Thursday, January 21, 2016

TGIF: Equipment Trail


Been an interesting couple of weeks here at the World Headquarters of Today's Image.  Liah seems to have recovered from her illness and has returned to work.

Taking photographs and wandering about with a camera has come to a halt as the temperature has been less then 20 degrees during the daytime.  

Rather, time has been spent in an inventory of the on hand photographic equipment - cameras,and lenses.

For a number of years, the film camera of choice was an Olympus OM 2 complete with 50 mm normal lens. Still have it along with a couple of other Olympus film bodies and lenses.  


Used that system until working for a local newspaper required the use of Nikon film cameras and lenses.  Out went some of the Olympus equipment and in came a parade of various Nikon bodies and lenses.

On leaving the world of photo-journalism, continued to use the Nikon tools until the photography world changed.  Digital made the film equipment not as attractive / useful and out dated.  

With way too many Nikon lenses, moved to Nikon digital products moving through - D1, D1x. D2x, D100, D200 and D300 bodies.  


As the Nikon's grew larger, looked around for something smaller and lighter.  Added the Fuji X10 with a fixed zoom lens.  While the files from the small Fuji were not quite as good as those from the Nikon's, they were fine for small prints and web use.

Sold the Nikon equipment and purchased another Fuji digital camera - X100 - and a Minolta film camera.  Small was beautiful! 


Post processing the Fuji files turned out to be a bit of bother. After way too much effort, would finally obtain the wished for result.  Time to check out something else.

Enter Panasonic:


The Panasonic G3 was small, light and produced a simple post-processing work flow.  Life was good and over time added two more G3 bodies, a G6 and finally a GH4 body.

The GH4 was purchased with the intention of producing video's. Not happening!  Found the GH4 menus confusing and difficult to use.  

Rethink time. Enter the Olympus OM E-M5 camera.  It uses the same lenses as the Panasonic cameras, so didn't need to move to a another lens system.


Most reviews of the digital Olympus cameras point out the strange and non - intuitive menus.  For my way of working they are understandably straight forward and easy to use.

With the induction of the the E -M5 Mark 2 body, replaced the Panasonic G6 and the GH4 bodies with two of the newer Mark 2 bodies.    


Life is once again, good and simpler. Smaller bodies, lenses and all use the same batteries and digital cards.    

This setup appears to be end of the trail - for now!

With one moment of warmth, a quick local trip to check out the new Mark 2 camera. 

  Richmond, Indiana.

For what it's worth, the following



Was taken with


it used film and cost $10.  It's not the equipment, it's the person behind the camera.

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