Farewell to E-mount....AGAIN

Having used cameras from Sony's E-mount range extensively over the last 5 years, initially with an A7R, then a Nex-6 and most recently an A6300, I found them to be brilliant. The Nex-6 and A6300 with the compact stabilised 16-50 powerzoom became my grab and go camera of choice.

Last time I left E-mount (when I sold the A7R and bought a Pentax K1) I quickly regretted the loss of the facility to simply mount old manual film camera lenses, especially the Russian Leica screw rangefinder lenses, with their slightly quirky images and tiny size compared to many modern AF lenses. A few weeks later, I bought the Nex-6 and was happily back in E-mount land, albeit in APS-C rather than full frame

The A6300 was a natural update to the Nex-6 when I realised that lugging a full frame camera and its associated heavy lenses around all the time was a mugs game. I still use the K1 with its amazing IQ (upgraded to K1-ii spec for a reasonable price by Pentax when they brought the new model out - a nice touch Pentax, Sony please note with your 2 new models a year) but the weight, particularly with the 15-30 f/2.8 zoom leaves it mainly for "going out to shoot some photos" days or astro, rather than "going out, chuck it in the bag and I might take some photos".

As the winter dragged on, I was thinking about possibly doing a motorcycle trip this year and looking at upgrades for the A6300 - particularly with IBIS (in-body image stabilisation).

Initial thoughts were the A6500, or the new A6600 from Sony but the 6500 didn't seem enough of an upgrade and the 6600 was a lot of money and still has the same sensor as the 6300.

So I started looking at alternative mirrorless CSCs, so that I can use legacy lenses in L39 and PK mounts.
 A7ii ? - only £900 now....tempting! but no, stop it! I don't want another full frame camera with big heavy lenses.
Fuji XT-3

After reading reviews, I ended up at a choice between the A6500/6600 and the Fujifilm XH1 with a 16 - 80 f/4 zoom in either case as a single travel lens, with a rank outsider on an OM-D.

The 6500 and the XH1 were around the same price, both heavily discounted from their launch cost and trying them out in the shop, I just liked the feel of the Fuji better and there was an L39 to X-mount adapter in stock, so I jumped that way.

So it's farewell to E-mount...AGAIN.

Did I make the right choice? ..... next blog.