Debating on selling my 5D II and 35L/135L for a...

[Sella174]

The OP stated he had a 135mm prime he liked to use. Let us see what native lens is on the Sony A7... Ah, the 70-200 f/4 is the only option at that focal length.

...

Sony A7 135mm focal length on native FE 70-200 f/4 (only native 135mm option) vs. Canon 6D native 135mm f/2

But when the OP then considers the FUJIFILM X-System ... and FUJIFILM has placed a 90mm f/2 on the roadmap for end of 2014. That takes care of the 135mm portrait lens. And the 23mm f/1.4 already takes care of the 35mm all-rounder lens.

 

[sdsr]

So another fun graphic!

The OP stated he had a 135mm prime he liked to use. Let us see what native lens is on the Sony A7... Ah, the 70-200 f/4 is the only option at that focal length. Slower, much larger, worse bokeh, etc. Might not seem fair, but if you are going with an ecosystem that has a paltry amount of native lenses it is fair game. One can fiddle with adapters, but that often can affect quality, autofocus speed, etc.

Is it really worth giving up the entire Canon lens and accessory ecosystem (Sony's only powerful flash pales in comparison to the 600RT, not even close) for 300g less weight and a bit less tall camera? That btw, will be an ergonomic nightmare if you did want to use it for professional purposes with a large lens like a 70-200 f/2.8 due to lack of sufficient grip on the A7 for heavy/large lenses.

Yes, it would be "an ergonomic nightmare" - or, at least, uncomfortable; plus, I would be concerned that the mount wouldn't hold up unless you held the lens/camera combination carefully. I'm quite happy to use my 100L and 135L on my mirrorless Sonys, but I would rather not attach anything bigger; and I'm equally sure that such a system would be terrible for many people - switching completely wouldn't make any sense at all (talking of ergonomics, the big Sony flash I bought with my A7r makes the thing so top-heavy as to be all but unusable; I doubt I'll be keeping it). But for someone for whom smallish primes are enough, they're worth investigating (so, yes, perhaps a very small niche market).

That said, I think the concerns about adapters are overstated. It's true that with the metabones adapter AF speed (and AF only works on some Canon lenses) seems absurdly slow compared to the blinding speed of native Canon AF. But there's no loss of image quality (maybe a gain, depending on your use). So far I've not tried an adapter for Sony/Minolta Alpha lenses, but I understand that there's no loss of AF speed or accuracy for such lenses - for which there's quite a large range, some of it supposedly excellent (I've never used one).

 

[sdsr]

I briefly owned a Fuji X series camera and got the impression that while it had less noise at high ISOs, this was merely because it applied aggressive noise reduction even to RAW files - its files had much less detail than equivalents from my other cameras, mirrorless and otherwise (in fact I noticed a relative lack of sharpness at any ISO, an impression confirmed by just about every photo I've seen online taken with any Fuji X-series camera). For that and other reasons I returned it. I really wanted to like the images it created because I find the cameras themselves very appealing aesthetically and in terms of design, but among mirrorless cameras I prefer the results from my Olympus and Sonys. This seems to be rather a minority view, however.

Not sure what you were shooting but I've got OOC jpg output from an XM1 and kit lens that is terrifically sharp even at 6400. Xt1 and long cheap kit lens similarly impressively sharp. Posted one here a while back.
www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=20200.msg382770#msg382770
perhaps you were suffering blur from some non-stabilized lenses?

I used a XE1 + the much-admired kit lens, plus, via adapters, several MF lenses. What I was seeing wasn't motion blur, and close supbjects photographed better than more distant ones. It could, of course, be that the lens or body were defective in some way (the images I liked most were taken indoors, hand held, in very low light with MF lenses). That said, I've looked at a lot of images online posted by admirers of Fuji X cameras and lenses to demonstrate sharpness etc. and none of them struck me as very sharp (not bad, but nothing that seems to me to justify all the claims made for them, especially given how much the equipment costs); that at least one professional photographer (soundimageplus), who claims that Fujis are his favorite cameras to use, concedes that the resulting images aren't as good as he gets from his Sony A7/r (though it's hard to tell from his photos - the images he posts are too small and I don't like the way he processes his photos); and that the comparative tool at dpreview, for whatever that's worth, confirms my impressions.

But I'm certainly willing to try one again - maybe I'll rent the latest one, with a prime or two. If your rabbit photo is ISO 6400, that's not bad at all.... Even so, they seem very expensive for what they are; for the same price as a Fuji Xt1 you could buy two Sony a6000s or almost three Canon SL1s; or for a mere $200 more you could move up to a FF Sony a7r.

