My weekend post: buying a new digital camera

Well, on Thursday I took my cousin and her adorable baby to the zoo with my own little son.  We had a good time there.  While there, I reaffirmed to myself my decision that after six years of my old three-megapixel camera, it was finally time to buy a new one.

A good friend of mine recommended a new technology known as the "Micro Four Thirds", and he specifically recommended the Olympus EPL1 and the Panasonic Lumix G2.  I also toyed with the idea of getting a Sony NEX 3.  I liked the simplicity of the NEX 3, and apparently it has a larger sensor than the other cameras I was considering.  Nevertheless, I disliked its physical dimensions; it was not a pleasure to hold.  Also, I saw that it scored somewhat worse for performance in the review on the Digital Photography Review website.  The deal-breaker was the lack of a viewfinder, which I find essential.

The same disadvantage was there in the EPL1, although Olympus does make two external add-on viewfinders for that camera.   I really liked the size of the Olympus as opposed to the Panasonic.  I loved the weighty feeling for such a small package, and I liked the way it sat in my hands.  In the end, though, viewfinder troubles did it in as a viable choice.  (The cheaper viewfinder has a note on the Olympus America website saying that its positioning is not centrally-located on the camera, and that makes me wonder about how reliable it can be.  There is no note in the more expensive external viewfinder description, but I think it's unreasonable to pay $280 for a viewfinder.  Furthermore, depending on the case I would have had to use, I hight have had to attach and detach the viewfinder frequently.)

I decided to go with the Panasonic Lumix G2.  It happened to be on a good sale because the G3 is coming out.  The G3 is priced at about $800 in the US (which will mean it will likely be more than that here in Canada), but the sale price on the G2 was $550.  This is not an amount of money I would ordinarily be at all  happy to part with, but in this case I made an exception, for two reasons.

First, using a camera with better image quality will be a way for me to properly record my son's childhood and my family's attributes as we grow older together.  I want good quality photographs to remember when what he looks like as a little boy, and what my wife and I look like under forty.  Second, although I am not a professional or even club-level photographer, I do like taking pictures.  It's an outlet for my creativity, such as it is, on par in some respects with writing.  Both work with images, whether literal or figurative.  More than writing does, though, photography helps me to create beauty, and that is something that, when it happens, gives me enormous pleasure.  I enjoy learning and developing this side of my creativity, perhaps because I never used to consider myself creative.  We can't all be Picasso's, but we can all be human, and to be human means to create.

I bought the camera on the Sunday.  Now I just need to use my human potential to figure out how to use the damn thing.

[Note: the surprising use of the somewhat mild cuss-word "damn" is intended to be humorous and self-deprecating.  The contrast of "human potential" and "damn thing" highlights in a funny way an important aspect of the human condition: our on-again, off-again relationship with machines and technology.  In fact, I'm not actually cussing my camera, nor am I frustrated with it; such is the nature of time that after buying it on Sunday night, I've had little opportunity to do anything with it.  Friday, though, is a holiday, and I'm very much looking forward to trying something out then.]