Have had half an eye on the used sales lists over here, somewhat looking for a properly (low) priced 14mm F:2,5 and scored it yesterday for roughly $80... Unfortunately without the back lens cap, so the fellow selling it, instead included a GF2 with battery and charger for it, in the same 80 bucks. That said, I have not much vested interest in the GF2 as such, but can reuse the battery for the GX1 and may off-load the charger. I`ll just see how it fares.
Would you mind giving some feedback in our print-related subforum once the printer arrives? Since my Canon Pixma MX725 is pretty much broken, I've also been looking for a new printer and have the G650's smaller sibling, the G550, on my radar.
A bit of duplicate post but: I ordered a "2 weeks used" Olympus M.ZD 100-400mm f 5-6.3 IS for "only" 999 £ (thanks to one of the most amazingly helpful and generous forum member):
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It's the biggest lens I have ever owned and to my surprise, IT ACTUALLY FIT IN MY QUICK ESCAPE 800 alongside the Olympus M.ZD ED 12-100mm f 4 IS Pro mounted on my Big Oly ... and still have room in the tablet pocket for my phone and troop at the top for spare batteries. Took all of them out today and I managed to squeeze a small bag of Croissants and a bottle of water (when I had the camera in my hand with either lens) and one apple.
And I also have a replacement for the Olympus EE-1:
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A 30 quid tactical pistol dot sight off Amazon that comes in (thankfully not black) good blending color.
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It has Red and Green colours sight with 5 levels of brightness.
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It has 4 different shapes for the sight, circle dot with a cross, cross with a dot, circle with dot and dot.
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I have 2 methods of mounting: I have bought a hot-shoe adapter to Picatinny rail from china but the hot-shoe square is not large enough and it wiggles when mounted on the camera, which makes it very frustrating to use. The other is I ripped the plastic shoe of an old flash that I did not need and stuck it on the rail and tightened the screw to hold it in place ... it sorts of works but it has no way of making it lock onto the hot shoe so it's not very secure.
But I am having some parallax issues because I can't seem to be able to align the dot with the center AF point of the camera. It comes close-ish using a 3x3 AF square but not pinpoint AF. The sight can't go anymore to the left and there's a bit of space between the dot and the AF point. I am probably going to look for an alternative because tracking at 800mm can be very very difficult without some kind of assistance ... especially with very fast and/or small birds.
Bought an EM1X via the getolympus outlet sale. Yeah, I know they sneakily raised the refurbed prices before the coupon was in effect, but it was still a relative bargain, ending up about $400 less than the currently discounted retail price. Some photo gear I sold recently helped defray the cost. I want to see if the vaunted Bird AF is really as good as many are saying, including my friends who have the X. We shall see.
Would you mind giving some feedback in our print-related subforum once the printer arrives? Since my Canon Pixma MX725 is pretty much broken, I've also been looking for a new printer and have the G650's smaller sibling, the G550, on my radar.
Having used Canon multifunction printers for about 16 years, I have become progressively more disenchanted with them. Build quality has become poor. Print colour life is plain lousy! Six months in an album! On plain paper, the colour lasts about 9-12 months before starting to fade noticeably.
When the last one died, I bought an Epson XP-970. Could not be happier with it, even excellent for photo printing. One print has been hanging on a bright wall for about 9 months now, with no sign of any colour shift.
I've also done a few A3 prints on stationery store photo paper that were excellent.
Highly recommended.
Not likely to replace my Epson R3880, but a very worthy printer nonetheless.
I bought a Panasonic GX85. I had one in the past and replaced it with the GX9, which I never warmed up to. I now have a Panasonic camera in three sizes: GX85, G9, and S1R.
That's interesting. I own a GX85 and have never tried a GX9 but I have studied them online and I thought it wasn't that different. What was it that you didn't like? I have been thinking about a second camera to have two lenses on the go and the GX9 was an option.
An eM5.ii is coming soon, to compete with my GX7. Weather resistance and higher grade of stabilizer are important items for me, but the '7 fits me really well. I've tried replacing it a few times but newer models haven't worked out; this is likely my 4th GX7 body, maybe 5th!
They might both stay, we shall see. Doubt it though, I've seen ny turnover rate ..
While I've been working at home for the last year, sooner or later, the office will open back up. However, it was recently announced that the office will move to another building, and instead of having assigned cubes where I can have multiple monitors setup permanently, it will be an open office setup (yuck). I wanted to have more than just a laptop screen if/when I'm working from an office. Maybe they will provide monitors, maybe not.
