New Camera (s)?

The E450 has served me very well for six years, probably because I came from a 35mm background where Fujichrome 200 was my standard 'shoot' colour slide film.

Now though I find that as a travel camera system it is bulky and even the super zoom (once much beligned as a kind of joke camera class amongst 'serious' photographers) cameras of the last year or so, out do the E series cameras for dynamic range and quite probably overall image quality, especially the Panny FZ1000 and the Mrk II and III Sony RX10s.

To think through a critical path analysis of what I need and what I will be empowered to do then I have to look a bit at the past and the future. A "travel" compact is on the cards, as well as a new system....or should I get a used 12-60, 50-200 combi and stick with Oly as the 'hobby' and get a compact ?

Lets write that one off now: The 12-200 Combi do it all? Well that is down to price, and Olympus owners are not like others, they are generally more experienced photters and think their kit is wonderful, so despite outdated sensors and a clumsy combination with the OM or PENs, they think their fast Glass is still worth a fortune. Cheapest is about 50% new last I looked. I am looking at using mayeb, maybe 300€ on the two. Mission impossible, best use the cash on a new system

There is very, very little middle ground now in compacts. THe RX10 II and III are expensive, a bit slow to zoom in and out, have way too long a reach for real use, but now have a one inch sensor and really. Weather proofing, the fast lens and this reach means


To move forward and even make some cash, sailing photting is a runner, so weather proofing is a must for my system., That now restricts me to in fact the Pentax K series for a system, with a two or three lens set up, and / or the RX10. THe LX200 "due" in september this year, may have weather sealing. But it is far too short a reach for sailing photting where I need about 400 mm reach.

I think a used pentax system and a used LX100 or D LUX 109 is the way to go really, or maybe a bib end 109 with Light Room included in the deal.

There may be a round of new cameras seeking new niches or to open things up like the LX100 and RX100 before it did. One thing for sure is that I have zero point zero budget this year!!!

Light Field Cameras - Gimmick or Gold Dust

I sat down last night to get my head around how the light-field-camera system works, because it looked conceptually difficult ...I couldn't work it out at first run through, I was bewildered.

It took a few different approaches and looking at a Lytro video of their first series of interesting cameras, for the penny to drop. You can think of the technique as on the one side being like the compound eye of a fly, fusing together many individual shots in the 'brain' to make a map of the immediate world ahead of  you. Or you can think of it as grabbing more information from the light rays which enter the camera, which in traditional photography are simply trained onto a flat 2D image with much of what the lens can capture being simply reduced to a simple, easy to interpret image.

Think then this. Today we are very used to 3D CAD images, while I work often with 2 D output for actual practical engineering and manufacturing purposes. Plan view, side view and so on.... It is easy on the computer to flick between these two , the three dee for conceiving how it will look, operate and fit during installation and then the 2D for the nitty gritty of measurements, angles, threads, welds and so on, where 3 D would just be a mess of info overload. Usually the 3 D is made from the 2 D traditional drafting, and then the CPU brain makes the 3 D view.

This is a similar principle for light field cameras, where a traditional lens is followed up by an array of micro lenses, the fly's eye , which then allow for more information to be captured in terms of all the focal planes available ie many slices of depth of field, and then also the multiple stero/optic capture where a slight 3 D image can be recomposed. Each micro lens splits the detail up a little more from all the rays coming such that the rays of light render more information or more traces if you like onto the sensor. It has been done in film too, but is not practical for viewing before the advent of serious computing power.

We got used to the stunning quick time style composite images which were created by multiple camera capture, allowing for unbelievable 3 D images with about a 40 degree walk around. The rolling stones video was the first I can remember, and I wondered, how did they do that!??? Basically on a single sensor you can achieve a slight 3 d stereoscopic effect due to the distance across the chip being able to capture very slightly different angles of view

Depth of field contol is then achieved in post processing with Lytro's software suite for example and that is the biggest benefit for general photographers. For macro photographers, the 3D view also helps them but really it seems to be a bit gimmicky for general photography, it is only a few degrees.

The compromise of this composite single capture image is the eventual resolution though. The first lytro camera has a resolution as any one still jpeg image, or just 1.2mpx . This is fine for a VGA monitor but makes for a limited image size on anything bigger, or a poor quality large image. Whereas in fact the information processing is far, far higher than that of a normal 2 D camera due to all the extra computations, which links a camera with a reasonable ouuytput of 8mpx into needing serious on board processing in order to capture even one image per second and represnent it as a flat jpeg on its read monitor screen.

Howwever, Lytro have of course found out that it is not consumers who really gain from this small 3D effect in still images, it is the space imaging and military gun sight government research that this system can find most value and thus earn Lytro the most cash. For me I can see two other major areas if it can be made to work with microscopes and endoscopes, for  bio/medical imaging and for inspection work in engineering.

I dont think we will all be using Lytro cameras any time soon, but perhaps we will see a mobile manufacturer licensing in the lens array because then VGA quality in maybe a 2mpx image is worth the bother for the small screen size to overcome the normal DOF limitation and offer a quirky three dee image.

