This is the story of why I didn’t buy a Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 prime lens for my Olympus PEN E-P3 and instead bought the Canon PowerShot S100. As a side note, I ordered the new camera in basic black because I’m a traditionalist. Black goes with everything and it cost $50 less than the identical camera in silver (why?).
It took me a year to work this out. Many people, including myself, have pointed out I have a plenty of cameras and accessories, so why in the world do I need or want another? It’s a valid question. I’ve given it a lot of thought.
Secretly or not-so-secretly, we all want the new camera
To the last man and woman, we are gadget freaks. We love’em, can’t get enough of ‘em.
Too many? No way. There is no “too many.” No photographer can have too many cameras, even if we have dozens of cameras including ones we never use or haven’t touched in years. It may appear to the non-initiate as if we have excess equipment, but each piece plays a unique role. Like children in a large family, no two are the same. Each has a special destiny, a niche, a purpose. Although a small degree of overlap may exist, it is surprisingly little.
Someday they will make a camera that will do it all … and I will not be able to afford it. Life can be cruel.
The Collection
The foundation of my equipment is a pair of Olympus PEN cameras. The PL-1 was my original camera. It’s a few years old and plays backup for the newer E-P3. I got the Olympus 40-150 zoom when I got the PL-1 as well as one of my two 14-42 Olympus lenses. More recently, I bought the 45mm F/1.8 Oly portrait lens. I love it so much it makes my heart flutter thinking about it.
Last, but far from least, I added the Panasonic LUMIX 14mm f/2.5. It’s pretty fast, decently wide, an all around excellent landscape lens. Since that’s mostly what I shoot, this is an extremely useful lens.
Also notice my amazing camera bag. It looks like a big lunch bag and holds all the equipment I own, including a lot of stuff not in the picture. I could probably use it as a lunch bag, come to think of it.
Next up, meet the Canon Powershot SX260 HS with its 20X zoom, f/3.5-6.8. Light and small, it has a lens that can go from moderately wide to very long (about 300 feet), it has been my grab and go camera as well as Garry’s. Because I do more grabbing and going than planning and organizing, it has gotten more use recently than the PENS. That’s mostly the result of poor planning on my part.
It focuses fast, is easy on batteries and small enough to slip into my pocket. It’s a fine little camera until the lights go down. At that point, its maximum aperture of f/3.5 becomes a problem.
Enter stage right: the new kid in town. Canon PowerShot S100 can shoot JPG and RAW (as do the PENs, but not the 260). Although this isn’t always important, it can be. The lens is not as long as the 260, but it’s much faster — maximum aperture f/2.0 versus f/3.5. In poor lighting conditions, it’s the difference between getting the shot and not.
In the end, after sifting through all the possible permutations and arguing with myself about “need” versus “want very much,” the decision was between getting the Panasonic LUMIX G 20mm f/1.7 lens ($348) for the PENs, or the Canon PowerShot S100 ($279 minus some coupons I had from Amazon).
The Panny 20 is a fast 40mm lens (in practical terms) that many photographers who work with micro 4/3 cameras use as a normal. It’s ultra compact, ultra light and renowned for high quality optics. I eventually dissected my reluctance to buy it thusly: 40mm is not a length I like.
It is a bit on the wide-angle side of normal. This means if I use it to photograph people, they will look a little wider than they really are. No big deal you say? Are you kidding? Whatever other truths exist about photography, this one is cross-gender, international, etched in stone:
No one wants to look fat in a photograph.
A little bit extra width would go over among the women in my life like the proverbial lead balloon. If I shot a lot night scenes or cityscapes, it might be worth it to me, but we don’t have a convenient city. It’s rural out here. We have a moon, trees, fields, rivers and waterfalls. Cows and horses, too. Our towns go to sleep early and don’t leave the lights on. Our roads are mostly unlit. If if you are from an urban area, driving after dark in this neighborhood can be unsettling. It is very dark.
So I bought the camera
I finally admitted I was never going to buy the lens, even if the price were to drop. Decision made, I felt better. Indecision concluded, let the buying commence.
The little S100 will get a lot of use. Garry will use it, I will use it. It will travel with us when we don’t want to play guard dog to more expensive equipment and when we don’t want to carry more than the minimum. I will toss it into my bag when we go out, just in case.
And that’s the story.
