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Pretty Good Hat

Thinking about a new camera

Time was, I took a lot of photos. I spent a lot of time in Lightroom working them up, tuning them, cataloguing them. I found great delight in learning more, improving my technique and exploring my creativity. There was nerdery, too, like an annual year in Lightroom stats blog post that was lots of fun. Along the way I made myself a collection of handsome prime lenses and used them almost exclusively. (At the time, nobody had a cool set of pancake primes like Pentax; to date, some of my favorite photos are with the little 21mm.)

As my son got older, the amount of time I could spend working up shots in LR started to approach zero, and I used the big DSLR less and less often, replacing it with snaps from my phone – photos that I could tweak, upload and share without the multi-step process of transferring and working up on the laptop. This trend intensified until recently, when our now-toddler got a little more independent and a little more routine. So I find myself getting that itch, to spend a little more time with my photography again – and with equipment that may still lighten the post-processing load.

With a fast-moving toddler, I also want something that autofocuses quickly and performs well with relatively low light, and on this score both the workhorse Pentax and the iPhone tend to fall short. Again, post-processing can make a lot of difference – Lightroom 4’s noise reduction in particular is fantastic – but it adds to the mental overhead of just using the photos that I made.

I’m not sure where to start looking for this fun new camera. I’m pretty sure the big DSLR isn’t my bag anymore, as much as I don’t want to leave behind this nice stack of glass. So where does one start these days? Mirrorless 4/3 cameras are intriguing (e.g. Shawn Blanc’s review of the E-PL5); for the price, both the E-PL5 and NEX-6 look pretty hot, though there’s something about a really good non-interchangeable lense that I find appealing: No race to accumulate different focal lengths, just a single frame to get really tight with.

And now that I start to read around a little, I see things like Zack Arias' review of the Fuji X100s. My, but that’s a pretty beast.

At the less flushed-cheeks end of things, but still attractive, are high-quality zooms like the Fuji X20 or Pentax MX1 (I do admit I still have a Pentax soft spot; my very first digital camera was an EI-200, and my second was a Fuji F10, so I feel like I could be keeping it in the family either way). For a grundle less cash something like these might fit the sweet spot for toddler-tracking, portability, and image quality that could feed my latent creativity.

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I do have the benefit of not really being in a hurry — mostly; my boy does keep growing and doing more wonderful things most days — while the options just keep getting better.