Micro Four Thirds is Dead....Long Live mFT

mFtf is basically dead for me, and as dead as it had been when i went in to a shop to buy an EPL1, walked out unimpressed and bought an E450 with three lenses on-line.

I am of course impressed  by the OMD range, but I need a weather sealed system and two lenses and that in OMD mFt is a huge investment with all the time the slightly poor trade off between depth of field and size being there. Also there is the fashion-over-ergonomics which is kind of fair  enough if it helps sell bodies, but at the top model really style is not important. How ugly are the D3 and the 5DIII after all?

Olympus have slowed up on selling the compact bodies and rightly so, they can get a far bigger price for the OMD range and people can suffice with their old PEN bodies as 2nd back up or pocket walk around, or buy them pretty cheaply indeed used or old stock. Not that they are much good with that 12mpx chip, but not that they are that bad when compared to the nealy all sub 1000 eurospondoolicdollars compacts.

Until now that is, with two cameras in fact from Panasonic and the related competition from Fuji in particular.
The FZ1000 finally places a reasonable size sensor into a "super zoom" or bridge camera, while the LX100 steals the show for a street camera based on the mFT sensor and a very fast lens.

The lx100 and its sibling the Leica branded Dlux type 109 change the game, big big time for all compact non EVF mFt compacts which are basically dead in the water IMHO for enthusiast buyers.

Interesting with both the LX100 and the FZ1000, Panasonic are stealing a march on not just compacts but also entry and mid level APS-C DSLRs and system cameras. The lenses are faster and better in range than the kit-shit of Canikon land, or most MILCs. The ISO performance is good enough for real photography in disappointing lighting.
The nirvana of shallow depth of field and good bokeh are checked off as if they have reached a mountain top and can take a pause for breath, while the competition look on from their foothills.

The lenses bring into question what the blazes these companies are doing in following the strategy of DSLR and making highly expensive lenses which in DOF / Speed terms are just mid level for APS-C. They have been able to pull off the less-is-more for many years and have ended up painting themselves into a corner, all be that a very nice couple of corners- Panasonic's genius hand played in video and range of cameras, Olympus with their enthusiast and pro appeal with OMD and the retro  style PENs. Nice corners to live in for the here and now, while perhaps the enthusiast market will desert them.

I see that there will be a range of LX hundred series and even a bridge mFT camera in the FZ range. So far it looks like the LX100 is a big seller on Amazon and this is for the same reason I want to buy one - it is a fast lens which can deliver creative depth of field and it is a jacket pocket camera with a view finder. It trumps having to buy a boxy mFT compact and two or three lenses in the mid range.

mFT MILC will still take slightly better technical image quality but the fast lens for under a grand just beat entering the system, and in fact I can see a lot of olympus first and second generation PEN owners dumping their gear to get an LX100, and I can see that people looking for a good long zoom for nerdy-birding could ignore the pixel peepers and plunge into an FZ1000.

Panasonic would be wise to look at doing an mFT version of the lens , to replace the 12/35 video optimised lens and indeed consider creating a range of fast zooms which are compact but sub f3, perhaps with a little less reach such as doing yep a 12/35 but say a 30/100 f2 for portrait and best dof seekers. The genie is out of the bottle, they have achieved a very good lens with only slight compromise which has no relevance to the buyers and intended use of the LX100. The fast lenses from Oly in particular are not all that small, and relative to many APS/C f3.5s they are actually slower due to equivalence.

Why have a kit lens and an mFt for less money and have to spend lots and then change lenses all the time or end up wasting time trying to set up a shot to isolate the subject, when on the LX100 we simply click open the aperture ring and shoot.

For me then, mFT is dead but has a long future in non interchangeable enthusiast compacts.

Painful Decision to Wait on The LX100 - DLux 109

All the reasons are there to buy this new LX100. I need a jacket pocket, glove-compartment take with me camera more than any new lenses for my dslr or say a do it all am-cam like the new FZ1000. It is better than the canon and the sony, and much better than its incongruent predecessor in the lx range, the seven. It has also great DR and mid ISO and OIs and better video than my current jvc camcorder.

However it is a relatively expensive camera which is showing not only its strong sides, but also some weaknesses.

The big point of this camera is a combination of the big chip and the fast lens. That trumps the XZ2, which i had my eye on, and btw can be had new for less than half then original rrp now on line.

It also trumps just about that is, any mft camera with any kit lens, apart from maybe the 12-50 oly at the two extremes of focal length. Why? The fast lens.

Why then not just dash out and buy one, cash down and the rest on credit?

The real reason on the back of my mind is that i am hoping olympus will make a competitor.

What would be so good from oly? Firstly amd most of all, far better out of camera jpegs, which is important in a compact camera which will document the minutiae of oir family lives as much as it will take any images of artistic, photojournalistic or heirloom framed images. My general dslr shoots are in a way warm ups for owning a pro-am FF dslr, in another way they are fun and only when i see the beautiful shot dono turn to raw. I cannot batch process by in large for all sorts of reasons, so frame by frame raw optimalisation is just too time consuiming for me.

