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It's finally happened. I replaced my DSLR, the faithful Nikon D300. I love that camera, lusted for it before I possessed it and now in retirement, remember it fondly. Mine was configured just the way you see it above: D300, MB-D10 battery pack and the Nikkor 18-200mm "super-zoom". I toted that thing everywhere. The Dallas Arboretum for family pictures, top of Victoria Peak in Hong Kong, all over Taiwan, to every kid sporting event and to every family outing. I bought it used of course, but it never game me the slightest hiccup. The lens packed it in once due to a dead stabilization motor, but that was my fault due to forgetting to turn that off while using it on a tripod. But that got repaired and it just kept right on taking pictures.
Over the years, I did manage to use a couple of other lenses on it; the Nikkor 18-70mm and the legendary 50mm manual focus Nikkor f1.4. The former came on the D70 that I own previously and the later a gift from my brother after he had it electronically converted to talk to current Nikon mounts. Nice equipment that still shoots nice pictures..... why change now?
This isn't exactly the way I look, but it sure is the way I feel these days. While our vacation trip to Disney forever changed what I'm willing to drive long distance with kids and luggage; our trip to DC forever changed what I'm willing to carry in photographic equipment!
This was the instrument of change! I don't mean I replaced the D300 with the Lumix LX5! Here's what happened. I felt like I needed to be able to have something small enough to fit in a pocket, since there are places that don't allow the big professional style cameras, plus I wanted to be able to shoot video as well. Given that we were going to DC and would be inside of buildings a lot, I wanted something that gave a little wider view than most pocket cameras were capable of giving. It turns out that this little Lumix would do all that and was cheap since it was a few years old at that time. I found one down in Waco for about a $100 and grabbed it. Since that time, most things that was too much for the phone got assigned to the little Lumix.
So, I've been periodically keeping an eye on cameras of this type for some time. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I came across a few of the GX7s bidding at a low price on eBay. One of them, even came with a lens, so I bid on it and got it for just over $240 shipped. At this point, I'd better back up to the point where I had decided that the D300 was too big and heavy. Not only that, it wouldn't do video which I've increasing found that I needed.
Some of you might remember that I had gone down this road before, when I wanted to build an alternate system that was small, light and easy to carry. As much as I liked that camera, I couldn't live without an eye-level viewfinder......
....and trust me when I say that I tried to live with the rather awkward attachment viewfinder. So I gave up and sold it for what I paid for it. In the meantime, Panasonic had brought out the GX1 which fixed most of what was wanting on the GF1, but it was too much and the recent failure too fresh. Then the GX7 came out and it was everything I wanted.... just cost too much. But that was the last quarter of 2013 and in the world of consumer electronics, 5 years is a long time. By the last quarter of 2018, that $1100 GX7 is now sub-$250 and this particular one came with the 12-32mm lens. For those of you not familiar with Micro-4/3 format, that's 24-64mm in the 35mm world. Barring the 14-140mm superzoom, or the 20mm/f1.7 pancake lens, this was my next most coveted glass.
Wouldn't I have rather gotten the more current GX8? Sure, but I didn't want to give $500+ for the body alone. Besides, my days of envisioning myself as a Cartier-Bresson are long gone. If I really were willing to spend more money, I'd have bought this...
The Olympus Pen-F that I would argue to be the perfect combination of most beautiful and capable digital camera today. But alas, we who live on teacher salaries, have to make hard choices. Enough of dreaming. What do I really want/need to be fully converted over to the new system.
2 lenses and a flash. The main lens will be the 14-140mm and that will live on the camera most of the time, the 20mm/f1.7 for low ambient light. And of course the other solution for low ambient light; the Godox TT350, because unlike Nikon; there's no advantage to paying more and going with Panasonic. This will make traveling a one bag experience without the back pain of carrying a full-sized DSLR.
