You want a placid life, find another planet

Lake 1

Lake 2

Lake 3

Monday was a busy day.

On August 1st I walked in Nuuksio, along the Korpinkierros route, doing a bit of exploring (and eating of blueberries) on the side. It was a hot day, but there was some wind to give a little bit of cooling.

I'm currently without a camera, as I gave the LX5 to my daughter who is traveling with her school class. I haven't yet got any serious withdrawal symptoms, but a couple of times I have wished to have a camera with me. Well, I have my mobile phone, but the Nokia E7 doesn't really work as a camera.

A week ago I had a look at what kind of cameras there are on the market right now, but nothing really engaged my interest. The Panasonic GM1 with the 24-64 equiv. lens would be almost pocketable but doesn't do macro, the Sony RX100 III is rather expensive and has usability issues, and the Panasonic LX7 isn't a great deal better than the LX5.

But at least we live in interesting times.

(Posting title is from the poem Interesting Times by Mark Jarman.)

Falling in love with a toothache

Lake 1

Lake 2

Lake 3

These photographs were taken last Saturday at Myllyjärvi, or in fact on Myllyjärvi. I went for a walk with my daughter to three lakes in Luukki: Myllyjärvi, Hauklampi and Hepolampi. We followed the tracks of other people who had explored the lakes before us. Nobody had fallen in so the ice must have been thick enough for walking.

I haven't written much about cameras recently, mainly because the LX5 is still working fine despite the stuck click wheel and occasional other problems which so far have been fixed by removing the battery and then restarting the camera.

However, I have been browsing the hands-on previews of the Olympus OM-D E-M10, which seems to be a fine tool for a photographer, and something I probably would like to be using. But still, it is a bit too big for me, even with the new pancake zoom lens.

Then there is the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GM1 with the 12-32 mm kit lens. There wouldn't probably be much IQ advantage to the GM1 when compared with the LX7, because of the relatively slow lens. However, the size of the GM1 is rather nice, and the usability would be probably ok also.

The only problem I see is the need for a separate macro lens for closeup photographs, which would complicate things a bit too much for me. A camera (without any extras) that fits a coat pocket is what I would like to carry. What is good is that the kit lens starts at 12 mm, I wouldn't like to have a lens that is any less wide than this.

However, my LX5 is still going strong after 160,000 photographs taken with it. When the LX5 finally breaks there is probably a new crop of fine cameras available for choosing a replacement.

(Posting title is from the poem Instances of Wasted Ingenuity by Dara Wier.)

The anomalous hypnotically increases with the power of inverse subjective

Evening 1

Evening 2

Evening 3

Here is landscape towards north from a rocky hill in the middle of Nuuksio, south of Högbacka, just before sunset on September 13th.

I haven't thought about cameras for some time, but the introduction of the Panasonic DMC-GM1 camera got me to take notice. With the 12-32mm F3.5-5.6 kit zoom this camera would make an interesting upgrade to my LX5, at least in terms of camera size.

However, there would be tradeoffs, and some things wouldn't change much.

The sensor is of course much bigger than on the LX5 or LX7, but with the kit lens the difference in IQ (noise) during the dark season wouldn't be much different, probably 1-2 stops better than the LX5 and 0-1 stops better than the LX7. As the body doesn't have image stabilization pancake lenses wouldn't do that well during the dark season, losing rapidly the advantage of bigger aperture. The kit lens has OIS and should be all right for taking photographs when it is darker.

What is good is that the GM1 supports the 1:1 aspect ratio, but here the LX5 and LX7 are better as they have a build-in aspect ratio switch. Maybe one can set the Fn1 button on the GM1 to switching aspect ratio? Fortunately the kit lens is 24-64 mm equiv. which means that at the wide end it is comparable to the LX5 and LX7, allowing to use 1:1 at 24 mm which is my favorite view to the world.

In terms of DOF the kit lens of the GM1 performs almost identically to the Panasonic LX7, as you see when comparing the equivalent focal length charts here and here. But the closest focusing distance is 20 cm at wide end and 30 cm at tele end, so macro photography would be rather limited.

In addition, the battery is rated at 230 shots (CIPA), which is much less than with the LX5, and thus one would need to carry a spare battery. With the LX5 I seldom need a spare as typically I get about 1200 photographs with one charge with my style of shooting (switch camera on, take 1-10 shots in rapid succession, switch camera off).

However, I'm still somewhat tempted, even though I would probably use only the kit lens, to keep things to carry to a minimum.

(Posting title is from the poem Towards the Primeval Lightning Field by Will Alexander.)