UKC

Hi all,

Wanted to consult the collective UKC photography oracle on smallish cameras with a good dynamic range.

I recently resurrected an old Lumix LX3; despite it having a great lens I'm pretty disappointed with the results. I never gelled with the camera when I first bought it, mostly because it copes poorly with high-contrast situations. This was really noticeable last week, when my iPhone was able to take far better pics in the same lighting (on-board HDR processing I'm guessing).

I don't have the time or patience (while shooting or afterward) to stitch two exposures together, and I'm not looking for extreme HDR capability as some pictures of that sort look really odd anyway! Just want natural-looking shots with some detail in the highlights. 

Ideally I'm looking for something

- available second-hand and cheap-ish say £200-300 tops

- reasonably tough

- full manual, aperture & shutter priority

- compatible with a standard circ polariser either with adaptor or screwing straight on

- nice wide-angle lens as standard

Any recommendations?

Olympus OMD e-M10 with lens of your choice might fit your bill? It does HDR, and has decent dynamic range to start with.

Brill. Now researching that model and the more weatherproof M1 / M5, seems there's a good number available at the upper end of my budget. DP Review like them too. 

Thank you

I have an OMD EM10, great little camera and am just considering buying a second hand EM1 for the weather sealing alone but it also has much better focussing than the EM10 an EM5, much biker lump of kit though compared to the 5 and 10 as it’s got a full grip body

Hi. Cheers for that - I think after researching the three models that an EM5 will probably meet my needs best, weatherproof and compact. It loses out to the EM10 on screen performance and connectivity options but IMO worth it for the increased robustness. Just need to get some pics with one now to compare with the LX3! 

I use a mk1 E-M5 which hangs round my neck when hill/mountain walking & snowshoeing - I have no qualms about using it in the snow, the weathersealing is excellent and even the non-weathersealed lenses haven't exhibited any problems (not been drenched though). It's fine on VF with the 17mm f1.8 but I wouldn't do that with the 12-40, it's too bulky for that. The only weak point is the rubber eyecup - that's dead easy to knock off. Shutter had to be repaired/cleaned at 14k actuations - £100ish charge which I felt reasonable.

Second for the Olympus, better than any bridge camera.

Great input, thanks both!

Yes my EM 5 gets a lot off abuse and bad weather and is still going strong, couple of spare batteries from Amazon recommended