Best mirrorless cameras 2022: from budget models to flagships | Articles | Photo, video, optics

2022 brought us some great cam­eras. Among them is a new hit from Fuji­film. Pho­to: Fujifilm/digitalcameraworld.com

In 2022, many man­u­fac­tur­ers have updat­ed their mir­ror­less cam­era lines, which means it’s time to update the old rat­ings! In pri­or­i­ty, we will have fresh mod­els, how­ev­er, one hun­dred per­cent hits of past years can­not be bypassed. We under­stand the best mir­ror­less cam­eras for pho­tos and videos togeth­er.

Best budget mirrorless camera 2022

Let’s start with the most pop­u­lar cat­e­go­ry — bud­get cam­eras. Man­u­fac­tur­ers this year did not please us with cheap mod­els, so the lead­ers of past years will be here.

Fujifilm X‑T200

And this is an old hit from Fuji­film, which has regained rel­e­vance in the cur­rent eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion. Pho­to: dpreview.com

The X‑T200 is Fuji­film’s lat­est tru­ly bud­get-friend­ly offer­ing: today, the mod­el can be pur­chased for about 50,000 rubles.

The cam­era appeared in 2020, and after it the com­pa­ny released only one mod­el aimed at begin­ners — the Fuji­film X‑E4, but it will no longer be pos­si­ble to call it a bud­get one (90+ thou­sand).

How­ev­er, despite its entry-lev­el cam­era sta­tus, the X‑T200 is by no means a cheap hack. It cre­ates cool JPEGs with Fuji­film’s pro­pri­etary film pho­tog­ra­phy sim­u­la­tion modes. It has a large and bright dis­play with a friend­ly inter­face. There is a viewfind­er, thanks to which it is con­ve­nient to shoot in bright sun­light.

Unusu­al­ly for the class, the cam­era is equipped with a head­phone jack. Plus, she can shoot video in 4K, which means that this is a good option for begin­ner video­g­ra­phers.

Giv­en the price, the mod­el does not have many dis­ad­van­tages: a weak bat­tery for 270 shots (fixed by recharg­ing on the go from USB) and not very detailed 1080p video (shoot in 4K).

Canon EOS M200

The M200 has a handy screen that flips up to the self­ie posi­tion. Pho­to: dpreview.com

An even more bud­get option is the Canon EOS M200. A minia­ture device today can be found for 40 thou­sand rubles, and this is per­haps the low­er lim­it for cam­eras that are not out­dat­ed moral­ly and phys­i­cal­ly.

Despite its super-com­pact dimen­sions, the Canon EOS M200 has a full 24-megapix­el APS‑C sen­sor that takes amaz­ing pho­tos. A con­ve­nient touch inter­face is suit­able for every­one who decides to try a full-fledged cam­era after a smart­phone.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Canon has stopped devel­op­ing native lens­es for the EF‑M mount, but recent­ly a lot of high-qual­i­ty Chi­nese “glass­es” have appeared on the mar­ket at attrac­tive prices.

The cam­era has two cons:

1. It does not have a viewfind­er, which many pho­tog­ra­phers find more con­ve­nient for fram­ing shots than a screen.

2. This is not the best option for video shoot­ing. In 4K, she shoots with a lot of crop­ping (1.7x crop), which makes it dif­fi­cult to shoot wide-angle video (exact­ly the kind of video that blog­gers need *).

*from bud­get cam­eras for blog­gers, we rec­om­mend the Sony ZV‑1. This cam­era for con­tent mak­ers has not lost its rel­e­vance in 2022. You can read our review here.

Best APS‑C Mirrorless Camera 2022

Of course, the giants of the indus­try still put a lot of effort and invest­ment into the devel­op­ment of full-frame cam­eras, arrang­ing a real “arms race” (about it in our last nom­i­na­tion). But prac­tice shows that inter­est in more com­pact advanced APS‑C cam­eras has not dis­ap­peared, but, on the con­trary, has even increased. Obvi­ous­ly, real­iz­ing this trend, Canon released two APS‑C cam­eras with a full-frame RF mount in 2022, but first things first.

Fujifilm X‑T4

Retro style is anoth­er fea­ture of Fuji­film. Pho­to: Fuji­film X‑T4.

Fuji­film is still the flag­ship man­u­fac­tur­er of crop mir­ror­less cam­eras, and so far no one has man­aged to sur­pass the mas­ter­piece of two years ago — Fuji­film X‑T4.

