I lost my Canon EOS M50 II. Basically my whole camera gear just spin off from a 3km tall mountain in Austria because I forgot to close my bag. I know...
After a month of mourning, I started to look again to the market, but It's hard to swallow. Prices are manually kept high. Affiliate links everywhere. Old gear is not cheaper. An average smartphone can record 4k video with in-body stabilization, but if you want it in a camera then the body will cost you a fortune. Lenses are not compatible with every body, technology exists for good lenses but they keep producing trash. And I have to buy the trash because of my price range.
Moreover, firmwares are proprietary. Smartphone sync apps are limited and proprietary (As a developer it's quite annoying, that they don't even let me fix their issues.) The raw format is only very rarely DNG but mostly proprietary.
I could list the injustices in the world we live in all they long.
But, I miss the image quality, and I need another one. What do you think, which brand is the least like above? What do you suggest for traveling?
(The photo has been made with my phone shortly after losing my camera, sitting there sadly, but somehow the land is so quite and calming.)
When you say old gear is not cheaper... I take it you're looking for some pretty modern stuff? When I decided to get more involved in photography I picked up a Canon Ti4 used from ebay. It was about 6 years old at the time and I picked up a good one for around $250. The same thing with lenses, everything I have is from ebay and everything was relatively cheap (although I'd love to get one of those Sigma 600mm lenses, but oof!). Yeah my body is closer to 12 years old now but I still use it all the time and it's done well for me, plus the EF mounts are common as hell, and all of my lenses have image stabilization built in.
If you're having trouble getting trash photos, maybe check back with this group on what lenses match the shots you're trying to take? There's definitely some garbage lenses out there, and early-on I discovered Canon's own 300mm EF lens have two different models that look identical, but there's a huge difference in the quality between them (which is why the good one costs twice as much, even used).
One good thing about Canon is that you have Magick Lantern available. Most of us can't afford the functionality that this software provides for free! If you want to stick with Canon and get the best bang for your buck, check to see which bodies ML is compatible with to narrow down your selections. After that I would check the lens mounts to see what other mounts can be adapted to fit a body to give you the widest selection of lenses possible. This is usually a one-way street due to focal length so it might pay to choose a body with greater adaptability.
Agree on older gear being cheaper. I've taken many a great photo on my D40 ($50-75 on MPB) and D5300 ($225-325 on MPB). Depending on the focal length desired, there are solid used F-mount lenses around for fairly cheap as well. My go-to was the AF-S Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 G IF-ED VR, which is a FF lens, but it still isn't that heavy. I think I got mine used for $350 10 years ago and have to imagine the price has continued to come down. There's a lot of fast thrid and first party glass available cheap too.
My best lens for capturing the sun and moon is a Canon EF 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6, which sounds like pretty much the same lens you have with a different mount? I found a Kenco doubler that doesn't seem to produce any artifacts (this one goes on the back side of the lens) which has worked really well for grabbing sunspots. Wish I'd had more ambition to get out this Summer, there's been a LOT of sunspot activity that I've missed.
On the other end I have a Sigma DC 17-70mm f2.8-4 which I've been using for model trains. I paid $233 for that one so it's my most expensive, but getting a faster lens really helped with those low-light shots. Sometimes you find great deals, sometimes you find Chinese garbage. Luckily I never paid much for garbage.
It sounds like the design goals Nikon and Canon were using were similar, yes. On a crop body, it's great for capturing things far away. I used it for motorsports. It was also a good people lens, but at 110mm FF equivalent you had to have some space to use it.
I can relate to this. Especially when it comes to reach and close focus, your gear can get in the way of the shot. I feel like a lot of this hobby is clearly identifying your use case (reach, close focus, speed, etc) and then weighing the lenses that satisfy that use case against their tradeoffs (size, weight, image quality).
Over in e-mount land, I have Sigma's 35mm f/1.4 (the old HSM version) and Sigma's newer 35mm f/2.0. The extra stop is nice, but I rarely need it and f/2.0 is half the length and weight. Guess which lens gets used more often.
The nice thing about buying used is you can usually sell it without much of a loss. I've been treating this as "longer term renting" gear to help me find what I want.