Secondly the lens would be sharper, maybe not as fast, but sharper. Also in combination with that it would be a Sony chip with less noise, better resolving ability and better colour.

Panasonic have fallen short , not by much, but just a little short.

1) Soft when open wide below f4
2) noisy and colour abberrant on the edges
3) annoying NR softness, i.e.  default high smoothing
4) little bit short on the long end at eq 75mm
5) other foibles,: auto iso , sensor warm outs on 4k, filters button stupid place, some others yet to be found.
6) out of camera jpegs needing post!

Any one of these points as the single isloated issue on the lx100, would not stop me getting one. But together and with that biggie in 6, they hold up my wallet peel.

I am stalling, i want to handle one but i can see it is going to be nice ftrom the videos. I am not convinced by the on line jpeg galleries, even though the test shots in the so called laboratory conditions say it is class leading.

If only olympus would do this as well!

It is currently a little unclear if there will even be an XZ-3. I guess they are either waiting for something cool from sony's sensor department for the current sensor size, or are reworking to either sony's one inch or hopefully the mFT format.

Panasonic have been able to use Leica to design ground breaking lenses, while having the R&D biudget in sensors and body equipment to now stand head and shoulders above the compact competition with their FZ1000 and LX100. The other manufacturers are who knows, maybe over a year behind in being able to put these size of sensors with so fast glass, enthusiast control elements, and not fogetting the video capability, all into sub 1000$€ packages.

Canon seem to be pretty happy with themselves but their G cameras which take good enough images but are quite bulky and no where near as good as the new GM or existing Epm with their kit lenses. Nikon just cannot do compacts or the milc one syste,, maybe they are too worried about the differential to their dslrs. Users are veryr happy, but they are brand-blinded. Panny are lucky to have had the deep pockets to align with Leica to get the edge and keep it.

Olympus are struggeling outside OMD - they have probably saturated the style seeking market and enthusiasts have fallen off PEN upgrades for omd, and have good enougj back up EP bodies. Omd is a fine fine place to be.

Stylus is not. They need an absolutelty top pair of sensors in order to carry on with the same hardware, otherwise the nice handeling and enthusiast features melt away for those consumers prone to buying the next generation phones with real zoom cameras, and cutting out the middle man on the way to facebook.

I suspect olympus are either consolidating on the up market cash cow omd, or are beavering away on something to really scare the competition in compact land. Hopefully the latter is the case!

LX100 on the Way, Why Buy??

WIth the LX100 starting to ship to retailer's warehouses, it is a pretty hot time to consider if this is a great compact camera or just a 'whole bunch' of trendy buzzy things actually achieved with an old mFt camera and some clever compromises.

Reasons Not to Buy?

Well the resolving power of the lens is still very much in question , and so far it does  not look as good as even the first generation PENs or of course FT cameras, even with kit lenses. The RAW files show better sharpness though, so maybe the jpeg engine is either undertuned on sharpening or is just a bit "loss-y". Default saturation is a bit high, as is maybe contrast but that would need to be seen.

On my e450 i like to use out-of-camera images, just really because raw developing is time consuming and my images are mostly going up on the web, hdmi lines max required ie less than half the original file size. So i have set sharpness +2, contrast +1, and gradation -1. I do regret forgetting to set RAW for some landscapes or high dynamic range shots, but because i like to underexpose often then attempting batch is hopeless for raw. Better to adjust jpegs. Even litho printers ask me for jpegs, less than 4 megs due to their workload and knowing that the shots will work at 330dpi ...ie that is from about 75% sized e450 shots

The reach onnthe lx100 - 75mm - is a little short for many, maybe for me ideally, but more on that below.

Now what is considered 'mid ' ISO is 3200 and here it picks up more noise than say the D7100. No big deal for me, the black cat leaping in a darkened room crowd may disagree. 1600 iso jpegs show smoothing but are very acceptable and noise is low. RAW low light shots are embargoed by panny marketing for now.

You need a big, expensive SD 1 card. Yep to do 4k justice then you will need to spend two hundred euros-dollars on a fast 64  or 128 gigger primary SD card.  Wifi suddenly seems very cool, but how much space do you have on your tablet, and how long to dropbox it on less than a 3G line ?. Also you really need to move out of PC land and into iMac and unix land for editing video within reason of productivity.

Size, ergonomics, non touch screen....something has to give at this price and size point in the market, so it has for some given. Basically this camera plays to te old joes like me in the gallery, but also to POS-mobile upgraders who are really wanting to get to grips with A and S modes.

Diallling in controls. the classic controls appeal to me, but many would rather have a more familiar set up with a multi wheel and a touch screen because they are spoiled techno toy brats!

Reasons to BUY ?