This is an almost per­fect hybrid cam­era, equal­ly well suit­ed for pho­to and video shoot­ing. It is equipped with built-in sta­bi­liza­tion, shoots cool 4K video with all the pro­fes­sion­al tools for video­g­ra­phers. High-speed shoot­ing at 15 fps (and 30 fps with elec­tron­ic shut­ter) is avail­able. And the aut­o­fo­cus sys­tem is only slight­ly infe­ri­or to the top-end full-frame mir­ror­less cam­eras from Sony and Canon.

And for a long time, the X‑T4 real­ly had no com­peti­tors in its class, but the year 2022 has arrived.

Canon EOS R7

The R7 has a pro­nounced com­fort­able grip. Pho­to: amateurphotographer.co.uk

Canon recent­ly sur­prised every­one by releas­ing two APS‑C crop mir­ror­less cam­eras at once: the Canon EOS R10 and R7.

The Canon EOS R10 is a sim­pler mod­el and rather com­petes with the cheap­er Fuji­film X‑S10. The R10 has a 24-megapix­el sen­sor and 4K/60p with crop­ping. Canon EOS R7, in turn, received a 32-megapix­el matrix and 4K / 60p video with­out crop­ping the frame. It can become high-speed (15 fps with a mechan­i­cal shut­ter, 30 fps with an elec­tron­ic shut­ter) with cool aut­o­fo­cus, which makes it an inter­est­ing option for shoot­ing wildlife and sports. Over­all, the R7 has sim­i­lar specs to the X‑T4, so choos­ing a cam­era is more about your pref­er­ence.

Canon has an impres­sive port­fo­lio of RF lens­es, but they are designed pri­mar­i­ly for full-frame cam­eras, so they can some­times be over­sized for the more com­pact APS‑C bod­ies. At Fuji­film, on the con­trary, all lens­es are designed specif­i­cal­ly for the crop matrix and per­fect­ly match the for­mat.

But Canon has its own ace up its sleeve: a huge num­ber of SLR lens­es for any pur­pose and for any bud­get, which can be con­nect­ed to the Canon R7 via an adapter. So if you already have a col­lec­tion of Canon lens­es, you know what to do.

Read also:

The best Canon RF lens­es for pho­tog­ra­phy and videog­ra­phy

Best mirrorless camera 2022 for advanced users

Mov­ing on to more advanced full-frame mir­ror­less cam­eras. Full frame is espe­cial­ly good for pho­tog­ra­phy: more light, more detail, and a wider for­mat. In this nom­i­na­tion, we will con­sid­er mod­els for advanced enthu­si­as­tic pho­tog­ra­phers, which, how­ev­er, can­not be clas­si­fied as flag­ship devices.

Sony A7 IV

Sony A7 IV turned out to be an almost per­fect hybrid cam­era. Pho­to: Youtube chan­nel Ger­ald Undone.

The Sony A7 IV is anoth­er great hybrid cam­era on our list, capa­ble of cap­tur­ing both cool pho­tos and good video. Thanks to the full-frame sen­sor in terms of pho­tog­ra­phy, it bypass­es all the mod­els pre­sent­ed above. Espe­cial­ly if you work in low light.

Per­haps the main sell­ing point of all Sony cam­eras is the incred­i­bly effi­cient aut­o­fo­cus sys­tem that gets bet­ter every year. When shoot­ing with the Sony A7 IV, you don’t have to wor­ry about keep­ing your sub­ject in focus: the automa­tion does every­thing for you.

Excel­lent dynam­ic range in RAW files will delight pho­tog­ra­phers, while 4K/60P and 10-bit video will appeal to video­g­ra­phers of all lev­els.

At the same time, the cam­era has no sig­nif­i­cant dis­ad­van­tages. We can only recall the slow­down in con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing in uncom­pressed RAW for­mat from 10 fps to 6 fps, which can upset pro­fes­sion­al sports pho­tog­ra­phers.

Canon EOS R6

The main com­peti­tor of the Sony A7 IV in this cat­e­go­ry is the Canon EOS R6, which was released a year ear­li­er. It is a lit­tle faster in con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing (12 fps ver­sus 10 fps), but at the same time it los­es in detail: 20 megapix­els for Canon ver­sus 33 megapix­els for Sony.

In terms of video, Sony offers a lit­tle more pro­fes­sion­al tools like a full-fledged HDMI con­nec­tor and “focus breath­ing” com­pen­sa­tion for native lens­es (an unpleas­ant effect when a zoom effect appears when focus­ing from min­i­mum to infin­i­ty).

