Weeds Redux, XVIII

Waterbury, Connecticut

Finally, the last installment of this "camera buying decision" series. Just over a year ago, last July, I bought a Panasonic Lumix GF1 with 20mm f/1.7 lens and the accessory EVF (electronic viewfinder). I mentioned early in this series of posts that I was fascinated by the 4/3s format back in 2003/4 and got terrific use out of the E1 camera, but then was left waiting too long for Olympus to replace the E1, so added some Pentax equipment. That worked well, but nothing’s perfect. From day one there were problems with the Pentax digital gear's autofocus system. Sometimes slow, sometimes weirdly flakey, and too often just not accurate enough. Constant vigilance to keep the AF honest distracted from the otherwise good handling of the camera and lenses. The "pancake" designs were beautifully crafted bits of glass and metal—they looked great, but were heavily compromised. The 21 has very annoying barrel distortion and soft corners, the 15 has enormous field curvature (no help to the already weak AF system in the cameras) and corners that never get crisp even at optimum aperture. Still, there were plenty of good pictures to be made—essentially all the pictures that appeared on this blog from early 2007 through July of 2010 were made with the Pentax gear.

The Olympus E1 was a great start for 4/3s, but it seemed to me that the 4/3s equipment lost its way, with cameras like the E3 and some lenses like the 12-60mm ballooning up to the size of APS-C systems, which is just the opposite of the original concept: a sensor size big enough to produce good files but small enough to foster an ideal combination of compact size and high quality for matching bodies and lenses.

So I was intensely interested when the Micro 4/3s standard was announced and cameras began to appear. With a sensor the same dimensions as the original 4/3s but no mirror box, this looked like potentially a more brilliant idea than the original. Also, I'm fine with a somewhat controversial aspect of the m-4/3s concept, that of baked-in software corrections for the lenses. Some have reacted as though this is a horror (perhaps in part because it's become a standard strategy for small-sensor digicams), but I don’t see that. We’re thoroughly into digital capture here, we’re not going to put one of these lenses on a film camera. So the notion (not exclusive to m4/3s and minis—Hasselblad is doing it too) is to blend optical/hardware design with software data manipulation that happens automatically, behind the scenes, seamlessly, either in-camera or in Raw processing. If this lets you produce a lighter, smaller, faster, less expensive lens that makes better files than a lens that relies entirely on optical hardware design, what’s wrong with that?

It took a little while for me to try the new format. The first Olympus models drew a lot of complaints for less than stellar AF, and I’d had enough of that recently. Their accessory EVF was high quality but big and clunky, really fighting the concept of the camera itself to my eye. When the stuff was just out, I saw someone carrying one at an opening for a pair of photographers at a very Fancy prep school's art gallery, and pretty much went, "eeeww." The early Panasonic m-4/3s cameras with built-in EVF struck me as too big, not radical enough, not trying hard enough to take advantage of the format/platform. Then the GF1 appeared, much smaller, like the Olympus digital Pen series, but getting great reviews for AF performance, with an accessory EVF that was more compact than the Pen’s but with significantly lower viewing quality.

So I decided it was time to get on board and see what one of these might do for me. My thought was that it would be the camera that I always have with me when I’m not specifically out to make pictures—doing errands, going to someone's housewarming party—and that I’d put it in the shoulder bag of dSLR gear when I went out specifically to shoot. It didn’t work out that way. After a little while to get used to seeing through the EVF and get a handle on the very different general controls, I began working with the Raw files produced by the GF1 and that small, fast, short-normal lens. Best digital capture files I'd ever worked with. Micro-4/3s began to take over for everything, except when I needed a lens or accessory I didn’t have for m4/3s.

A quick digression—the GF1 began to take over for nearly everything I do with digital capture. But large and ultra-large format film is still part of my work. I’m planning an expedition next month to add three states to my American Drive-in Theater project, and I’ll be using 8x10" and 7x17" film. Of course I’ll shoot up a storm with digital capture between the theaters as well. But my specific interest in digital capture is equipment that will fill the niche my M-Leicas did with film. I want a combination of high quality, compact size, and great handling. When big is the primary requirement, high resolution, really large prints—I’ve got that covered elsewhere.

So, virtually every picture that’s appeared on this blog since mid-July of last year was shot with the GF1 and 20mm, until the 14mm f/2.5 became available late last year and got into the mix. Prints are even more impressive than little web files: I've been pleased with a lot of these pictures printed at 15x20 inches, which is a significant step bigger than 12x18"—the largest I ever printed my Leica negatives. The unit’s biggest drawback is that primitive accessory EVF. It is accurate, the framing is 100% of what you will get, but in bright light it can be difficult to tell what’s being framed so accurately. It’s a good thing the AF is so reliable, because you sure can’t evaluate focus through the EVF. What you can do is tell whether the floating green rectangles that indicate where the camera thinks it should focus agree with what you want, or whether you need to tell it to do something else. Then you can essentially count on it being perfectly focused where it says. Even at f/1.7. Welcome change.

Now we finally get to last week, or, well, almost. A couple months ago, the Lumix G3 was announced/released but has been unavailable at the usual suppliers. The G3 boldly goes where the previous Lumix cameras with built-in, high-quality EVFs failed to go: it’s got the high quality finder in a package that is right down there with the size of the GF1. Which is to say, ahem, not that different from a screw-mount Leica. The dimensions are a little bigger, but it’s actually slightly less tall and a lot more sleek than the GF1 with the EVF installed, which is the only way I ever use the GF1. If the new size/shape with the quality finder were the only new features, that would have been enough. For weeks I’ve been constantly checking online dealers, and last Thursday when a batch of G3s with kit zooms appeared I jumped on it and one’s been here since Friday afternoon. In fact, there’s a lot more than the finder: a new sensor with 30% more pixels that the reviews are saying, despite the smaller pixel size, delivers better dynamic range and high ISO. There’s a fully articulated LCD screen, something I’ve never had and will be interested to investigate for possible handling virtues. So the G3 for me immediately followed my “rule” that you consider a new camera if you see ways in which it will directly improve your picture making.

A quick postscript. I’m getting used to the camera and learning which of its gazillion features will be useful to me. The finder is as good as everyone says, though that’s not to say that it’s exactly like a good dSLR finder. It’s different but promising. Beyond that I can’t do my usual objective tests of things like dynamic range, I can’t check whether those extra pixels actually translate into larger prints with no quality loss, because the G3 is so new that the current version of ACR doesn’t support it. Until Adobe drops the next release of ACR, all I can do is shoot in Raw+JEPG, view the JPEGs and file the Raws until I can process and print from them. To find out what the G3 can really do.