The lens! Yep it is so fast and has a really nice range without making the camera too big. Ok not that long, but it is so fast and onto a bigger sensor so your thin depth of field happens way soon and is way smoother than either DSLR kit lenses or competing smaller sensored enthusiasts compacts

Size- got to be a plus, a true jacket pocket, light camera.

Tactility- good use of the lens A ring and focus - zoom ring, and the dial in hard controls for A, S and not forgetting manual mode plus a little fine adjust on the exposure comp wheel. This is very well thought out actually.

The Wide End .......24mm is a lovely angle to work with for land- amd city -scapes because it does not distort so very much as to make the cameras presence obvious, while it does add to that 'vista experience' and zero to infinity DOF.

11fps  / in full size, this is impressive.  Coupled to 8mpx frame grab from 4k video

4k video? bit gimmicky ? maybe for some, but future proof and you avoid total mess ups in 'lossy' processing. Also it secures 1>1 from the sensor chip which means better fidelity in camera capture to card.

wifi check , high iso check and so on.

Bye bye pasm. I find pasm really annoying these days as many of the shots i choose to spend time on i want to do my own manual bracketing for exposure, depth of field and trying to avoid camera shake. This is largely solved by going back to basics and i like the idea of then overlaying the exposure wheel which will give you the opposing shift when in S or A. This is a real plus for me these days, i end up not knowing where i am in the series of possible shot set ups, or suddenly wanting to take a fast shot and finding S to be left on a half second or P to be aperture biased on my camera unfortunetly. I would hope the lx100 has a max auto ISO setting to then not worry about going over into noisey squishy 6400 land. 1600 will be enough for me with the OIS on or using a tripod.

Last but not least you are getting a very, very good electronic view finder, which for enthusiasts is a real plus.

You are essentially buying a very good lilttle package which will for the non pixel peeper take better shots than anny kit lensed crop frane dslr or mFT or nikon 1 .

Pricey ? Think of the pckage over the immediate competition-possible price differentials for the goodies you get...

200$ for the evf
100$ for sub  f2 to 2.8 in this focal zoom range.
$200 for 4k vid - think also resale even if you do no videography, this camera is three years video future proof at least.

Ok by 2016, the new rival models will have caught up but what will these cameras cost then ? Panasonic recognisw that now is the time for a quantum jump in features and yes, a price hike, to maken this level of camera truly head and shoulders over mobile phone cameras in $500 devices you must remember. With one inch mobiles, fovean and repixelising digizoom , intelligent blur etc in camera, for the above average facebook -instagram glamour snapper then having a separate compact as well as your mobile is going to be a harder ask, as the next level of compacts up to one inch sensor sizes are eaten into by mobile devices. The only place left to go is larger sensors over an inch and faster lenses, longer too and here panny are blazing the trail with this neat  lx100 and the FZ1000 for people who must take birdy - mammal shots from a far.

I have sat on the fence with mFT because i do not like the ergonomics and really the fast glass shows that the systems are overpriced. It is only with the last two levels of GH-G series and the OMD that sensor IQ is really impressive and iso 3200 useable. I am glad i waited because 900€ on an lx100 gives me a better option than a GX7 or epl7 duen to size and price for those f2 numbers.

The only reasonb not to buy is probably the LX110 !!!

Which Camera Suits You. Me. and the Woman in The Street ???

  I have just taken a tour into the never-never land of Leica on a well known internet forum and came away with a decidedly underwhelmed feeling. Worse when I went onto the NIkon 1 MILC forum, where the standard of photography on average did not warrant more than a mobile phone, while a particularly well captured composition of dancers had awful soft, out of focus or  camera shake from what looked like a pause in proceedings.

All these people have one thing in common, they have spent far more than they needed to in buying a camera for what they actually 'need'.

I think that people really miss the point if they have not grown up with the principles of photographic techniques and basically an eye for sealing a moment in eternity from somthing which they feel they can grasp. In other words, some people have a natural talent for both seeing the moment as it arises, the photo-opportunity,  and then having the skills to capture it. Or seeing the composition as it presents itself , such as a sunrise or shadows cast across a railway terminals marble concurs. Any camera will take you there if you don't know where you are going....

Now what type of photos are you likely to take, which do you like most, why do you want to take photos in the first place?  Over time in the west most people who have been interested in taking better quality photographs have been talked into buying the cheaper entry level digital single lens reflex cameras, and until just a few years ago these indeed were the route to better images than the small pocket sized point-and-shoot cameras.

Why DSLRs and  Multi Lens System Cameras are a Waste of Money For Most People

DSLRs of the entry level type are also bought by the consumer masses at inflation adjusted prices two to three times the price of mid nineteen eighties 35mm Film SLRs , when a then funky PASM body would set you back between 200 and 300 pounds for a 35mm camera....oh did I say that most all people buying a DSLR by numbers, buy a smaller than that of course in the APS/C . It is ironic that this originally film format was heralded as the next big thing when in fact it took so much away from photographic quality, while now in fact it is both the bread and butter of over spend on a students or a  family's camera and also a serious contender for proffessional quality output.

