2 years with Micro Four Thirds... What I learned.

for most things that you buy your love for them Peaks as soon as you open the box from then it's a slow and tedious journey towards upgrading and starting the whole process all over again occasionally there you find something that you like so much that with each passing day and week you like it more and more I have this personal rule with boxes that I'll keep the box of anything that cost me more than 100 pounds I don't know where that rule came from I don't know why I have it and it's never served me any good but just something I'd do don't think your camera was in there anyway I want to talk about that box not really the box what was in the box because I've got it two years ago so yeah this is my lumix g9 and if you followed this channel for a while you'll have seen this hundreds of times now what started is a pretty straightforward or be exciting purchase it has become like a in many ways a life cell life changing put a career changing purchase and I've loved this g9 so much that eventually I became a lumix ambassador and as many of you will know lots of videos on this channel have actually been sponsored by lumix so anyone that's thinking that this is gonna be a video about micro four-thirds or the g9 that's unbiased in any way what I'd say to that is obviously not know it's a completely biased video I love this camera [Music] now I should preface this by saying that like a lot of photographers I know who make their living with cameras I didn't choose this camera because of sensor size in fact sensor size and resolution they're not even in my top five considerations when I buy a camera no I bought this camera because at the time this was my standard zoom lens and I wanted this to be my standard zoom lens and somebody who climbs mountains and shoots in quite remote places this or going from this to this had quite a lot of value for me now I knew my image quality wasn't going to suffer going to micro four-thirds because I don't shoot above ISO 800 for hardly ever to be honest I don't shoot weddings are actually sports unlike 99.9% of other photographers date today I don't need anything more than 20 megapixels because like the rest of the world most of my images now both commercial and personal they're all seen on the internet on low res webpages or apps I guess like Instagram and stuff and even if I was working on a campaign that was going to end up on a billboard an iPhone has plenty of resolution for that a bit of an aside on image quality just quickly actually last night I was watching the Michael Jordan documentary on Netflix the first episode of it I think it's called the last dance the first episode was great I'm gonna watch episode 2 tonight and basically the premise of it is that there was a camera crew embedded in the Chicago Bulls squad for the 1997 season I think the rest of the program is essentially Talking Heads which were filmed I guess in the last couple of years so there's 20 years between the Talking Heads footage and the embedded camera crew following the Chicago Bulls footage I didn't notice once the difference between the quality of footage even though there's 20 years between them now I'm sure if I went back and watched the episode or when I watch episode 2 because I was aware of it after the episode the fact I didn't notice it I'm sure I'll notice it going forward but the point is the story was good and therefore it didn't notice that I was watching way out of date technology versus up-to-date technology even when they were put right side by side next to each other even cross my mind and for me I found more often than not it's exactly the same thing with stills image quality has very little correlation with the quality of an image and yeah a lot of camera manufacturers put all their resources into getting bigger and bigger numbers of their cameras Canon for example has just released an 8k camera I mean there are 8k cameras that exist anyway but this is like a I don't know why special to be honest but everyone's raving about it and I get why they do it it's much easier to market a camera when there's a big number in the spec sheet it's much easier to do that then say all this cameras are a bit more comfortable to hold than the last one but for stills given that the vast majority of image is now seen online it sort of feels like building cameras that have got more and more and more resolution is the same thing as like car manufacturers building family hatchbacks that have got higher and higher and higher top speeds even though speed limits are coming down just wouldn't happen instead they focus on things like safety and comfort and usability all while a lot of camera manufacturers are focusing just on megapixels as far as I can see and I for one would prefer it if all camera manufacturers were working on things like economics more than there were things like resolution that nobody really needs yeah long story short two years shooting on micro four-thirds and with this g9 and I reckon of all the places I've been with it all the countries I've shot with this I could probably count on two fingers on the top of my head times when I wish I'd had a bigger sensor both of those times I was trying to take pictures of the Northern Lights and both of those times I would have liked a bigger sensor but both of those times I still ended up with images that I loved so first thing I'd say straight out the back out of 2 years of learning with the Micro Four Thirds camera if you are an outdoors photographer who shoots anytime other than the middle of the night all the time you will love a Micro Four Thirds camera you'll get great photos from it I'm sure if you're astrophotographer definitely get a bigger sensor but if you're not I think you can get lots out of this and I would defy anyone who says that they can see the difference between a micro four-thirds and a full-frame image when the lights good yeah like I said if you're shooting a lot in low-light in the middle of the night I wouldn't get a Micro Four Thirds camera I'd get a camera with a bigger sensor unless you want to stay really really light in which case you can get a micro 4/3 camera and you can get plenty of fuss lenses for this camera so I like the 10 to 25 which I'm still mulling over that's a full frame equivalent of 20 to 50 mil with an aperture of f11 7 not the same depth of field but a really wide aperture but yet all things being equal I would suggest that a micro 4/3 camera is not gonna shine for