To Buy or Not to Buy

That is the question in todays much- anticipated second-ever photography related blog. I suppose this will be an exercise in trying to justify buying a new toy. It will be interesting really. I promise. You can even vote at the end.

After revolutionizing the world of photography 6 months ago with a small camera (see picture below) that can take DSLR quality pictures (and HD video for that matter) ....... Olympus is about to release the E-P2...

I was so sorely tempted to buy the E-P1, and the E-P2 seems to have addressed the (very few) reservations I had about buying the E-P1. Namely slowish autofocus and no viewfinder. Aside from that....

Why is it better than my camera? I'm glad you asked.

Reason #1

It's smaller. Carrying heavy cameras is lame. The only reason anyone buys point and shoot cameras is that they're convenient, portable (and cheap I guess) . The reason you don't carry that DSLR you own everywhere is because it's not. I actually do carry mine everywhere... being one of the smaller SLRs...with the tiny lens below...it's quite portable. Still.....this new camera is 30% lighter and and 35% smaller than even my compact set up.

Reason #2

It's low light performance is much better than mine. Don't know what that means? Basically...if there's not enough light to take a nice picture...you have to make your camera really sensitive to light (higher ISO numbers) , so you can take a picture with less light. However, when it's really sensitive, it makes mistakes.

Some cameras are better than others. This camera...being about 3 years newer than mine does a better job.

Not only can it be set 4 times more sensitive than mine....it can take the same quality picture with about half the light. Which means I can take the same quality picture inside a cathedral or something with half the light that I need with my older camera.

Or because I can make it more sensitive...I can get a picture that would be totally blurry with my old camera, or require a tripod (speaking of lame...who likes lugging a tripod everywhere?)

Reason #3

HD Video! My camera can't take video. This one can.

In HD. Enough Said. How cool would it be to be able to take video with the worlds best optical lenses from Zeiss, Leica, Voigtlander...not to mention my Zuikos....this camera can accept all of these lenses (manually focused) (plus Nikon Canon, Minolta and Pentax if you so chose). Mine can't.

Plus, this camera can accept external microphones...so

you don't pick up the annoying lens zooming sounds or anything.

Having a video record of my life in Korea or Seo-Yeong being young and cute is a cool thing for sure...

As an aside...this camera is better than a camcorder too, cause I can choose what's in focus and what's blurry instead of just having everything annoyingly in focus....

Reason #4

More Megapixels. Not really that important. But slight improvements mean I could print a picture of the same quality about 20% bigger with the new camera than with the old....

I think that about wraps it up....

Oh, and that view

finder sitting on top of the camera removable and adjustable...it can pop up to 90degrees like a periscope if I was shooting macro shots or somehing....

Let me know... Do you think it's a compelling case?

Reasons why it is not better include:

1) I have to use an adapter for my current set of Olympus lenses.

2) Autofocus is slower than my current camera...so for moving animals or sports or running kids, my current camera would be better.

3) If I use big lenses, the smallness factor of the camera is kind of irrelevant.

4) Adding a viewfinder (you can see in the picture) makes it significantly larger.

5) No pop-up flash. I don't really care. But some people might.