End of Canon

Saturday, February 8, 2014

Canons

It's been a good run, Canon. I've switched to an Olympus OM-D E-M5 system.

It all started with the G1 in November 2000 (apparently for my birthday). Many of my all-time favorite images came from this camera! The video was awful, and pulling it out - yes, it still works - is an exercise in patience, but the 3 megapixel shooter was my first "real" digital camera.

A couple years later, I bought the S230 for Krista's birthday, to which we also later added this waterproof case. The pictures were almost (but not) as good as the G1, but the video was a lot better. This one scored our unforgettable dolphin swim :) A pair of SD600's joined the fold for Antonio and Carmen. In 2010, the S90 replaced the failing S230, with impressive enough image and video quality to be a viable pocketable option when it was inconvenient to carry around the big guys.

In 2004, I replaced the G1 with the Digital Rebel - the remarkable DSLR that kicked off an industry. I scored thousands of awesome images with this camera, slowly adding flashes and better lenses to create a flexible system. In 2008, the 40D joined the fold, and its super-fast, high-quality performance got me taking it everywhere, and even doing paid work (go figure).

In my photo library:

Camera Saved images
G1 5968
S230 2077
S90 1917
Digital Rebel 11970
40D 13160

But, from left field, came the advent of smartphone cameras. Even though the 40D took images in another league from the smartphones, the video from the phone was pretty good (and the 40D didn't take video at all), and the images keepable for the most part. It took enough effort to pull out the 40D compared to a phone out of a pocket, that lesser quality + convenience trumped the more cumbersome high-quality system. The Lumia 920 cemented this advantage with pretty-good images, and really-good (Stabilized!!) video. But so often I kept missing the great images from the 40D, and really missed my lighting system.

Over the last year, two cameras captured my attention: the Olympus OM-D E-M5 and the Black Magic Pocket Cinema cameras, in the micro four thirds (m43) system. They offered several things attractive to me:

For the E-M5 particularly:

I considered Panasonic's cameras, but the GH series were too large, and the GX series didn't have camera stabilization and microphone jacks.Olympus' newer E-M1 was appealing, but too large with little additional benefit in my key areas. So the E-M5 seems to be the best option for now, with a system that should have a good life for years to come.

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