Rarely do I know exactly why I made a particular decision, but this time I agonized over it for so long that I can — this once — follow my process. That the price of the camera dropped a lot during the last month made the decision easier. When it was around to $400 dollars, it wasn’t so tempting. At $279 with free shipping and a couple of discount coupons? I bought it.
What I use a lot, use occasionally, never use at all, and why
Cameras
I use the Olympus PEN E-P3 often and am always glad when I do. It is fast to focus, recycle, flash, everything. Almost instantaneous. It’s lightweight, compact and a ton of fun to use. Also, the pictures come out well. The auto-focus is important these days since my eyes are not what they were. The speed at which the P3 zeroes in on its target as well as its effective anti-shake (built into the camera, not the lenses) are great for hands that aren’t as steady as one might like.
I don’t use the PL-1 as much, but I keep it fitted it with a second lens. It’s faster to switch cameras than change lenses.
I use the Canon Powershot 260 more than the PENs, not because it’s better — it isn’t — but because it’s so easy. No decisions to make about lenses or other equipment. One camera, everything included.
I bet more and more people be using these high-end point-and-shoots. The quality has gone up and the prices are, for the most part, not breathtaking. There’s not much one of these little babies can’t do.
The difference between point-and-shoot and “other” is getting blurry. All cameras, including some super high-priced DSLRs can all be used as point-and-shoot cameras. You might be surprised how many people have never gotten beyond that. They own thousands of dollars of professional equipment and don’t know an f/stop from their Aunt Fanny. I figure eventually they will give up the pretence and get a good point-and-shoot.
Micro 4/3 format Lenses
1) Most used: The 14-42mm kit lenses. In 35mm terms, this is 28mm to 85mm, or slightly wide-angle to portrait. It is — especially for a kit lens — an exceptionally good piece of glass and it’s versatile. At its maximum aperture of f/3.5, it’s fast enough to shoot in most natural light until the sun begins to go down. If I can’t make up my mind what lens I need, this one gets the nod.
2) Close contenders:
(a) Olympus 45mm f/1.8 (90mm per in SLR terms) is a beautiful, fast lens I often use instead of a “normal.” When you are shooting tight, it has a wafer-thin depth of field letting you do portraits anywhere without the background intruding.
(b) The Panasonic LUMIX 14mm f/2.5 (28mm per SLR) is a moderate wide-angle with high quality glass. At 2.5, it’s reasonably fast, even in low light. It’s also compact and weighs close to nothing.
3) Rarely used:
Olympus 40-150 f/4 (widest aperture), translates to an 80 – 300 if it were a 35 mm. Why don’t I use it? Because I often shoot wide, but rarely shoot long. I shoot macro, portraits and landscapes, but things in the distance rarely interest me, at least in part because I can’t see them. The one time this year I needed a long lens, I had the other camera with me. Oh well.
Compare Olympus cameras: Olympus PEN E-PL5 prices , stores , reviews , specifications and videos at Fisooloo.com.
Marilyn Armstrong‘s insight:
This website, set to Olympus if you click over from here, is a useful tool for comparing models of camera equipment in a variety of ways. If you’re thinking of buying, but aren’t sure what model … or for that matter … what manufacturer … to go with, this is a good tool to help you sort it out. The site includes reviews, specs for those of us who like to know exactly what we are getting. And more.
There are other categories: computers, fashion, gaming consoles, other things … but you can use it however it suits your needs.
The mirrorless interchangeable lens camera world has gotten crowded. All the major manufactures have jumped in and many have multiple models. I created my guide to mirrorless cameras to help people navigate the waters and make the proper decisions.
If you disagree with my recommendations, that’s fine. Add your suggestions in the comments area underneath this post. If you look at my portfolio or mostlyfotos, you’ll know what I like urban landscapes, architecture and street photography. I also take a lot of candid family photographs which I don’t post on the blog. These mirrorless camera recommendations are based on my experience taking these kind of photographs.
If you are confused by this new and fast growing market, don’t be. Just click on my guide for a straight forward look at what you should consider.
If you have friends that want to step up from a point and shoot or a DSLR user who is tired of lugging their beast around, please send them a link to this page or click the Facebook, Twitter or Google Plus buttons. You can also find a link to the Mirrorless guide on the right side under “Recommended Gear”
Marilyn Armstrong‘s insight: Personally, I favor Olympus and always have, but there are other good choices out there. You’ll never get absolutely everything you want in a camera. There’s always a compromise somewhere, so making a decision involves knowing what you must have versus what would by “nice” to have.