The thing is that DSLRs are obtrusive by their size, their shutter noise and actually the message they give out...this is a serious image that is being taken. People can be guarded in their response to candid shots. Your face is hidden from interaction by in large, you may well be better served by ducking your head under the black cloth of a large plate format camera of old because at least then you are hiden as a person.

Also they are cumbersome, and feel a little vulnerable with their snouty lenses. You would probably not take a DSLR down the rough side of town alone, you maybe avoid taking it hiking or boating due to its weight and value, and you most of all would not get allowed into a rock concert with one slung over your shoulder without a press pass.

Compact Cameras A Great Choice, And A Great Future

This is why compacts took off with proffessional photographers. They found them far less obtrusive. The cameras were a lot less threatening, almost as if JFK or Che Guevera thought they were having family snaps taken and not iconic images which will last through history. The tool of choice was the Leica M, or some photographers used the film Olympus PEN cameras. It took the invention and implementation of the pentaprism view finder in 35mm, to change the game and in fact all these SLR cameras owe as much to the 35mm compacts of the 1940s-60s as they do to the twin less reflex cameras they largely came to replace.

If you watch many pro's at work in the studio or working sub telefoto, they often spend a lot of time away from the view finder. The back screen on digi cameras helps them. Some do not have this approach, tending to be glued to the view finder, but most you will find I think are there looking at the scene or model and waiting for either the right second or the right inspiration to then execute the shot technically.

Things have come full circle with Leica going digital, but remaining out of reach for most pockets, while Olympus played the price payoff game with mFT along with the new kid on the block Panasonic, who swalled Leica behind the scenes in order to get a head in the consumer photography market. Both have ended up creating real rival cameras to the great Nikon and Canon 35mm digital SLRs and also Panasonic rival proffessional video cameras in their GH range. Yes there are some draw backs, but in essence you get images which can be to a jobbing media professional, indistinguisable from full frame. It takes a technician to tell the difference between these mFT cameras and their 'professional benchmark' cameras such as the D3 when the best lenses are engaged.

Why The Through The Lens Optical System is Obsolete

In essence the pentaprism, or mirror box as it is on many cheaper SLR cameras, is an uneccesary feature on any digital camera, and adds bulk and also requires the mirror geometry which takes up space in the distance from the film to the lens mount flange. Pentax have basically just chopped it off  in their mirrorless APS-C cameras.  The optical view finder  in all cameras has been made further obsolete by firstly LED based back screens and by the latest generation of electronic viewfinders. The arguments about the virtues of the OVF, the optical real deal have all but evaporated from the chat forums of the photographic web community.

There are benefits in low light, with light intensifying, in giving extra overlayed information and in reducing the size of cameras when going for the EVF, whille many consumers have grown up taking images on their mobile phones, and have no relationship to the viefinder. They have actually broken a couple of the barriers I talk about above. Firstly your camera becomes part of the scene, obvious but a social device in taking shots. There is nothing special about having it with you, and nothign special about group selfies. WHYSIWHYG - what you see is what you get, the frame of the camera is just a part of the scene, or the scene is looking at the frame and seeing themselves before it is taken. There is a continuum with only a narrow picture frame between the screen image and the wider reality around it when you hold the camera out to take a photo. You are taking your head out of the camera, usually letting the programmers who made the camera take care of the technical exposure and focus, and just picking your moment..... most of all as I say just above, it is the camera you have with you MOST.

Limitations of Your Mobile Device Camera

Unfortunetly there are many draw backs with mobile camera images, but do not let that influence you if you decide that you are maybe going to get  a shirt pocket camera versus a better mobile. Go for the mobile with the best in built camera from the range, and then of course you save yourself maybe half the buying price by not having spent your cash on a compact which will do little more at the sub 200 euro end of the market.

I dare say that there are paid ie professional photographers now who have only taken images on mobile phones, and probably work either for the mobile manufacturers or the networks in producing inspiring images which then of course eat up mobile network megabyte allowances!

The draw backs of mobile phone in built cameras are:

1) No good quality telefoto /zoom photography
2) No real control over blur ie always a deep depth of field
3) Often poor low light images with motion blur, speckled image noise and incorrect colours
4) Often poor controllability over shutter speed
5) Highlights and shadows are 'clipped' ie lack nuances
6) Sharpness for print quality is lacking
7) Usually dependent on the cameras own way of compressing images into jpegs and that can create banding and aliasing ie blocky images.

All of these are being addressed as I write. Panasonic have launched a "large sensor mobile phone- this promises to have less low light noise and better control over DOF,.There are intelligent blur filters and after effects which are getting very very good in faking it. The best mobiles now feature Shutter Priority ie shutter speed selectability and exposure control with live view. You can take black and white images or alter them instantly in any android or apple phone now.

However it has to be said that the drawbacks are only being clawed in partially and basically you cannot get a ferrari v12 in the body of a Mini. I would say as a photographer myself, that if you are upgrading mobile phone right now then look for the one with the best camera and most controllability now for your price and choose a mobile operatiing system around that. If though you are really keen to learn photography then do not waste your money on the best mobile camera, look for a compact camera which suits your ambitions and pocket.