In gen­er­al, the choice between these two advanced full-frame cam­eras again comes down to per­son­al pref­er­ence. If you already have old Canon SLR lens­es, you can use them with the Canon EOS R6. And if you have pre­vi­ous­ly shot with a sim­pler Sony APS‑C cam­era (like the a6400), then most of the com­pa­ny’s lens­es are equal­ly suit­able for both crop and full-frame mod­els.

Best mirrorless camera 2022 for video

Both Pana­son­ic itself (for exam­ple, the leg­endary GH5) and Sony (Sony a7S III) have a lot of con­tenders for the title of the best video cam­era, but we tried to pre­pare a list of new­er mod­els. And in 2022, there is a cam­era that has already won the hearts of many video­g­ra­phers — the Pana­son­ic Lumix DC-GH6.

Panasonic Lumix DC-GH6

Video­g­ra­phers have been wait­ing for the Pana­son­ic GH6 for a long time after the leg­endary “five”, and the nov­el­ty did not dis­ap­point. Pho­to: Jim Fisher/pcmag.com

Despite the fact that this is an MFT-for­mat cam­era (its sen­sor is half the size of a full-frame one), in terms of video qual­i­ty it is in no way infe­ri­or to the flag­ship full-frame cam­eras. After all, most videos are still shot at 4K res­o­lu­tion, and an MFT matrix will be enough for you. In addi­tion, most films are still shot on APS‑C cam­eras (called super 35 in the film indus­try). And between APS‑C and MFT, the dif­fer­ence is very small.

What does the GH6 offer to video­g­ra­phers:

• video in 5.7K up to 30p, 4K up to 120p;
• built-in sta­bi­liz­er;
• pro­fes­sion­al codecs: ProRes HQ 4:2:2 in 5.7K and 4K, 12-bit ProRes RAW video out­put to an exter­nal recorder.

The cam­era is equipped with a cool­er, so it does not over­heat when record­ing at max­i­mum set­tings. Plus, all ergonom­ics are tai­lored for video shoot­ing, includ­ing an addi­tion­al video but­ton on the front pan­el (blog­gers will appre­ci­ate it) and a rear screen that turns side­ways and spins around its axis.

Of the minus­es — a huge weight for the MFT for­mat (820 grams). Although, when com­pared with full-frame com­peti­tors, this is not too much: the Pana­son­ic Lumix DC-S1H, for exam­ple, weighs more than a kilo­gram.

Anoth­er draw­back is the pro­pri­etary Pana­son­ic con­trast aut­o­fo­cus, which los­es to the lat­est devel­op­ments from Sony and Canon. Although, if you are a true film­mak­er, why do you need aut­o­fo­cus?

Fujifilm X‑H2S

Despite the advanced fea­tures, the X‑H2S has retained a very com­pact body. Pho­to: cined.com

In addi­tion to the GH6, anoth­er top video mir­ror­less cam­era came out in 2022, and again not in a full-frame for­mat. This is the Fuji­film X‑H2S*, which could well com­pete for the title of the best APS‑C cam­era in gen­er­al. We added it to this block because the mod­el’s strongest points are in the video for­mat.

The cam­era offers:

• 4K at 60p, 4K at 30p with min­i­mal rolling shut­ter (dis­tor­tion when pan­ning and shoot­ing a mov­ing object) and 4K at 120p;

• 6.2K at 30p with an aspect ratio of 3:2, which is use­ful for fur­ther crop­ping dur­ing post-pro­cess­ing;

• built-in sta­bi­liza­tion;

• inter­nal record­ing in Pro Res and RAW-video out­put to an exter­nal recorder.

The X‑H2S also has excel­lent aut­o­fo­cus, although there is no track­ing mode for any objects in video mode (there is face recog­ni­tion). As a sep­a­rate acces­so­ry, a cool­ing fan is sold, which, how­ev­er, “buzzes” quite notice­ably.

Of the minor short­com­ings — the sta­bi­liz­er in the video some­times tries to deal with delib­er­ate move­ments in the frame, which reduces the smooth­ness of the mate­r­i­al.

*At the time of writ­ing, Fuji­film’s new flag­ship X‑H2 has been announced and ear­ly reviews of the mod­el have been rave. But until we include it in the top — wait for a spe­cial review!

Best mirrorless camera 2022 for professional photographers

In this sec­tion, we’ll take a look at the flag­ship full-frame mir­ror­less cam­eras focused on high-speed pho­tog­ra­phy. Pri­mar­i­ly suit­ed to pro­fes­sion­al sports and wildlife pho­tog­ra­phers, they are also good for a wide range of gen­res from por­traits to land­scapes.

