Walking around Cameras: Which one is right for you?

A long time ago ( about 12 years or so) I inherited my very first “nice” camera. It was an Olympus OM-1n, by chance. It suited me. I used it extensively for about a year and then go ahold of an OM-2n, which, of course, I like even better. Things fell apart when I wanted to jump into the realm of Auto-focus SLRs . My friend, who was a professional photographer, shot Canon. Since Olympus didn’t make an auto-focus SLR I picked up a Canon A2. I never got around to getting the scratch together for a lens better than the 28-80 that came with it, but it took descent pictures and had a little zoom, auto-focus and different auto=picture taking modes, so it got a little bit more use than the more restricted Olympus OMs did. I found that I would drag the bigger, heavier, Canon around with me “in case” I wanted to take a picture and would pack along my lighter, smaller OMs and lenses and flashes and stuff when I set out to “take photographs. I generally kept the OM-2n loaded with color film and the OM-1n with black and white, which, even back then was getting to be a hard format to have processed convienently. Interestingly, I never have been able to break that habit with the OM-1n. TO this day it’s loaded with some T-Max. Taking good pictures was hard though and I found myself taking pictures of my young daughter more than any thing else. A succession of cheep Olympus (Naturally) Point and shoot digital cameras followed. I’m not sure why they sucked, but they did. For the most part, they got the snapshots of the kids and vacations but whenever I tried to Make an Image instead of Take a Picture, they fell flat on their mega-pixels.

So, about four months ago, and after years of prompting from my wife, I broke down and picked up a Digital SLR. For some reason I stuck with Olympus. I did so love my OMs and forgave the POSes for their shortcomings and picked up a second hand E-600. I will write about this camera at length at a later date but, suffice it to say, there are some problems with the camera. I was (again) penny-wise and pound-foolish. I wound up also getting, predictably enough, a Canon DSLR: the 60D. It’s funny that I find the rolls reversed on these two cameras as opposed to the 35mm film cameras. I find that the smaller, lighter E-600 is my preferred carry-around camera and I tend to drag out the 60D only when I plan on taking pictures. It’s bigger and heavier, and the lenses are bigger and heavier (I have collections of lenses for both systems this time. “Fool me once…” and all that jazz) and it’s expensive and brand new too! Of course, sad to say, but the camera of mine that gets the most use, besides the iPhone, is the Canon SX150 IS point and shoot that I picked up to replace my current Olympus turd-burger. I like that SX150 a lot too.

I dream of getting a small, range-finder style camera to replace that SX150 with, like a Fuji X-20. I think I’ll probably forego the X-20 though in favor of some “L” glass for the 5D that I don’t have yet. So, which camera do YOU use for walking around "just in case" you want to take a picture of something?

Seventy Bucks is better than Thirteen HUNDRED bucks. Sometimes.

With the recent purchase of my OM-4T, with it's renowned multi-spot metering, I have been focused on the spot meters on my various cameras. The subject of my experimentation was an ornament hanging in the front window of our flat (sorry, watching some BBC). The first shot was taken with the first metering from my Canon Powershot SX150IS. You know, the 150, the old version of the base model. Seventy bucks (on sale).

Next up was my brand spankin' new, eleven HUNDRED dollar Canon 60D. This is the Big Brother to the SX150. If the little point and shoot did that well on the very first go, the 60D should blow it away, right? Nope. It took some tweaking and this is the best of them. 

Then I dug out my Olympus E-600 that I had on hand. I picked it up used for three hundred bucks. The first try:

This is the camera that I want desperately to love. I tried two more times and got this slightly overexposed result:

 Back to the drawing board. I messed with the settings for a fourth and then fifth time and finally go this result.

So, all in all, it took me well over a half a dozen attempts on expensive DSLRs to get the same results spot-metering a subject that I got "spot on" (pun intended) the very first shot on my out-of date, discount point and shoot! Save your pennies kids. You don't need a top-shelf DSLR to get good shots.