This is the fastest growing market segment for cameras in Japan. The US is are moving in that direction here as well. With good reason. Small, good quality, fast, modestly priced (for a good camera). A lot of people buy these as second cameras and discover that they rarely use their “first camera” anymore.
At the Precision Camera mini vendor fair, I finally got my hands on the newest Olympus Pens, the E-PL5 and the E-PM2. I gave a scathing review of Canon's EOS M, but the Olympus Cameras worked well as expected. However, there was a surprise that I'll talk about later. Both cameras were lightning fast including the focusing and the frames per second -- such a big contrast from the plodding EOS M.
Another case of great minds thinking alike, albeit for slightly different reasons.
Update: The price on the E-PM2 dropped today by $75 ... so I bought it. I just wish I could have gotten it with a lens I don't already have twice over. But it cost the same for the camera body without any lens or with the lens, so okay. Now I have three 14-42mm Olympus lenses. Anyone need an extra? Swap?
Even though Olympus has brought out several new cameras since I bought my E-P3 less than a year ago, I still keep one of these as my “spare” and back up camera. I got it a few years ago when my big Canon became too much to handle … and I have never for a minute regretted it.
The pictures I get from it are as good as ever. It isn’t as fast as the newer PENs, but it’s a fine camera and if I had no other camera at all, this one would do the job.
The Olympus PEN E-PL1 is an excellent camera for most purposes. You can purchase one from Adorama, new including the lens for $259, less than many good point and shoot cameras. They are a fine piece of equipment, either as a back-up camera or alternative to a full-size DSLRs, or as a compact, high-quality all around camera for anyone. It’s also the perfect step up for someone who’d like to make the move from a point and shoot to something more flexible and sophisticated.
For me, it was love at first touch. The moment I got my hands on this sweet baby, I knew I’d found my camera. I was sorry I had spent all that money on the BIG Cannon (sic), but the Canon went to my granddaughter who takes great photographs herself, so I guess it all worked out they way it was supposed to.
It is fast. It focuses fast. It recycles quickly. It has a nice speedy multiple-shot burst, though not as fast as the bigger camera. The anti-shake is built into the camera, not the lens. This is an Olympus feature – all the PEN cameras have it — so any lens that fits the cameras has anti-shake, even if it isn’t an Olympus lens. This is a fine thing for shaky old me. It is lightweight, easy on my wrists. The lens retracts to keep the camera even more compact.
The “kit” lens is as good as any lens I’ve got. Manual or auto focus, it’s just fine. The 2X factor on the camera means the effective lens is 28 – 84, a nice range for normal shooting and portraits. I have a 40 – 140 telephoto too, but I rarely use it. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just seems that most of the pictures I want to take are wide, close, or portrait. I rarely want a long lens.
It packs up almost as small as a point and shoot, but takes better pictures. Great color and you can get a pretty good selections of lenses, prime, telephoto, wide-angle. As a bonus, Panasonic micro 4/3 lenses are interchangeable with Olympus lenses, so you have additional choices.
It shoots RAW, RAW + JPG, and all the variations on a theme of JPG.
The controls are simple. The manual with which it comes is, unfortunately, awful. There is a PL-1 for Dummies book available from Amazon and it is terrific. It explains everything clearly, with pictures, and will help you enormously. I highly recommend it.
Olympus PEN E-PL1 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I-Auto is really smart. They all say they are, but this really is. It will literally find a face in the crowd. It is great for photographing my doll collection because it finds all the doll’s faces and performs color correction without any assist from me, even using flash. Amazing. It doesn’t have a built-in viewfinder, but I bought the electronic one that attaches to the hot shoe/utility port.
Surprisingly, I mostly use the LCD screen, which is big and bright. I’m surprised. I thought I’d use the viewfinder but as an eyeglass wearer, it’s just easier to use the screen. I could have save the money and gotten an extra lens if I’d known.
Lots of “scene” modes and art filters to choose from … and everything is easy to access. You don’t have to navigate though layers of menus. Most of the functions you use are on top where you can easily find them. The controls fit in my hands.
