Review-comparison: the best mirrorless cameras in terms of price and quality | Articles | Photo, video, optics

The pop­u­lar­i­ty of entry-lev­el full-frame mir­ror­less cam­eras like the Nikon Z5 is pret­ty sim­ple: you get a great pic­ture and the lat­est hard­ware at a mod­er­ate price tag. But today they have a seri­ous com­peti­tor. Which? Read our arti­cle today. Pho­to: emaratdaily.com

The giants of the pho­tog­ra­phy indus­try are one by one pre­sent­ing top mir­ror­less cam­eras for pro­fes­sion­als — the Nikon Z9 has recent­ly appeared, and the oth­er day Canon pre­sent­ed the long-await­ed EOS R7. But those who decide to update their old DSLR do not need such pho­to mon­sters.

We’ve tak­en the top four val­ue-for-mon­ey cam­eras and com­pared them across the most impor­tant para­me­ters. For com­par­i­son, we select­ed inex­pen­sive reli­able cam­eras with good per­for­mance Fuji­film X‑T4, Canon EOS RP, Nikon Z5 and Sony a7 III.

Image: matrix, res­o­lu­tion, ISO
Burst shoot­ing
Sta­bi­liza­tion
Video
Dis­play
Elec­tron­ic viewfind­er
Bat­tery
Case: dimen­sions, weath­er pro­tec­tion
Price and totals

Image: matrix, resolution, ISO

Fuji­film X‑T4: APS‑C, 26 MP, ISO 160–12800 (soft­ware expand­able to 80–51200).

Canon EOS RP: full frame, 26 MP, ISO 100–40000 (soft­ware expand­able to 50–102400).

Nikon Z5: full frame, 24 MP, ISO 100–51200 (soft­ware expand­able to 50–102400).

Sony a7 III: full frame, 24 MP, ISO 100–51200 (soft­ware expand­able to 50–204800).

The Fuji­film X‑T4 is the only crop (APS‑C) cam­era on our list (APS‑C mir­ror­less is Fuji­film’s spe­cial­i­ty), while all oth­er mod­els are full-frame.

Full frame has its advan­tages over crop:

• bet­ter image qual­i­ty in low light due to a larg­er sen­sor that cap­tures more light;
• the abil­i­ty to use wider lens­es and get wider shots, which is espe­cial­ly good for land­scapes, archi­tec­ture and inte­ri­ors.

When in terms of res­o­lu­tion, the cam­eras are approx­i­mate­ly on the same lev­el: 26 megapix­els for Fuji­film X‑T4 and Canon EOS RP ver­sus 24 megapix­els for Nikon Z5 and Sony a7 III.

Final­ly, the third fac­tor that seri­ous­ly affects image qual­i­ty is the ISO range. The wider this range, the less dig­i­tal noise will appear in your pic­tures in dif­fer­ent light­ing con­di­tions.

Here, Fuji­film has the weak­est per­for­mance: 160–12800 (auto­mat­i­cal­ly expands to 80–51200 at the soft­ware lev­el), Canon EOS RP 100–40000 is slight­ly bet­ter (expands to 50–102400). Nikon and Sony have a stan­dard range at the same lev­el of 100–51200, but the Sony a7 III has more plug-in options: 50–204800 ver­sus 50–102400. This means that Sony is the best at shoot­ing in low light.

Con­sid­er­ing that Sony, unlike the slight­ly more “megapix­el” Canon, also has built-in sta­bi­liza­tion (more on this below), which pro­vides many advan­tages for pho­tog­ra­phy, the Sony a7 III can be giv­en the palm at this point.

Win­ner: Sony a7 III.

Burst shooting

Even though the Sony a7 III is the old­est cam­era in our com­par­i­son, it boasts excel­lent burst speeds. Pho­to: camerajabber.com

Fuji­film X‑T4: 15 fps

Canon EOS RP: 4 fps

Nikon Z5: 4.5 fps

Sony a7 III: 10 fps.

This is an impor­tant indi­ca­tor for any­one who shoots scenes with move­ment — sports, wildlife, street and action pho­tog­ra­phy. But a good frame rate can also come in handy in wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy, doc­u­men­taries, and even por­traits.

Fuji­film turned out to be the fastest here. Of course, this cam­era has a head start — crop matri­ces are read faster than full-frame ones, due to which the speed of con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing also increas­es.

Only Sony comes a lit­tle clos­er to Fuji­film, but still falls short of the nim­ble crop. If you shoot a lot of pho­tos with move­ment and a full frame is a must for you, take the Sony a7 III.

Win­ner: Fuji­film X‑T4.

Stabilization

Fuji­film X‑T4: 6.5 stops expo­sure with most lens­es, but 5 stops with some lens­es.

Canon EOS RP: no.

