baby on the way need help with camera selection

redgreenski

I am completely new to photography. I did extensive reading in here, youtube and various online sites on DSLR cameras vs mirrorless vs just standard point and shoot.
My requirements are:
- low light indoor conditions
- bright light indoor conditions with dark shadows (hospital floor, think delivery room)
- fast moving subjects (think baby)
- compact and portable enough that I would want to take it on trips
- my wife says that for her good video is a must too
I looked into different posts here and I found that a lot of people seem to like Fuji XT-1 and Sony a6000. Others also get good pictures with Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV. I have pretty much decided against Fuji XT-1 due to poorer video quality than a6000. I am now stuck between the models below:
1. RX100
- seems compact, more portable, more likely to take on everyday trips and snap a picture instead of the iPhone 7plus
- will I get as good pictures at home when portability does not matter as much?
2. a6000
- with proper lens will I get much better indoor pictures than RX100? or is the difference negligible
3. a6300/a6500
- is video quality substantially better on a6300 vs a6000
- is a6500 worth the higher price range for me?

ziggy53

Where to start?

Hospitals vary greatly as to illumination in the delivery room/birthing room. I'll trust you with the "bright light indoor conditions with dark shadows" but caution that the brightest may be only when the doctor actually delivers the baby and then only around the birth site itself. Generally hospital illumination will run from typical indoor lighting to low light, to give the mother a break. Most modern cameras do well in really good light but smaller sensors can struggle in lower light.

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV has a 1" sensor, much smaller than the sensor in the other cameras you mention.

Of the models you mention, I suspect that the Sony Alpha a6300 and Sony Alpha a6500 would give the best results, but Sony has chosen not to create any fast and constant aperture standard zoom lenses for the "E" series bodies. Battery life is also an issue with these cameras.

My first recommendation for the primary application of childbirth documentary is a dSLR which can do both stills and respectable video.

I suggest that a Canon EOS Rebel T7i / 800D might be a more suitable solution in that it has a decent Passive, Cross-Type Phase-Detect Autofocus (AF) for the stills and then Dual-Pixel AF for video. Add a decent standard zoom lens, like the Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM or maybe the Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 DC HSM Art with twice the light gathering ability, and you have a good basic system. I also recommend adding a Yongnuo YN622C Wireless (Radio) Flash Trigger Transceiver just for its Patterned AF-Assist light system, which helps the camera's AF system by providing a patterned, high-contrast target which is much easier for the camera to recognize and speed the whole AF process, even in complete darkness (but it helps a lot in any indoor situation).

Eventually, you can add a compatible flash and another transceiver to allow off-camera flash, which will elevate your photography by adding better lighting control as you need it.

I'm still using an old Canon 7D, which is still working great largely because of the EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM and flash units which still provide excellent imagery.

I do have a Sony a6000 system, a bevy of lenses and a decent compatible flash, but the camera lags in AF acquisition indoors and I can only recommend it for non-serious work. (I get a lot of out-of-focus results or just plain nothing because the Sony AF won't latch.)

I also have a pair of nice Nikon APS-C dSLRs, the D7100 and D7200, and quite a few lenses and flashes for them, but I still believe that the Canon system I described is what would work best in your situation.

Whatever you decide, purchase the system well in advance of the event. You'll need time to practice with the system and learn how to use everything in the midst of a lot of distractions. Best of luck to you and your growing family!

redgreenski

The Canon EOS Rebel T7i / 800D looks good but my issues are with portability. There are various reasons why I don't want a big camera. Especially during delivery it maybe much easier to take some shots with something smaller.
How would the The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 V compare to A6500 with kit lens inside the hospital room?

ziggy53

@redgreenski said:
How would the The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 V compare to A6500 with kit lens inside the hospital room?

Since Sony makes both of those cameras, and they are both in current production, we will assume that the sensor efficiency per unit area is equivalent. If so, the larger sensor wins.

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 V has a 1" sensor (13.2mm x 8.8mm) and the Sony Alpha a6500 has a Crop 1.5x/APS-C sensor (23.5mm x 15.6mm). The Sony Alpha a6500 sensor is much larger (around 3 times the sensor area), so it wins in terms of sensitivity.

However, the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 V has a fixed zoom lens and large aperture, which directly affects light gathering ability, with a maximum aperture ranging from f/1.8 at wide angle to f/2.8 at telephoto. This is excellent performance in a zoom lens.

The "kit" lenses Sony would like to sell you for the a6500 are pathetic for an indoor shoot. The best, fastest aperture, standard zoom lens which will fit the Sony Alpha a6500 is the FE 16-35mm F2.8 GM. (It is designed as a wide-angle zoom for the full-sized Sony Alpha bodies but acts as a short-range standard zoom on the crop Alpha bodies, like the a6500.) Compared to the RX100 V lens this lens has a bit less than 1/2 the light gathering at the wide end but parity at the longer end. Importantly, it is a very expensive and heavy lens as well, creating a fairly big and heavy system, with less zoom range than the RX100 V system.