Getting Your Head out of the Camera

What using a mobile though. as I say you get a very immediate interface to the world around  you and less of a barrier to people or the crop of the scene you are going to take. You can train your eye to take shots of what you see as being good, ie there is a subject or wholistic impression to be captured, and you frame that in a way which is clean and pleasing. You execute it without camera shake, and you adjust exposure or effects to make something which looks pleasing immediately. In fact you experiment with art filters on images and post processing with effects on the fly, taking maybe dozens of shots for fun. Not worrying about focus and shutter is actually a bonus.

The vast majority of DSLR owners have an entry level Canon or Nikon, and they set it to P, programme mode because that  is easy and they remember forgetting to turn it off F16 or a half second exposure when they did venture round the PASM wheel. So as a mobile phone photo artist you are in good company.

Often quoted is of course the percieved need of expandability, but in fact the vast majority of first time DSLR buyers stay with the kit zoom lens they bought the camera with until the whole camera becomes dated and loses its resale value by more than half, by which time they buy a new. Expandability means essentially buying more lenses and eventually upgrading a new body which is still  compatible with the system. The problem is that really the cost of the system is prohibitive for most buyers, they just have better things to spend their money on because buying an f1.8 lens for twice the price of their original camera kit just does not seem like good value.  If the cost of bodies have perhaps doubled in 20 years, the cost of system lenses, filters, flash units, tripods and so on have gone up more than three times. In my opinion, you get actually very much more for your money but wages have just not kept up for the majority of people in the last 20 years. A middle road APS-C system with four lenses, a good flash, filters and carry bag is probably around about three thousand pounds. That is more than twice a comparable system such as the OM or early AF EOS systems costed 27 years ago.

How Many Millimeters Do you Need?

Lenses though are a very good place to start in defining your needs in a camera.  The most obvious feature is the focal length which provides both the magnification and the field of view, and always referred to in "mm" and for historical reasons that is  then when talked about, converted to old momney ie 35mm camera equivalents. mFT has tghe kindest equivalency being half the lengths for which ever format of sensor chip you buy,  you willl find a 35mm equivalent either referred to in the instructions or you can search for it on the internet.

. In 'old money then the ranges are>

11mm and below: Fish Eye type images and highly distorted images.
22-24mm  Considered a strong wide angle, gives interesting perspectives and deep DOF, useful for landscapes and street photography or many creative approaches. These lenses function much better in digital photography than film, because the natural distortions of this very wide are corrected by in camera computing such that the edges do not appear unduly curved.
30-40 mm The 35mm lens is the classic compact lens of old, as it is compact while being wide enough for street photography and landscapes, while having natural depth of field which can lend itself to closer portraits or journalistic photos of people than telefoto lenses
50-55mm The classic nifty-fifty , this lens range has fallen out of favour, see my note below, but were often the very good standard, basic lenses fitted to cameras for first purchase. Slightly less magnification than eyesight, they cover a field of view quite similar to the human central field of attention, and that is perhaps why they were so popular, making it easy to frame images and capture desired detail.
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75, 90, 120mm These are the classic lengths of portrait telefoto lenses, and my prefered working magnification for working with people and certain sports like sailing. They were affordable and had wide apertures which meant they could take very short depth of field shots, making for nice soft backgrounds and even a side of the face out of focus. The modern fast 'prime' lenses ie fixed length, for all the smaller formats are correspondingly much smaller than the full frame 135/35mm film which is a benefit. The usual kit zoom lenses usually cover this range from the wide, or from about 50mm eq, but lack the very fine depth of field in the full sized versions.
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They create a noticeable magnification over eyesight and make it easier to work further away from the subject.  As mentioned they used to be very good value for money, being about 100 to 250 pounds for a film SLR. Now they arre partly obsolete due to zooms and have become expensive items often at professional prices. One way of getting a cheap upgrade to a current APS-C or in particular an mFT lens is to buy a convertor ring and buy a cheap second hand 50mm nifty fifty lens from an old film SLR. The drawback here is you will need to manually focus.

Zoom lenses which cover this range while also offering the very wide apertures of f2.8 and lower, are for most people prohibitively expensive being very often more than twice the price of the initial camera and lens. However you can work around this a little by using the longer end of an equivalent of 150mm to 250 mm and then backing off from the subject a few meters. You can then achieve a nice blurred background, but be aware that camera shake becomes worse the longer the focal length chosen. My zoom lens on FT which covers 80mm to 300mm does not need to be backed off very much, just a meter at 100mm eq to make for a nice subtle blur, while also it has to be said, keeping the whole of the face in focus.

Telefoto Lenses

150 - 600mm and beyond.  A typical useable length for nature photography is considered 400mm, and there is a trade off here between having to use a very stable tripod for the longer lengths and maybe being able to take some careful handheld shots at higher shutter speeds.