The camera feels solid and well-built and biggest shock? The kit lens is great! I did get a longer telephoto, but rarely use it. The prices of the lenses range from quite modest to wow, but that’s true of most good cameras.
In short, this is a great little camera and about the most camera you can get for the money.I’ve had mine for more than two years and it has never failed me.
The ”Olympus Pen E-PL1 for Dummies” is a must if you are new to this kind of camera. I’m not a camera dummy by any means, but a quick look at the info in this book made me realize that if I wanted to get the most from my camera, I needed instructions that made sense. The book has the information I need; the manual doesn’t.
You will need the software that comes with the camera if you plan to shoot RAW. It’s pretty useful for handling batches of photos not only for RAW conversion, but for batch renaming, re-sizing, formatting, and so on. You tell it what you want it to do, and then it does it, whether it’s 1 or 1000 pictures. It doesn’t require monitoring, either. However, there are no instructions on exactly how it works, so it may take you a little fiddling to figure it out. It’s not difficult and once you get the hang of it, it’s surprisingly useful and will work on JPGs from any camera. Only the ORF format for RAW, however, which is Olympus’ unique format. I believe Corel reads it too, but Photoshop so far doesn’t, at least not my version. Maybe newer versions read it.
Overall, it’s a great camera at a great price. Not the fanciest on the market, but for pure ease of use, price for value, convenient size, I think it’s the winner: the most, best camera for your money.
Here’s the story. There I am at a party. I’ve brought my camera, because hey, why not? I’ve been taking pictures of people doing what people do at parties. Talking. Eating. Sometimes laughing. A few loners. People talking in pairs, in groups. And I’m trying to find a new way to do something at which I’m not particularly good while finding a way of making pictures that are inherently dull, not so dull.
Tall pines from the deck.
The host, a retired photographer and videographer, hates parties and was hiding. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t appear until his wife rousted him from wherever he was holed up.
This is a group dominated by professional media people, some retired, many still working. So there were a lot of cameras, mostly Canon, a few Nikon. I’m the only one with one of those funny little cameras, having brought my Olympus PEN E-P3 a spare battery and left the rest of the gear home.
The man with the Canon.
In this crowd, pictures are not taken on telephones or tablet computers. It’s not that kind of crowd. This is not a group in which anyone suffers from techno-envy. We all have equipment. Lots of it, our own and stuff that belongs to the television stations for which most of the guests work. Oddly, no one was doing video. Too much like work.
A hallway.
I didn’t actually know more than a handful of the people at the party except in the most general way. I know the host, the hostess, a few other people here and there. Pretty much everyone there are former colleagues of my husband or related to the birthday boy.
One way or the other, I’m not sure I could get most of the names straight. Even if everyone was wearing a name tag — they weren’t — it wouldn’t help much. The problem is partly because I don’t know most of the guests. It’s also that I have always been terrible with names and faces. I’m nominally better with faces, but hopeless with names.
Still life with cheese remnants.
You can tell me your name and within a breath, I’ll say, “I’m sorry, what’s your name again?” and if it happens more than twice, I’ll be too embarrassed to ask again, so I’ll smile and nod. Life can be a bitch. Parties are worse.
So it’s me and my camera. It’s an event and besides, what else am I going to do?
This is not a really exciting experience for me. About an hour into the event, my boredom exceeded my tolerance, so I set myself a challenge. Find something to shoot in a lovely, but architecturally ordinary, suburban house.
In the corner.
In the end, the choice was simple: play “Word Mole” on my telephone or find something to shoot. I went with photography, although I’m a world-class “Word Mole” player.
Reflections in a high window.
Here are the results. “Seek and thou shalt find” should be the motto of all photographers. I looked. I didn’t just look around, I also looked up and down. I looked in corners, I peered through banisters. I tried natural light and flash, wound up using both.
Kitchen talk.
Motto of the story? There’s always a picture somewhere. Somehow. You have to look for it, sometimes very hard, but it’s there.
NOTE: I re-edited all these using Photoshop rather than Corel and the difference is enormous. It’s a bit frustrating that the only really great photo-editing application is so wildly expensive, but nothing else works like Photoshop. There is a reason why its name has become synonymous with photo-editing. It’s still the best. I just wish it didn’t cost quite so much!
With camera in hand, exploring European lands, cultures, food, and drink...mostly with a plan, but sometimes enjoying the adventure of just getting lost.