Bottom line, the Sony RX100 V is not horrible overall, and you can probably get some decent images especially with some practice (which I greatly recommend). For the money, it's also a very good value and compact too. It's a tremendous upgrade over any cell phone camera.

Grainbelt

I'd encourage you to consider the medium in which you will share your photos and videos. A lot of the reviews and technical discussions online focus on details that are imperceptible when printing at 8x10 or smaller, and definitely for web / social media sharing. As much as we all like to compare specs, any current 16+ megapixel camera body is going to have tremendous performance for still photography.

Setting them apart, if you choose to shoot in JPEG format and not process your own raw files, is the processing applied by the camera to the data from that sensor. As a new shooter, and one with a newborn, I expect you'll be wanting to share images straight out of the camera. I am hugely partial to Fujifilm in this regard - the skin tones are consistently rich without being ruddy and oversaturated.

The other thing those sensors can't do is gather more light - that is up to the lens. Fujifilm excels here as well, with an arsenal of prime lenses with very fast apertures. Even the 'kit' zoom typically offered has a useful variable aperture of F/2.8-4. There are now a trio of new weather sealed F/2 primes as well as the 35mm F/1.4 and 52mm 1.2. They were all designed for this format and offer reasonable size as well as great handling with the Fujifilm X bodies.

The scale of apertures as it relates to the amount of light let thru to the sensor is referred to in 'stops', where each stop doubles the amount of light, allowing for a shutter speed twice as fast or an ISO setting half as high. Both of those are important when shooting a moving subject, indoors. The scale is as follows: 1,1.4, 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11.

The XT2 has improved video performance if that is truly a priority for you. Suggest you take a second look at what Fuji has to offer.

redgreenski

Ziggy, thank you so much. You have been very informative. From logistical perspective I am thinking now on settling on two cameras. I will probably get Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 V for quick span shots (unless you can suggest a better compact camera). And it's going to be for those moments when I want to be there to experience the moment and also not to look intimidating with a huge camera and huge lens. I am also going to buy 2nd camera to take more professional looking pictures once things settle down and everybody is in their own private room.
Grainbelt, I will watch some youtube reviews for T2.

In terms of picture quality what I care about the most is not the pixels but the colors. I recently had an indoor graduation where light was dim and yellow. Every single iPhone picture looked just terrible in terms of color balance and contrast. I have never been so disappointed. And I have iPhone 7 plus.

ziggy53

@redgreenski said:
Ziggy, thank you so much. You have been very informative. From logistical perspective I am thinking now on settling on two cameras.

That is correct thinking! Camera "systems" can have greatly different "personalities" with regard to their capabilities. A great landscape system might be totally unsuitable for sports, for instance.

I use Canon Full-Frame and Canon APS-C cameras for the extremely important work, stuff which either pays or which is once-in-a-lifetime, specifically because the autofocus sections can be exploited to a nearly flawless level. I use Nikon APS-C for most personal use because their autofocus performance is very close to the Canon systems (and may be better than Canon in some circumstances but not those for my purposes and intents).

Nothing kills a shot faster than poor focus, so that is my primary consideration.

@redgreenski said:
In terms of picture quality what I care about the most is not the pixels but the colors. I recently had an indoor graduation where light was dim and yellow. Every single iPhone picture looked just terrible in terms of color balance and contrast. I have never been so disappointed. And I have iPhone 7 plus.

When you say, "[the] light was dim and yellow" I suspect that you were dealing with high-pressure sodium (HPS) lighting, also called "sodium vapor". This type of lighting is fairly efficient in terms of lumens per watt, but it is monochromatic and pure yellow. If you must use ambient (available) HPS then converting to B&W (grayscale) in post-production is usually the best choice.

A better choice is overpowering the yellow ambient light with your own light source, and professional photographers, including staff photographers and venue-designated photographers, use electronic flash. You can also use electronic flash as a spectator in most graduations, as fill light. Used this way you can improve on the "racoon eyes" you can get with overhead lighting.

The following were shot in mercury-vapor lighting, which is an improvement over HPS but still lacks a complete spectrum of light. The fill-flash helped immensely with facial definition and then the reds were corrected in post-production. (Without red correction the skin looked ghastly, and the red sash and reds in the background looked dull and muted.)

(Redeye was later corrected, but I left it here as an illustration of an additional consideration.)

(Another image in the set but with redeye correction.)

Equipment used above was:

Canon 1D Mark II body
Canon EF 70-200mm, f2.8L USM
Canon 580EX (original) flash with external high-voltage power supply (reduces flash cycle times by 2/3rds).
Tripod used with the legs together to provide "some" lateral stability. Mounted using the tripod ring on the lens to provide better balance and faster rotation to portrait and back.