In the days of135/ 35mm film and at the longer ranges today, zooms were bulky and had quite restricted aperture values of f5.6 upwards as a start point,   so it made it hard to get a fast shutter speed to stop the amplified camera shake movement.

Working Out Your MM Needs

A very useful feature of modern jpeg images is that they usually contain embedded information, date and time of course, but also shutter speed and focal length. So if you have a cheap compact or your mobile you can get an idea of what lenght you use, and then you can start to look at some of your favourite photos or some photos you found frustrating.  Too far away, not close enough, not enough of the scenery and so on.

A very commonly sold modern camera type is the Superzoom which are chunky cameras with a telescopic zoom lens, offering at least as high as a 400mm equivalent often from 28mm wide. So you can take images from wide landscapes to wildlife. Unfortunetly the compromise is that they use small sensors to make the system less cumbersome and to keep the price down. If however you are happy with mobile phone image qaulity, and depth of field control is not important to you while being able to take birds-in-trees shots is, then the latest cameras are not bad, although you may find the picture qaulity is not even as good as the iPhone 6 or Galaxy s4, all be those with much more limited magnification.

Be honest with yourself. A long focal length is just a nice to have, it probably does not reflect the vast majority of pictures you take, while the bulk and limitations such as camera shake and need for a tripod, mean that lenses for an interchangeable camera are rarely used, while a super zoom aka bridge camera is used seldom on the long end, and you carry the bulk and reduction in image quality for no real reason.

However at the other end of the scale  a nice wide angle of 24 or 28mm you will get lovely landscapes, city scapes and so on without having to take panoramas and force people to click or scroll to get the impression. 

Good family portraits begin at around 45mm, head and shoulder shots, and as I say 80-120mm for heads and faces only. This is very well catered for in many smaller compact cameras. On MILC cameras and DSLRs often the kit lenses are just a little short, being around 85 mm max zoom and then you need to swap just to do head shot close ups. However you get a better control of shallow depth of field and background blur, and for APS-C and mFT you get good enough quality to be able to then crop in on shots and make really nice face portraits for example.

There are now though a very few compact cameras which offer this useful range of 24mm to 80/100mm in a zoom and have both a wide aperture of below f2.8 and a larger sensor. They are actually dearer than entry level DSLRs with their single kit lens, but in fact take as good photos while also being able to fit in a jacket pocket. Sony, Panasonic, Olympus and Canon all have enthusiast cameras some of which have the 1" sensor or larger like the mFT sensor and 1.5" sensor.

Lenses for Nice Blurry Backgrounds ?

Depth of field means how much of the image is in focus. For a wide angled landscape of the Scottish Highlands with a lake shore and an obligatory stunted tree, you want a deep sharpness ie extensive depth of field. For a blurred background in a portrait, you want to have a shallow sharpeness, a limited depth of field. The first deep type is actually very well achieved by the latest mobile phone cameras, and you can take very good scanning panoramas the camera stitches together. These are okay for use on facebook, and great if that happened to be an opportunity you didnt have another camera with you.

As I mention above you can cheat with longer focal lengths in achieving the same thing but it is far better to have  control over depth of field by essentially having a wide aperture in the main range of your defined needs, which I suggest are those of the enthusiast compacts I mention, or an interchangeable lens system camera with a more expensive zoom lens in the 24-90mm range. A very interesting alternative is to buy a kit camera and then a high quality 35mm semi wide which can be used for everything from close up portraits, body length shots, group shots, street architecture and landscapes.  You then queu your gadget legs to achieve zoom ie framing what you want. This also renders the camera very compact.
As you get better at photography you will decide that 'fast' lenses ie those with apertures of f2.8 and lower, are highly desirable because you not only get better control of shallow depth of field, but you can use faster shutter speeds to freeze action and avoid camera shake.

Lenses are really the key to photography and literally the window on the world for all cameras and image capture.

Reflecting on Your Needs Now

Now start adding layers of what you want to achieve. Action shots? Long smooth exposures in low light? Silky blurred out backgrounds? Telefoto nature photography? Super wide landscapes? Professional looking portaits and posibly setting up your own stuidio?  Flash free night time street shots ? Video with fidelity for your HDMI tv at home...

Now look at images you have taken and would like to have taken better. Then find images you love. Now go to a shop with some enthusiasts as staff, or if you dare, venture onto a photo chat room on the internet and start discussing those images and what you want to do before you start discussing camera models.

Decided for the 2nd Time , Micro Four Thirds is Not for Me !

The first time I decided mFT was not for me was when I walked into a shop and picked up a PEN EP-1. I was a little captivated by the 1960s retro design, the 12mpx and the good quality lenses. However straight away it just did not feel right in the hand. I also looked at a G1 that day or another day, and decided nope, I wanted somethign a little bigger in my hand and with an OVF, like the old days.  I went for a well priced new FT Olympus E450.

