.) It really depends on one's shooting style. Me personally I don't really plan on doing street shooting simply for the fact that Minnesota isn't exactly a street shooter's ideal location for street shooting. I don't know if @Nineshadow  will do street shooting. (I wouldn't suspect Romania to be a great place for street photography either.) 

c.) Thanks for correcting my mistake.

[handymanshandle]

The A58 has neither a pentaprism nor a pentamirror. It has a fixed translucent mirror and EVF (OLED).

Pfft. Similar idea to a pentamirror.

[Williamchan87]

I personally arn't fond of any of Sony's DSLT, and only liked 2 of their mirrorless being the A7 family and the A6000