Nikon Z9

Nikon Z9 was orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived as the future “cre­ator” of cov­ers for Nation­al Geo­graph­ic. Pho­to: petapixel.com

The first Nikon in our top! Believe me, this is not because we do not like the man­u­fac­tur­er, it’s just that recent­ly Nikon has not been par­tic­u­lar­ly active in releas­ing new items, pre­fer­ring to demon­strate var­i­ous vari­a­tions of the cropped Nikon Z50 (Z fc for fans of vin­tage style and Z30 for blog­gers).

But Nikon Z9, announced at the end of last year, made a lot of noise and took pride of place in many tops and bags of pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phers. It’s a big cam­era, more like a pro DSLR, with an inte­grat­ed ver­ti­cal grip and a full range of phys­i­cal con­trols.

At its heart is a full-frame 45.7‑megapixel mul­ti­lay­er sen­sor. It pro­vides high read­out speed, which allows high-speed con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing and high frame rate video record­ing. The high res­o­lu­tion also means the cam­era is suit­able for megapix­el-demand­ing gen­res like land­scapes and com­mer­cial fash­ion pho­tog­ra­phy.

The main fea­ture of the mod­el is the absence of a mechan­i­cal shut­ter. By the way, a com­plete tran­si­tion to a high-speed elec­tron­ic shut­ter is pre­dict­ed for all mir­ror­less cam­eras of the future.

With this most elec­tron­ic shut­ter, the cam­era demon­strates impres­sive high-speed shoot­ing per­for­mance:

• 20 fps at 45.7 megapix­els in RAW;
• 30 fps at 45.7 MP in JPEG;
• 120 fps at 11 MP.

And all this with an almost infi­nite buffer. Only in RAW is it lim­it­ed to 1000 frames.

In addi­tion, Nikon Z9 can shoot video in 8K up to 30 fps and 4K up to 120 fps. It has built-in sta­bi­liza­tion and aut­o­fo­cus with advanced AI-assist­ed object recog­ni­tion.

Com­pet­ing with Nikon are two oth­er mon­sters. One is more sharp­ened for high-speed shoot­ing, and the sec­ond sim­ply decid­ed to bring all the char­ac­ter­is­tics to the max­i­mum val­ues. We’re talk­ing about the Canon R3 and our favorite from last year, the Sony Alpha 1.

Canon R3 and Sony a1

Canon R3 is reli­ably pro­tect­ed from dust and mois­ture, because it spe­cial­izes in sports and wildlife. Pho­to: thephoblographer.com

Canon R3 is a more spe­cial­ized cam­era. It has the same ver­ti­cal grip form fac­tor as the Nikon. How­ev­er, the matrix is ​​less detailed — 24.1 megapix­els.

Few­er pix­els means faster read­ing of infor­ma­tion, so the cam­era can quick­ly shoot with both elec­tron­ic and mechan­i­cal shut­ters. With the first one, the cam­era shoots at 30 fps, how­ev­er, the buffer in RAW is lim­it­ed to 150 frames. With a mechan­i­cal shut­ter, it runs at 12 fps with a buffer of up to 1000 frames.

The mechan­i­cal shut­ter has a plus com­pared to the elec­tron­ic one — the absence of the rolling shut­ter effect (dis­tor­tions when pan­ning and shoot­ing a mov­ing object). There­fore, the­o­ret­i­cal­ly, the Canon R3 is bet­ter suit­ed for scenes with fast move­ment — sports and wildlife. But keep in mind that it has few­er pix­els, which means it will cope worse with land­scapes.

She does not shoot video in 8K, but there is 6K. The rest of the cam­era spec­i­fi­ca­tions are sim­i­lar to Nikon.

The Sony a1 also has a ver­ti­cal bat­tery grip, but unlike the com­pe­ti­tion, it can be removed. Pho­to: Youtube chan­nel Ger­ald Undone

And final­ly, “full-frame mir­ror­less on steroids” — Sony a1. It has a 50.1‑megapixel sen­sor, 30 fps con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing with an elec­tron­ic shut­ter (buffer 155 frames) and 10 fps with mechan­i­cal, 8K video, a pow­er­ful bat­tery for 530 shots.

In gen­er­al, she has no minus­es, except for the price of $ 6,500. Com­peti­tors are cheap­er: the rec­om­mend­ed price of Canon EOS R3 is $6000, Nikon Z9 is $5500. Although in Rus­sia the prices for Sony and Canon are now equal, and Nikon sim­ply dis­ap­peared from all stores. A detailed com­par­i­son of the three mod­els can be found here.