Nikon Z5: up to 5 stops of expo­sure.

Sony a7 III: up to 5 stops of expo­sure.

Sta­bi­liza­tion has obvi­ous advan­tages when shoot­ing pho­tos — it helps to sharp­en the image and shoot hand­held at slow­er shut­ter speeds. It’s also very use­ful in video, elim­i­nat­ing jud­der and twitch­ing.

Mea­sure the sta­bi­liza­tion in expo­sure stops. So, com­pen­sa­tion up to 5 stops of expo­sure means that you can get pic­tures of con­di­tion­al­ly the same qual­i­ty at shut­ter speeds of 1/15 sec and 1/500 sec­ond (with and with­out sta­bi­liz­er, respec­tive­ly), and with com­pen­sa­tion of 6.5 — 1/15 sec and 1/1500 of a sec­ond.

Fuji­film wins again, albeit with some reser­va­tions. It pro­vides a max­i­mum lev­el of sta­bi­liza­tion of 6.5 stops for 18 out of 29 X‑series lens­es, while for the rest of the lens­es it will be at the lev­el of Nikon and Sony.

Canon clear­ly los­es in this com­pa­ny — the cam­era does not have a built-in sta­bi­liza­tion sys­tem, although the EOS RP mir­ror­less sys­tem has many opti­cal­ly sta­bi­lized lens­es that com­pen­sate for this lack of a cam­era.

Win­ner: Fuji­film X‑T4.

Video

The swiv­el screen of the Fuji­film X‑T4 is good not only for self­ie pho­tos, but also for video shoot­ing. Pho­to: fstoppers.com

Fuji­film X‑T4: 4K UHD/DCI up to 60p.

Canon EOS RP: UHD 4K/24p.

Nikon Z5: UHD 4K/30p.

Sony a7 III: UHD 4K/30p.

Capa­bil­i­ty of shoot­ing video is one of the main indi­ca­tors for mod­ern cam­eras, because video is becom­ing an increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar for­mat.

Here the X‑T4 has an advan­tage, which was cre­at­ed specif­i­cal­ly for the needs of video­g­ra­phers. The cam­era can shoot 4K in two for­mats: stan­dard UHD (3840×2160) and wider-angle DCI (4096×2160) at 60 frames per sec­ond. This speed is well suit­ed for scenes with fast move­ment in the frame. Good sta­bi­liza­tion is also a plus for this cam­era.

How­ev­er, Fuji­film does not have a sep­a­rate head­phone port (for mon­i­tor­ing sound vol­ume dur­ing record­ing) — you can con­nect head­phones via USB‑C using an adapter. All oth­er cam­eras from the list have a sep­a­rate port. Of course, this is a small incon­ve­nience, but it should be remem­bered.

Win­ner: Fuji­film X‑T4.

Display

Fuji­film X‑T4: Rotat­able 3‑inch 1.62M dots.

Canon EOS RP: Swiv­el 3‑inch 1.04M dots.

Nikon Z5: 3.2‑inch tilt­ing 1.04 mil­lion dots.

Sony a7 III: Tilt 3‑inch 921k dots.

The Nikon Z5 has the largest dis­play at 3.2 inch­es, but the Fuji­film X‑T4 boasts the best res­o­lu­tion. At the same time, Fuji­film has a swiv­el screen, which is more suit­able for video shoot­ing, while Nikon has an inclined one, which pho­tog­ra­phers usu­al­ly choose (con­ve­nient for shoot­ing from the waist).

Win­ner: Fuji­film X‑T4 / Nikon Z5.

Electronic viewfinder

The elec­tron­ic viewfind­er is the most con­ve­nient option for fram­ing in sun­ny weath­er. Pho­to: canon.nl

Fuji­film X‑T4: 0.77x mag­ni­fi­ca­tion, 3.69 mil­lion dot cov­er­age.

Canon EOS RP: 0.7x mag­ni­fi­ca­tion, 2.69 mil­lion dots.

Nikon Z5: 0.8x mag­ni­fi­ca­tion, 3.69 mil­lion dots res­o­lu­tion.

Sony a7 III: 0.78x mag­ni­fi­ca­tion, 2.36 mil­lion dots.

The qual­i­ty of the viewfind­er is espe­cial­ly impor­tant when tak­ing pho­tographs (it is eas­i­er to frame the frame with it) and when work­ing in sun­ny weath­er. The high­er the res­o­lu­tion, the more details you can take into account, and the increase (cov­er­age) indi­cates how much of the final frame will be vis­i­ble in the viewfind­er (1x is the entire final frame).

The Nikon Z5 looks like the most inter­est­ing option thanks to its 0.8x mag­ni­fi­ca­tion and 3.69 mil­lion dots.

Win­ner: Nikon Z5.

