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| Bridge cameras like the FZ1000 used for this photo give me pictures which are good enough that I have given up ILCs altogether. |
I have been making pictures for 64 years. In that time I have had the opportunity to use just about every camera type that has been available to the general consumer.
For most of the second half of the 20thCentury and the first 15 years of the 21st century my main camera was some kind of interchangeable lens type (ILC).
In the old days there was no such thing as a zoom lens for the consumer market so if you wanted to change focal length you had to fit a different lens.
In the manual focus days I was a Pentax SLR user, starting with the Spotmatic then graduating to the ME super.
But in the late 1980’s autofocus arrived. Unfortunately Pentax missed that bus. They did not develop a workable AF system for several years and in the process lost a massive amount of market share, never to be recovered.
I went with Canon in the form of a string of EOS mount SLRs from the EOS630 up to the EOS1V.
These were basically good products blighted by chronically inaccurate AF.
Along came the digital era and I stayed with Canon in the form of the 20D, 40D and for a short time a 60D and a 450D.
Again these were basically good cameras except for their inaccurate and inconsistent autofocus.
I got fed up with this and tried the Panasonic G1 when it became available on the Australian market.
This was the first ever digital mirrorless ILC and I could see even in 2008 that this technology was the way of the future.
Suddenly I had a camera which managed accurate AF single almost all the time with any subject even in low light.
In other respects Micro Four Thirds technology was not competitive with current DSLR products of the time.
But I persevered through Panasonic’s efforts to transform a good idea (the Micro Four Thirds concept) into a viable product for the market.
To be fair to Panasonic they had it tough, launching an entire new system from a standing start into the chaos of the global financial crisis of 2008. I guess the wonder is that the M43 system and Panasonic’s imaging division survived at all.
Adding to the pain, along came the smartphone revolution leading to a freefall in overall camera sales from around 2010.
The G1 was burdened with many deficiencies of image quality, performance and ergonomics. But it was a start.
After the G1 I had the G3, G5, G6, G7 and G85.
The G3 was a little ergonomic disaster.
Panasonic’s designers got the concept back on track with the G5 and 6 which shared the same body.
Image quality and performance improved but shutter shock reared its ugly head, blighting the next few models with nasty double imaging with some lenses and some shutter speeds.
Shutter shock dogged the G series right up to the G7 which is fitted with the old spring loaded shutter which causes the problem.
Somewhere in there I tried an Olympus OM-D EM5, also a Micro Four Thirds camera type.
Some people say they really enjoy the Olympus experience, I hated it.
I disliked the way it felt in my hands, all hard and edgy, I thought it ridiculous that I had to buy an accessory handle to get a decent grip on the thing, the labyrinthine menu system was bizarrely complex and difficult to understand and AF continuous was hopeless.
In addition some of the lenses were terrible, notably the much unloved 12-50mm which by the way is still in Olympus’ current catalogue.
Around this time Sony offered its bottom of the ILC range A3500 for $350 in Australia. So I bought one and tried it out for a while. I gave it my worst ever ergonomic score and wondered why the thing exists. Incredibly this model is still available from photo retailers.
It seems altogether incongruous to me that Sony which is now putting out the most technologically advanced high end models in the history of photography could at the same time continue to make the woefully inadequate A3500.
I tried the Panasonic GX7 when it came along but did not like the flat top/mini handle design at all.
It never felt secure in my hands and I had many issues with the controls.
The GH series started as a kind of upper spec but still very small version of the G series. My engagement with the this series began with the GH2 which made good pictures but inherited most of the body shape of the original G1 and many of its ergonomic problems.
I graduated to the GH3 and GH4 both using the same body which was considerably larger and much better designed than the GH2.
With these models Panasonic began to differentiate the GH series as a specialist high spec video line which also made good stills.
These were (still are if you have one) very good cameras but they suffer from the dreaded shutter shock problem especially with the 14-140mm lens which I liked to use.
I think the first Panasonic M43 model to finally lay the shutter shock demon to rest was the G80/95, thanks to a new electro-magnetic shutter design.
I owned one of these for a while and found it to have very good picture quality. In many respects the GX85 is a very sophisticated model with many advanced features.
But as with the GX7 I could not get to like the flat top/mini handle design which forever felt as if it was about to fall out of my hands.
Panasonic needed to put the guts of the GX80 into a G8 model and at last they did.
But somewhere along the way they decided to change the numbering/naming convention without explaining the reason.
Anyway the G8 emerged as the G80/85 just to confuse everybody.
I bought and owned a G85 for a while.
I rate it the first fully de-bugged G model ready to take on any competition from any other maker or camera type.
It is a very capable and sophisticated camera with many advanced technologies which work really well.
Panasonic got it right at last. On the seventh try and nine years after the original G1.
The only fault I could find with it is the flat Cursor Button module. I fixed this with some Sugru on the buttons.
My most recent and probably last ever foray into the ILC world was the GH5 which I sold recently along with all the M43 lenses.
I found the GH5 to be an amazingly capable and sophisticated device with excellent image quality, performance and ergonomics and an extraordinary level of specifications and capabilities for both stills and video capture, with strong emphasis on the video side of the equation.
It really was more camera with much more video capability than I can use or even understand, so it went to someone who I hope will make better use of its capabilities than I ever could.
My preference now is for fixed zoom lens models.
No more changing lenses.
I have happily given up some of the capability of ILCs for the versatility of compacts and bridge types which have good enough image quality for me.