So I got a new camera
Spent my Bearblog perma subscription money on this tbh but Bearblog can wait for a bit (sorry Herman)
I've been rocking my wife's Olympus E-PL3 for a few months, but it's pretty old. It was always the budget brand camera of its day anyway (the L stands for Lite... I think) but in 2016 the 13MP sensor isn't super hot, not to mention the pretty slow autofocus. I'll still keep it around, for reasons that will become clear, but I was feeling that pressure.
I had a few thoughts lined up, mostly in the Olympus side of things (mainly because I already had some M43 lenses, especially the 20mm f1.7 Panasonic pancake). E-M10 II or E-M10 IV, or an E-M5 III... but then this deal came along, and I couldn't pass it up.
Fella was offloading his whole M43 collection, and included was an E-M1 II for A$650 with three batteries. The body alone is going for like $770 on eBay, so, you know. And I had the money. Why wait?
I've been playing around with it for a little bit now and I think it's a great camera. It takes incredible shots. Right now I can't take it out of the house - it didn't come with a strap, so I have one on order, and I'm pretty afraid of dropping the thing. It's built like a tank, but it's still an expensive camera at the end of the day.
I wasn't sure about the articulating screen compared to a tilt screen and, alas, I think I was right: I don't like it nearly as much. It's supposed to be good for vertical shots and such, and it's nice to be able to flip the screen over to protect it when using the viewfinder, but it feels awkward looking at it when it's over to the side of the body. Sad to say but I think most high-end models have moved over to an articulating screen, so I don't know if I have much in the way of options here in the future.
The main thing I was surprised by was how much the additional size and weight matters. It's only about 200g heavier than the E-PL3, but that 200g matters significantly. Specifically, it's a lot more difficult to hold one-handed - two-handed is easy enough, but being able to move the camera around for a specific shot was great. The size also is a bit of a bummer; it turns it from something I could slip in my heavy coat pocket into, well, not that. Hopefully it will still work on a shoulder strap so I can holster it the way I did my E-PL3 on street walks, but we'll see when this new strap arrives.
I will say the grip is magical; it feels perfectly molded to my hand, and it makes holding it one-handed feel a fair bit more secure than the smooth-as-glass flat E-PL3 did. And actually using the camera is a fair sight easier than the PL3. Dials to control shutter and aperture are a godsend after having to fuck around in the menus for the E-PL3, not to mention the plethora of buttons on this thing - the super control panel was helpful, but having access to ISO/sequential shot/DOF preview all on a bunch of easy-to-access buttons is really convenient.
And, of course, it takes amazing photos. Fantastic photos, really, at least in the easy mode still-object product-photography genre, which is what I default to. I realise this is a post about cameras without a single image - sorry, again, I spent the subscription money that would let me host images on bearblog on this camera - but I just wanted to spew out some words while I still had them in mind.
As if by serendipity, while I was browsing the Discover tab I found another BearBlogger had just built a photo journal-y sort of place. Read Peter's bearblog about it here, and check out Moments.im here. I will probably start an account there later just to poke around.