"With no full mechanical shutter available, the R8 cannot close the shutter when powered down as other R-series cameras do (but not including the RP)."
Sensor will be always dirty. This looks a big red flag to me?
Sounds like you’re trying to talk yourself out of buying an R8.
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@koenkooi I only have a few weeks experience with the camera (as does everyone who owns one, since the camera came out only a few weeks ago).
I just checked, there’s certainly some dust on my R8’s sensor. Honestly, there are only a few specks and that’s pretty surprising to me, since I just returned from two weeks in Italy with the R8 as my only camera (other than my iPhone), and my lens changing behavior was unavoidably terrible.
I typically carried three lenses (RF 24-105/4, RF 14-35, and either the RF 28/2.8 or RF 24/1.8), and changed lenses frequently (mostly between the zooms, the primes did not get much use). Lens changes were all ‘on the fly’ working out of a shoulder bag that was a tight fit, meaning longer than normal times with no lens mounted as I juggled gear (and kids). That included several changes while hiking on Mt. Etna, where the kids’ sneakers started out black but ended up gray from all the volcanic dust.
Sensor dust is something of a minor bugaboo anyway, you see it at f/22 but even at f/8 it’s generally not visible unless the specks are really big. It’s an issue for macro shooting, much less so for general shooting. where stopping down too far costs you substantial sharpness loss from diffraction.
So personally, I am not worried about the lack of a protective shutter on the R8. If it bothers you, consider the R6II.