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by chickenboot
4686 days ago
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I'm personally a m4/3 convert - I exchanged my D700 and some great lenses for a full Olympus OM-D kit, and aside from a few quirks, I couldn't be happier. However I am not ashamed to say that the D700 and the glass I had was more camera than I needed; I would wager I'm not the only person who covets (and spends perhaps too much on) new and better gadgets though... I made the switch after a holiday with a new baby - trying to carry a serious DSLR and nice lenses around with a baby just didn't work. The whole m4/3 camera and lens kit feels to me like it weighs about as much as one of the serious lenses I used to have! A real fear is that, despite how happy I am (and clearly the author of this article is too), I don't think they're selling enough across the board (if you don't already, I'd suggest any avid photographer read Thom Hogan's stuff, and he talks about this often - e.g. here: [1]). [1] http://www.sansmirror.com/newsviews/the-m43-users-are-nervou... |
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(Tip: the same fisheye lens is sold under all three names. Amazon carries all three and the prices bounce up and down wildly in the $250-$350 range. So put them all in your cart and check it once in a while to see when one of them is down close to $250.)
The quality of these lenses combined with their small size and light weight makes the system a real winner for me.
I've never actually owned a DSLR. I used to shoot with a Nikon FE film SLR with some nice lenses, but switched to compact cameras when I went digital. The Canon S95 I used for the last couple of years takes great pictures. But I wanted to be able to get fisheye photos (for panorama stitching) and better macro shots, and the m4/3 has really delivered.
Thom Hogan is right that Olympus and Panasonic are having trouble selling enough of these cameras and lenses, and it probably is because people aren't moving from DSLRs to m4/3 but instead just using their smartphone cameras. For most of the photos people take most of the time, that's more than good enough.
But I also agree with his conclusion: no one should be scared away from m4/3 because of these uncertainties. You can get great cameras and great lenses right now and use them for many years.
These were taken with the Olympus and various lenses (except for the stained glass photo that I took many years ago). Some are just snapshots, but a few I'm really pleased with. All are straight out of the camera except for cropping, and defishing in the photo of the two dogs:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/geary/