Stop and Think

(A mother and her two children were on their way to the kindergarten. They were walking towards the Nathan Road, the longest thoroughfare and lifeline of the Kowloon Peninsular of Hong Kong, and stopped by the traffic light where a delivery man swished past in a bike that was unusually small for a delivery man. Back in the days when Hong Kong was under British colonial rule, you would have seen traffic facilities shipped from Britain at every zebra crossing. In those days, probably such a short-distance crossing would also have a safety island in the middle with two British made lamp boxes. You know what the British were getting at then. Guess what? Now the traffic lights use the lamp lids that resemble those used in China.)

Have you ever stopped and thought, "When has buying a camera started to become so complicated and time-consuming?" As an amateur photographer for two decades and with a GX200 for some months, I have been amazed by the details that reviewers have gone into for even the serious compacts. Good to them cos without them we would not have made the more informed choices. But do you find that you are more undecided as you keep on reading' em? Are we too addicted to and too informed by the technical reviews? For some of the technical details, I as an amateur do not find them actually essential in reality. Knowing a camera technically is one thing, taking great shots is quite another as far as I am concerned. An Australian professor in fine arts who was (deceased) a friend of mine had used his old camera for some decades and took great shots out of lots of practices, not out of the technically greatest camera. The former chairlady of a local professional photographer's club has succeeded in photography by one of her practices in which she thought up unique angles to tell of the subjects/ themes that someone worked on before. She didn't practise by trading in for the greatest camera. Sure enough, a fine camera will be fine enough. Most of the serious compacts and DSLRs are fine cameras, with some being better. But in reality the more obviously essential thing may be: does the photographer feel all right about his? I used to read a lot of reviews before making up my mind for a purchase, but now resort to a simple strategy that I recommend to you: toy with the cameras in a shop and find out which one suits you best. Buy it and practise your photographer's instincts instead of wasting too much time on and growing puzzled by what a camera cannot perform. Yes, I still need reviews beforehand. But more of those about a user's impressions, less the technical ones. If need be, I'd rather spend time comparing online photos taken with the cameras on my list to find out what suits my taste best. If you are undecided on the GX200, go toy with it in a shop. In case you need some impressions from users. See the previous post here or my impressions that I reposted below: 1) Corner sharpness Gx200 does well in this area. But its JPEGs are sort of soft indeed. Shoot RAWs for more serious shots IMO. 2) Vignetting GX200 does a very well job here. 3)ISO Performance I wish the next GX will put a faster len at f2. I don't mind the high ISO noise (well, indeed, not really complimentary over ISO 400 but PP work will handle the noise) but a faster len will help a great lot in dim shooting occasions. 4)Start-up Time Not slow but on some occasions I missed the shots because of that. 5)Shutter Priority Mode Wish the next GX will put it there even though the lack of it can be easily worked around in M mode. (Point to the subject and press left arrow, then GX200 will give you the "right" exposure combination. With the two adjustment dials, you can correct it to the desired shutter speed in an instant. You can even stored the most used shutter speed to the M123 for a quick access. It is not called shutter priority mode, but it works like one ;)) 6)Fn and M123 GREAT features I must say. Take for example I set M1 to snapshot mode and it saves lots of shots I would have missed otherwise. I also put one of the Fns as M Focus -> A Focus to be able to lock the focus easily. M2 for 1:1 format in Continuous B&W, Colour, B&W (colour-filtered) mode. M3 for dedicated combination for special shots. 7)Portability and Controls 200 marks out of 100. No match whatsoever. After using the GX200, I even don't miss the controls on my Dynax7, which has been known for its great control. 8) Dataless black stripe Until the next instalment of firmware, the RAW will show the dataless black stripe when opened in some PP software. 9)AWB This is about G10's if you're considering it. I tried it in the showroom and its AWB was ugly. Was it my fault? Dunno. 10)Zoom range This is about LX3 if you're considering it. I tried it in a shop and its zoom range gave kind of "that's it?" feeling. I didn't quite realise that it had actually zoomed to the longest end.