photographers who shoot in places where it doesn't shine so sighs as I've mentioned was one of the big reasons that I've got a micro 4/3 camera although as you can see might be able to tell in my hands if you've not seen one in person it's um it's actually quite big so if you compare this to a number of the mirrorless full-frame cameras this probably wouldn't be much smaller in fact it might be bigger than some of them now I clearly am NOT a camera manufacturer but it seems to me that it's much easier to shape weight and size off of a camera body than it is to shave way in size off of lenses because the size of the lenses seem very dependent on the size of the sensor and that is where you get tiny micro four-thirds lenses so yeah the overall size of my kit is much smaller than it would have to be if I were shooting with them I pick a sensor size which I love gotta be honest though I don't really love the way that the g9 looks is not the prettiest camera I've ever had I mean I do like this red thing around the top there but aside from that I think it's the best-looking camera I've ever had not that that really matters I mean the looks of a camera relative to its performance is about the same as the looks of a toothpaste tube relative to the toothpaste performance it literally doesn't matter [Music] so I get lots of communications from people each month emails YouTube comments Instagram DMS that kind of thing from people telling me that they've switched to micro four-thirds or just a smaller sensor like an aps-c if they've been shooting for frame whatever and they say that they're absolutely loving the fact they've done so they've not noticed big detriment in image quality that they expected and that they love having a lighter gear that's awesome I also get emails from people occasionally saying that they really want to invest in micro four-thirds but their concern that it is gonna die out it's gonna fizzle because how can this camera system with a much smaller sensor survive when there's so much full-frame stuff going on I think you have to understand that this system was developed at a time when there were already plenty of larger sensors available it's not like they invented it and then the next week someone came along with a sensor size that was much bigger than they thought oh no we've been trumped there this was designed because it's got a smaller sensor and therefore can have things like smaller lenses also the first micro four-thirds come with I got I think was the gx1 back in 2011 2012 somewhere like that which I think actually was probably one of the better-looking cameras I've ever owned and I remember distinctly when I was researching that camera reading loads a lot of blogs and forums of people saying exactly the same thing they were worried that micro four-thirds gonna die out because the sensor was just too small fast forward eight nine years and it's still going strong basically since this system has been invented some people have thought that it's going to die out and yeah it's still going strong look at how many lenses are available for this system and tell me again that you think it's gonna die out I don't think so not anytime soon I mean it might I don't have a crystal ball but I was gonna put money on it I'd suggest that micro four-thirds is these plenty safe for the time being this is another thing that people like to debate whether or not you can use a micro four-thirds camera for professional use and I've seen professional campaigns and people get paid for shots shot with phones loads this isn't a phone it's much more capable than phone therefore you can use this in professional applications why would say as well is that the reason the likely reason that phones for example don't get used more in professional jobs is purely because you can't trust them in extreme environment in places where you've got to put a camera in a bit of a precarious position in order to get the shot I mean a phone is basically a magic glass wine earth would you risk it this though and cameras like this are built like absolute tanks is weatherproof freeze proof and I've thrown this round all over the world and here we are with a cup of scratches two years later it's an absolute unit and that is the qualifying feature of a camera for professional use as far as I'm concerned not the size of the sensor so yeah two years with this camera my favorite camera ever just not my favorite looking camera ever I would say and I also don't like the shutter the shutters really light if you've got the g9 you'll know the shutters really light and pretty much to a person I don't know anyone who likes the light shutter so not the biggest fan of that aside from that though the ergonomics the placement of the buttons the menus the speed of the camera all of it I absolutely love and place much more value on than just how big the sensor is and all those things are things that I consider much more readily than say resolution when I'm trying to work out what camera to buy and this has ended up being probably one of the better purchases of my life so one yeah that's my two year round up anyway yeah just a quick video I'm still stuck indoors as you can see we're still under lockdown in the UK start to warm me up now and try not to take it personally but basically if you follow this channel again for a while you'll know that just before this lockdown I started a series of outdoor videos called stills in motion the point of them was to go outdoors exploring taking photos and making vlogs about that and yeah four weeks after styling that we have the biggest social restrictions since world war two come in and I mean I know everything that's going on is is much more serious than my little youtube videos but um yeah try not to take it personally in fact the other day when I was moaning about this to someone they told me to imagine this happening without an internet connection and I haven't known since then actually imagine that anyway thanks for watching let me know if you if you've taken up micro four-thirds recently and if you like it or the other way around or just let me know whatever really um I'm keen to hear from people I've not seen anyone other than my wife in quite a long time so see ya be good to chat see you next time thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: James Popsys

Views: 213,688

Rating: 4.9086142 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: zHCe8wNIVxw

Length: 12min 45sec (765 seconds)

Published: Sat May 02 2020