Skip to main content

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: 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.

{:id: .center}

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.