Apart from the G/GH cameras, which I find a little small actually, mF T cameras are either retro or basic in ergonomics until you start adding grips or of course tout out for the OMD EM1 or GH4. The time for retro style selling is surely passed, there are only so many hipsters and does the asian market care if it looks like a 1972 Ricoh view finder 35mm cam'?  I just wanted something with substance, familiarity, critical mass in the hand.

After this as you know if you follow me, I built up the budget system many other entry level Oly users do, the 14/42 and 40.150 with the faster pretty much pro level 25mm pancake. I was going to go to the OM adapter ring and buy a couple of OM (my old OM stuff was stolen and the rest dissapated ) lenses but really the wide end is okay, no blur but the 14/150 saves the game and takes nearly all my family portrait keepers and nearly all I have published in print.

The problem is that it is all a bit combersome and a bit slow, added to no IBIS on the entry level Oly and piss poor mid ISO performance , with 400 not really being acceptable. It also has a really heavy mirror and shutter release movement which needs correcting for sub 125th sec with lock up delay for the mirror. ( try finding that, remote flash iradio trigger in camera, selectable curtain shutter, bracketing and WB preview and so on in other entry level cameras of 2010 or today for that matter!)  So now after almost five years of a lot of fun, much developing my photographic skills and artistic ability, and some notable frustration I am ready for a move.

However it will not be to mFT.

Why not? Well for a pocket sized camera I currently use my mobile phone like most all of us, so the body size is not so criticalI have big hands and like a feeling of weight and proportionality, substance as I say above, in my hand. mFt also has another huge negative and that is the gap between entry level glass and the fast glass. Due to the crop format, you are almost two stops down from APS-C, and this is a physical barrier. The big new pro zoom lenses show that in fact there is compromise and a high price to pay. They lack the range of the old queen and king of FT, the 12-60/50-200 Oly ED SWD glass and in fact are  not all that much smaller, they have to have the same diameter and apart  from the flange adapter, they need to go to their focal lengths too.

The alternative for me would be of course the wonderful 12-60/50-200 pair with an adapter ring and a....wait for it, only one Camera really works with these lenses and it is a big investment. It hardly can be compared to the D7100 for image output and the video is weaker than its panasonic cousins. (Video suddenly becomes a new hobby from this summer onwards!!!) Now this week actually there are two offers of well under 1000 euros for these lenses plus a 520 or a 630. Seems like a bargain? But wait I have to then still put up with low ISO on all but the E5 if that falls in price and no video, which is annoying because I am not interested in lugging my camcorder and having piles of SD cards to go through after a holiday. 

If olympus were to bring out an E50 or E700 type SLR mirrored with the new sony 16mpx and 4K vid and so on, then I would get this glass. Or an FT mirrorless, or a bigger mFT body in a mid range price. They are not going to do any of that, they are more interested in petite asian hands fondeling their wares in the shops than caucasian quarter backs fumbling with the small dials and touch screen.

The thing about mFT for me as an amateur is that the glass for the blur per dollar is just not worth it. In the wide to mid range where I want to throw the back ground then I have no way apart from post. Which is Doable. Okay there is a lot of second hand kit, but basically only the GH3 , 4 and OMD EM1 interest me and they are all pretty expensive compared to the D7100, and the pentax k50. I want weather proofing so that limits me again, and then I cannot use the SWD lenses on the GH cameras. Bummer

Back up here then, I have a nice little system for my daughter to use and to take on holiday.  If I did buy the glass and say an E520 or E630 then I would have a nicer system, and with the E5 I would have a pro system then for sailing and maritime photography (in clement weather that is!) I couuld do it all NEW with the K50 and get better DOF control. better high ISO, more MPX of course and then decent enough video, in a system arguably tougher than the e5 with the pro WR glass combi. Bigger yes.

Back up there also on affordable mFF and my need for a "glove compartment camera" Panasonic have indeed pulled it  off with the excellent little gem, the LX100 which takes near mFT quality image technically, but with that lovely fast glass , latest generation DR,  good mid to high iso performance and with great video. All for well under a grand, 699 pooonds in blighty. Short on the loing end? Well it opens up other things for me than my wonderful 40/150 plastic megatastic Oly lens. It will be with me much more often too which is the best camera to have, and it can take DSLR quality images for screen use at least, if not maybe being absolute pico peeking sharp when opened up lower than f8.

I would expect with wishful thinking that there would be some lenses like this in mFT which are then kit quality but with sub f 3 performance, but I am wishing again. It is more likely that there will be more mFT fixed lens cameras, especially in the bridge area which can then compete ...but with what? In effect they are competing with mFT in terms of the price point, but deliver better image value due to more DOF control.   These will though be from the main two or three manufacturers already in mFT of course and will compete with the next generation of larger sensor compacts, of which maybe two will use the FT sized sony 16mpx chip anyway.

I see that as the future, would like to see more mid range prices in mFT, there is though a good used market for the primes, but also I would like to see a new FT camera or mFT mid range camera optimised in ergonomics for the FT lenses and new big lenses from Oly in mFT (300mm inc next year)