my tortuous path to mu -43

hello everyone -- I'm David from Edinburgh. I've been a photography enthusiast for around 30 years though it has come and gone in phases with membership of a few clubs along the way. Eventually I got frustrated with the lack of immediacy of feedback film and craved digital. The first system I bought into was Olympus. I was trying to find a system which would provide good quality but without too much size or weight and considered the new E400 but eventually got the E500 as it was much cheaper but more bulky --the first broken rule. I then collected a selection of increasingly heavy lenses including my first ever fisheye but after a year or so, despite a good deal of enjoyment with this camera, became frustrated with a couple of things, namely the lack of a true ultrawide and any kind of stabilisation on telephoto. The high ISO was far from inspiring as well. Was within an ace of getting the E3 but then thought to myself, you really cannot afford that --is there not a better deal around? So I switched to Nikon who had at the time a perhaps better lens range including the option to use old primes.

Eventually, I'd collected enough old legacy odds and ends to want to see them with the correct focal length as well as still having some frustration with low light. Enter the D700 last autumn which I hadn't expected for another year or more but I was lucky with a local second hand one. Finally a camera with no weaknesses apart from its annoying tendency to show up every little defect of lenses! Some lens rearrangement required. But finally I was settled --I was quite sure the IQ would do me happily for another 5 years. Just one small issue (apart from dust which has driven me to distraction once or twice). It was difficult to decide what to take on short trips as the kit was neither light nor compact. And I had vague thoughts about a lighter second camera but can't stand anything with only an LCD and anything else was too bulky or expensive.

Then purely by chance a few weeks ago I saw an ad for a clearance of the G1 at under £300 which is much less than I thought a mu-43 camera would cost. Read reviews and thought, well this could be a nice second camera. Now the problems really start as I like it so much that I'm wondering if i really need the full frame stuff. This, after all, was what I was really looking for when I first got the Olympus four thirds camera. I was already sure at that time that the days of the DSLR must be numbered but had no idea how long this hybrid system would last. Objectively, the low light/high ISO performance is similar to the Nikon D200 and clearly below the D700 but yet I'm finding in practice already that the G1 can cope far better than I'd expected with tricky lighting. Of course just now I only have the 14-45 but am seriously considering building a system out of this. But I can't have both, esp. if I get the wonderful sounding, 7-14 and if the D700 has to go, it will have to be before it is replaced so I can probably get back as much as I paid. So, big decisions to be made and I'll no doubt be pestering some of the FF v MFT threads. Ok, I admit I already started...

David

 

Hi Pelao, I was always originally just a landscape guy but since digital have tried to do a few street scenes and moody interiors. I would actually like to do more portraits or at any rate more pictures with people in them but often seem too shy.

At the moment I print rather seldom and a while ago postponed a decision on an A3 printer though one day before long I will buy one and then certainly start to print more seriously. High ISO is fairly important as I enjoy rather low light woodland scenes for instance but am finding I can capture these quite easily with the G1 often using a lower ISO than previously because of the generally wider aperture used in 4/3rds and the inbuilt OIS meaning that shots of around 1/8 or even slower are normally sharp. Also the advent of Lightroom 3 has really made a significant difference to high ISO as colour noise is effectively eliminated now and outdoors at least luminance is not disturbing. I find that ISO 2500 in even lighting (which is actually around 3200 ISO according to DxO) is invisible at normal (1600 pixels) screen view or A4 print. Only 3200 (really over 4000) really oversteps the mark and is unusable for colour images. Indoors can be trickier but even here the results have exceeded my expectations.

Weight is the biggest single consideration but I also prefer the metering and DoF feedback through liveview that you can get, not to mention real manual focussing if needed. And that shutter is so much more civilised

thanks for your feedback --David

 

I could probably run to the 20 and 45-200 and keep the D700. But I love the perspective of ultrawide and the 7-14 is a serious investment. The 9-18 is tempting as well, especially as it's so tiny and light and is not very different from my current 17-35. My instinct tells me that the Panny would be the most logical step though

 

Hi Bokeh --- I don't have my 4/3 lenses any more, shame really, but i think they were a bit heavy for this system. I'll try to get some G1 Edinburgh images up on Zenfolio and/or the gallery here before too long

 

Hi Brian and thanks for the welcome. This forum has a nice friendly feel about it and it's almost like coming home after deserting four thirds for a couple of years. But the new micro version is really what I'd been hoping this format would be all along. Just a wee update to the sensor which will on doubt come with the third generation and I couldn't see any reason for shooting anything else. I remember that the Oly group were thinking of planning a safari to Edinburgh which you were organising but I guess that if it happened, it was while I was in Nikon banishment!

 

A steeple! I don't have ahead for heights although I confess to recent climbing to the top of the world's highest one in Ulm --770 steps... Do you really think they would allow someone in with a toy camera? Am intrigued to hear more. To answer your question, I didn't keep anything in the end but sold the basic kit to a friend who still is happily using it.

 

Hi Bill,

Thanks for the advice. At the moment I'm still undecided. A curious thing happened today at work. I work with the city council in IT and happened to be with one of their leading photographers. He has a D700 with all the gubbins -- 17-35, 80-200 and that fat thing on the bottom which makes it look like a D3. I said I'd fallen in love with m43, especially because of the weight. "Weight", he said, "what weight?" and then told me he had to carry this cam with the 80-200 solidly for two hours on assignment and was absolutely exhausted. He quite likely has a buyer for the Nikon stuff if I want to sell and rather fancies the 70-300 himself (this to me is an large and heavy lens but of course not a patch on the 80-200 f2.8). I need to continue my tests. If, in general, I like the images as much from the G1 then I have to consider what percentage of shots would require the D700 because of G1 limitations. So far, I doubt it's even 1% for my kind of shooting. Of course all cameras have limitations --DR is a fraction of what the human eye can (and greater light and shade is actually a lot of what makes a photo distinct though the craze for HDR might make you think otherwise). The eye doesn't see purple fringing, distortions and edge fuzziness. All these and more, many of which are primarily lens defects, make up the total package. I'd love to think I don't have GAS but I'd probably be fooling myself. But i do have a real desire to get on and spend more time trying to be creative than in the impossible hunt for the perfect camera --obviously a 200g pocketable 12-800 f1.0 zoom lens with eye quality IQ on a rangefinder cam with an EVF equal to an SLR but of course with a large 2x at least view would be a good start