 

[Aglet]

But I'm certainly willing to try one again - maybe I'll rent the latest one, with a prime or two. If your rabbit photo is ISO 6400, that's not bad at all.... Even so, they seem very expensive for what they are; for the same price as a Fuji Xt1 you could buy two Sony a6000s or almost three Canon SL1s; or for a mere $200 more you could move up to a FF Sony a7r.

No, the rabbit photo was 1250 ISO but it's not even a 100% crop either. I've attached an unedited 100% crop with intact exif from the OOC jpg.
I agree, even if the Fuji's are presenting slightly better images OOC, the price premium is NOT worth it and popular Adobe raw converters are still providing rather soft results compared to others raw processing SW.

rant - I bought an early XT1; i really like it, except for the worst buttons ever put on a camera body of any make, at any time! (Canon 60D is even better)
- /rant

OK, back to the camera. For considerably less $ you can get a much better featured Nikon D5300 that doesn't exactly eat the Fuji's lunch, but certainly could be said to edge it out in many ways.
OTOH, many of Fuji's fans are raving about the quality of the lenses and ... I'm starting to agree. There's something about the way they render an image I find very pleasing vs mainstream glass. Fuji really knows how to make lenses and even their low end kit lenses perform very well.

I was using an XE1 + 18-55mm this weekend for some close-up shots and am really pleased with the results. No editing required, directly OOC was good to print.

 

[sdsr]

But I'm certainly willing to try one again - maybe I'll rent the latest one, with a prime or two. If your rabbit photo is ISO 6400, that's not bad at all.... Even so, they seem very expensive for what they are; for the same price as a Fuji Xt1 you could buy two Sony a6000s or almost three Canon SL1s; or for a mere $200 more you could move up to a FF Sony a7r.

No, the rabbit photo was 1250 ISO but it's not even a 100% crop either. I've attached an unedited 100% crop with intact exif from the OOC jpg.
I agree, even if the Fuji's are presenting slightly better images OOC, the price premium is NOT worth it and popular Adobe raw converters are still providing rather soft results compared to others raw processing SW.

rant - I bought an early XT1; i really like it, except for the worst buttons ever put on a camera body of any make, at any time! (Canon 60D is even better)
- /rant

...

That's a shame - I thought it looked rather appealing (at least in terms of the dials on top). And thanks for the extra crop.

As for the much-touted superior high ISO performance of Fuji X cameras, have you encountered this issue? Take a look at the exchange on the June 6 entry here:

http://soundimageplus.blogspot.com/

The upshot is that at the same aperture & shutter speed, Fuji images are noticeably darker than those made by certain other cameras (e.g. Sony a6000), so that -say- the proper comparison for Fuji at ISO 3200 is ISO 6400 on a Sony a6000 (there are comparisons with other cameras too). Presumably this gets discussed in Fuji equivalents of this forum and elsewhere too.

 

[Aglet]

That's a shame - I thought it looked rather appealing (at least in terms of the dials on top). And thanks for the extra crop.

I still really like using it, it's a sweet little camera! Just some vexing buttons on the early models.
Rumor has it... they've been improved in later production and there may even be a retrofit...
I was just gonna glue some "extensions" onto them to improve things.

As for the much-touted superior high ISO performance of Fuji X cameras, have you encountered this issue?

I've got a few Fujis and I've found that the biggest benefit is that the X-trans is remarkable free from blotchy chroma noise at high ISO.
The bayer-sensor X-A1 is about as chroma noise prone as any other modern sony-based sensor.
Fuji's in-camera processing is very good tho, and may account for some of that low noise appearance.
I haven't had enough time to mess with the raw files to draw my own conclusions. But that brings another; for someone like me who's used to shooting everything raw and tweaking in post, I find I can get a lot more shots the way I want them right out of the Fuji camera as a ready-to-go jpg for many uses.

I have not put my Fujis head-to-head with my Canon, Nikon, Pentax, or Olympus gear to see how they all expose the same scene. It's something I'm interested in doing tho, as I found some interesting metering ideosyncracies with my D800s and moreso with all my Pentax DSLRs.
My Canons seem more closely attuned to my Sekonic Light meters over a wider range of lighting and the Oly's I haven't wrung out yet.

DPreview found an exposure difference tho. And I would not be too surprised if there is.
.. actually, just doing a sunny-16 check on some XE1 shots from last weekend it seems it's about 1.5 stops off. I'd have to use my lightmeter and gray cards to really pin it down but looks like it's averaging ~ 1.5 stops more exposure is required at a given ISO.

I hope DxOmark figures out how to test them soon, for info' sake. i like the output regardless, I'll keep shooting with them. The lenses provide a nice looking rendering.