While vacations and such are on hold right now, I was thinking that when we do go on a trip, and I'm in the hotel room at night, that it would be nice to have a second screen when looking at the photos I shot during the day. If I am using it for photo editing, I would prefer the colors to be closer to 100% of the gamut of colors, and higher contrast available.
After looking at a lot of specs for these portable monitors, I made my decision based on:
Brightness of 400cd/m2 (many of the monitors are 250cd/m2);
Contrast：1500:1;
IPS 98% sRGB color gamut (many are 45%, some are 68-72%);
Full HD 1920x1080 pixels (for a 13" monitor, 4K is overkill, and my older laptops might not support 4K);
12-14" screen to allow ease of packing in a suitcase/backpack along with the laptop;
Power less than 10W, so I can run it off of a powerbank if I need to;
Touch screen support (hopefully it will work under Linux);
Priced at $200 or less.
I really, really wanted the monitors that attach directly onto the back of the laptop (like the SideTrak Swivel), but I ultimately concluded that they each had flaws that prevented me from buying them. In particular, I have older laptops that don't have USB-C cables, so I need HDMI or Displayport, and many of the attached monitors are USB-C only. Also, there were some concerns that the whole setup wasn't stable.
Though if I'm being honest, it is a toy that fascinated me. I did look at the Olympus Outlet sale, and frankly nothing in the sale jumped up a screamed 'buy me'.
An eM5.ii is coming soon, to compete with my GX7. Weather resistance and higher grade of stabilizer are important items for me, but the '7 fits me really well. I've tried replacing it a few times but newer models haven't worked out; this is likely my 4th GX7 body, maybe 5th!
They might both stay, we shall see. Doubt it though, I've seen ny turnover rate ..
I switched from Panasonic GX7 to Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II many moons ago ... I wanted the weather sealing and the flippy hippy screen was very tempting ... but the E-M5 Mark II never warmed up to me too much outside of the image quality and rendition.
The reason was the Panny GX7 was the most comfortable camera I ever had my medium-large-ish hands-on and that even with large-ish/heavy-ish lens too (most I ever got to test it with was the Oly 50-200mm f 2.8-3.5 Mark I with MMF-3).
What I did not like about the E-M5 Mark II was how narrow the camera is between the right edge and the screen. my fingers would constantly go over the screen or overreach the top and back buttons. A 3rd party metal grip helped this a bit for the mid to tip of the fingers but not my thumb ... at that time I couldn't afford the official grip. In the end, I got the E-M1 Mark I and now I have the Mark III.
Actually, 2 days ago I sold my E-M5 Mark II (after more than 2 years of barely any use, some months not at all) to my best friend because she wants to go to Japan next year and wanted a more compact and portable camera than her (ancient at this point) Canon 1000D. I undersold the camera so it can fit in her 500 Euro budget so she can afford the Panasonic 12-60mm f 3.5-5.6 and the Olympus 45mm f 1.8 (both lens used on my recommendation). I even threw in some legacy dumb adapters if she ever wants to play with old glass (she's not much into photography BUT she has a curious nature and has pretty good skill for artistical impression).
I do miss sometimes my old Panny GX7 ... even with the shutter noise sounding like R2D2 getting a blow job
Having used Canon multifunction printers for about 16 years, I have become progressively more disenchanted with them. Build quality has become poor. Print colour life is plain lousy! Six months in an album! On plain paper, the colour lasts about 9-12 months before starting to fade noticeably.
When the last one died, I bought an Epson XP-970. Could not be happier with it, even excellent for photo printing. One print has been hanging on a bright wall for about 9 months now, with no sign of any colour shift.
I've also done a few A3 prints on stationery store photo paper that were excellent.
Highly recommended.
Not likely to replace my Epson R3880, but a very worthy printer nonetheless.
Which one do did you have John? This really isn't my experience.
I have some framed pictures in the brightest room in my house which have faded a tiny amount in the course of three years - that said, I'll just reprint them at some point. No worse than some dye-sub prints on the same shelf.
Album pictures look as good today as they did when I printed them. I just use overlays or spay mount - no plastic covers.
I only use the range of Canon inks and Canon paper that the printer is designed around. The Chromalife inks seem very stable compared to older all-in-one cartridges from HP and Epson. I've never printed with a modern Epson printer for comparison though.
Which one do did you have John? This really isn't my experience.
I have some framed pictures in the brightest room in my house which have faded a tiny amount in the course of three years - that said, I'll just reprint them at some point. No worse than some dye-sub prints on the same shelf.