Battery

Fuji­film X‑T4: 500 shots per charge.

Canon EOS RP: 250 shots per charge.

Nikon Z5: 470 shots per charge.

Sony a7 III: 710 shots per charge.

A capa­cious bat­tery is espe­cial­ly impor­tant for trav­el­ers: the sock­et will not always be at hand, and being left with­out a charge at the most inop­por­tune moment is still a plea­sure.

The Sony a7 III out­per­forms oth­er cam­eras here by a tan­gi­ble 200 shots advan­tage.

It should be not­ed that all cam­eras from the list can be charged via USB from a portable bat­tery.

By the way, please note that any bat­ter­ies are dis­charged faster in the cold. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there are no spe­cif­ic fig­ures and tests, but there is a well-known pat­tern: old bat­ter­ies are dis­charged in the cold faster than new ones.

Win­ner: Sony a7 III.

Case: dimensions, weather protection

Fuji­film X‑T4: 607 grams, 135 x 93 x 84 mm, dust and mois­ture resis­tant.

Canon EOS RP: 485 grams, 133 x 85 x 70mm, unpro­tect­ed.

Nikon Z5: 675 grams, 134 x 101 x 70 mm, dust and mois­ture resis­tant.

Sony a7 III: 650 grams, 127 x 96 x 74 mm, dust and mois­ture resis­tant.

Pick­ing a win­ner at this point is not easy. The light­est and most com­pact mod­el here is the Canon EOS RP, while the RP is a full-frame cam­era, unlike the X‑T4, which, despite the small­er for­mat, turned out to be both larg­er and heav­ier. How­ev­er, Canon lacks pro­tec­tion from bad weath­er. If you don’t plan on shoot­ing in the rain or tak­ing your cam­era on long, dif­fi­cult trips, this isn’t much of a prob­lem.

But if you want a ver­sa­tile cam­era for a vari­ety of shoot­ing sit­u­a­tions, the body of the Sony a7 III looks like the most inter­est­ing option: despite the full frame, the cam­era is com­pact and not too heavy. Plus pro­tec­tion against dust and mois­ture. We give her the lead in this cat­e­go­ry.

Win­ner: Sony a7 III.

Price and totals

The very com­pact body and price are the strengths of the Canon EOS RP, which for many users may out­weigh the dis­ad­van­tages of the mod­el. Pho­tos: businessinsider.nl

Fuji­film X‑T4: 160 thou­sand rubles.

Canon EOS RP: 130 thou­sand rubles.

Nikon Z5: 170 thou­sand rubles.

Sony a7 III: 215 thou­sand rubles.

And here we get to the most inter­est­ing — the price. In the course of our com­par­i­son, you prob­a­bly noticed that the Canon cam­era los­es to com­peti­tors in many aspects.

But this is not at all because Canon does not know how to make high-qual­i­ty cam­eras, but because the EOS RP is real­ly a bud­get full-frame mir­ror­less cam­era. Pret­ty good, but not per­fect. And for this you get a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence in price — the Canon EOS RP costs 130 thou­sand rubles, 30 thou­sand cheap­er than the next-priced Fuji­film X‑T4. If price and size are your pri­or­i­ties, the Canon EOS RP is an inter­est­ing option.

If full frame is not a require­ment for you and you can eas­i­ly get by with a crop cam­era, then the Fuji­film X‑T4 is a real favorite in a num­ber of indi­ca­tors, in par­tic­u­lar in terms of con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing and video. The cam­era isn’t as good in low light as its full-frame coun­ter­parts, but oth­er­wise you get a “uni­ver­sal sol­dier” that won’t let you down in any sit­u­a­tion.

Fol­lowed by Nikon Z5 and it’s a real­ly high-qual­i­ty cam­era in all respects: with an excel­lent matrix, advanced video shoot­ing and a stur­dy body with pro­tec­tion from bad weath­er. Nikon Z5 is a bud­get full frame that does away with many of the short­com­ings of the Canon EOS RP, and in a num­ber of para­me­ters, the Z5 does not lag behind and even sur­pass­es the more expen­sive Sony a7 III.

Sony a7 III is the high­est “class” cam­era in our selec­tion, but due to its ven­er­a­ble age, it can be pur­chased at a bar­gain price. At the same time, the a7 III is by no means an obso­lete mod­el. Per­haps its age only affects the low-res­o­lu­tion rear dis­play, but oth­er­wise the a7 is an advanced and tru­ly “folk” mod­el. Good con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing per­for­mance will appeal to wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phers and any­one who shoots at events. The light sen­si­tiv­i­ty and sta­bi­liza­tion make it a good option for low-light shoot­ing, and the video per­for­mance won’t dis­ap­point even advanced video­g­ra­phers.