Album pictures look as good today as they did when I printed them. I just use overlays or spay mount - no plastic covers.
I only use the range of Canon inks and Canon paper that the printer is designed around. The Chromalife inks seem very stable compared to older all-in-one cartridges from HP and Epson. I've never printed with a modern Epson printer for comparison though.
Richard, we've had 3 or 4 different ones. Up to the IP4000, they were great.
The 'new' one (IP7560?) used Chromalife inks on Canon papers, and they faded almost immediately! Even in Arrhenius dark storage conditions (albums). Best stability was on photocopy paper ... This printer was a low point for Canon, and I was glad when it died ... !!
The Epson XP-960/XP-970 series appear excellent, and even have a user-replaceable overspray tank. My brother has had an XP-960 for about 2+ years now. Zero problems. Our XP-970 is about 9 months old, and works extremely well. Far better designed than recent Canons.
The XP-970 looks like good value, but for me, it's a non-starter.
The Canon G650 is a multi-function compromise. I need half a dozen decent colour or black & white photo prints per month. The deal breaker is the 40+ pages of A4 text I print every single day, plus the copying and scanning that I and the rest of the family do. Hence the attraction of low cost/high capacity original ink. Printers last me about two or three years at best - it's a business cost. I aim to pay 3p a sheet or less including paper, ink and printer for black and white A4.
My 'office' is my dining room table which gets cleared when needed. I have previously ran a separate Kyocera B/W laser printer to get my office printing costs down (under 2p a print all-in), but with this particular printer, I shouldn't have to. Minimalism is the key to a happy wife (well, in most departments anyway).
If I ever needed A3 - I would consider the Epson, but I've seen good results from the Canon Pro series too.
I bought a Panasonic GX85. I had one in the past and replaced it with the GX9, which I never warmed up to. I now have a Panasonic camera in three sizes: GX85, G9, and S1R.
I have a GX85 as well. I bought it to replace the LX100. I got the two lens deal plus a $100 gift card, then sold one of the lenses.
The GX85 is a fun compact camera. I like the EVF placement as it makes it easier to shoot with both eyes open.
Well ... used the money I got for my Little Oly sale (to my best friend) and got a Panasonic Leica DG Summilux 15mm f 1.7 ASPH for use on street photography and family/indoor portraits, bought it used from CEX for 285 quid, condition looks okay on the lens (though the lens hood was so used that the pins that hold it in place are smoothed out so it's quite easy to bump it off the lens) and the only fault (of no major consequence) is 3 tiny pieces of debris inside the lens ... I am undecided if I should return it for that yet, I got it just today and I have a 7-day window of return.
Now the bigger problem is the misses is really pissed about me buying the lens because she can't understand why I need more lenses (then Oly 12-100mm Pro and Oly 100-400mm) ... I could try and explain and show her why but it would be in vain so I guess I will have to live with it (and her memory tends to be very long) ... now need to figure out how I can get the Panasonic Lumix G 42.5mm f 1.7 ASPH Power OIS to have the other end of the spectrum ... and I swear the Olympus MC-14 WILL BE THE LAST LENS ... (but then there's lens filters and tripod, for group family pictures, and monopod and Gorillapod and ... *dies*)
I hear ya. The trouble started with miz ektar when the vintage lenses started taking up space on the floor. Fortunately the stuff in boxes is still invisible.
Well ... used the money I got for my Little Oly sale (to my best friend) and got a Panasonic Leica DG Summilux 15mm f 1.7 ASPH for use on street photography and family/indoor portraits, bought it used from CEX for 285 quid, condition looks okay on the lens (though the lens hood was so used that the pins that hold it in place are smoothed out so it's quite easy to bump it off the lens) and the only fault (of no major consequence) is 3 tiny pieces of debris inside the lens ... I am undecided if I should return it for that yet, I got it just today and I have a 7-day window of return.
Now the bigger problem is the misses is really pissed about me buying the lens because she can't understand why I need more lenses (then Oly 12-100mm Pro and Oly 100-400mm) ... I could try and explain and show her why but it would be in vain so I guess I will have to live with it (and her memory tends to be very long) ... now need to figure out how I can get the Panasonic Lumix G 42.5mm f 1.7 ASPH Power OIS to have the other end of the spectrum ... and I swear the Olympus MC-14 WILL BE THE LAST LENS ... (but then there's lens filters and tripod, for group family pictures, and monopod and Gorillapod and ... *dies*)
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That said, I have not much vested interest in the GF2 as such, but can reuse the battery for the GX1 and may off-load the charger. I`ll just see how it fares.
