The beauty, or lack thereof, of this camera was called into question in the comments to my last post. Iyt was suggested that I show the camera next to the X-S1, which of course I still have with me. The D7000 is of course at its new home in Quebec, and so is unavailable for comment.
Here is an image of my entire new system beside the X-S1 …
Fuji F200EXR 100iso f/3.9 1/4 (tripod – Slick compact ii)
The term “compact” does not do justice to this system. It’s just plain tiny. To be fair, I put the 45-175 (90-350 EFL) power zoom lens on the G5 and it is still smaller by a lot. The power zoom does not extend for either focus or zoom and so is extremely pleasant to use under all circumstances. It helps that it is also quite sharp.
Here is the GF3 with the wonderful Samyang 7.5mm Fisheye mounted.
And the G5 with the Olympus 45mm 1.8 and 14-42 power zoom in the foreground. These are tiny lenses but pack a huge punch …
And finally, the X-S1 and G5 in travel mode. The X-S1 has the better range, but the G5 stomps it in literally every other category.
For travel purposes, I have an insert from the Lowepro CompuDayPack that works great at the bottom of many laptop cases. Here is my entire system packed away for travel with room to spare.
So not only is this system not ugly, it is in fact gorgeous in every possible way. The whole m4/3 line is pretty nice to look at and pretty wonderful in practical use. The new touch interfaces from Panasonic are excellent, but there are so many buttons on the Panasonic that you may never need to use the touch interface. Your loss of course.
So far, I do not miss the D7000 at all. Of course, it is harder to get some shots on low light, but so far I have found nothing impossible yet …
And speaking of size … I am going to try a new travel tripod for my upcoming trip to Stockholm. I have been looking for something that simply works. Nothing fancy at all but something small and light. I tried one of those “whip antenna” style tripods but it is far too flimsy to be useful, so I kept looking. And today I found the Slik Compact II, on clearance at Future Shop for 29 bucks.
Here is the new tripod shown second from the right. In order from left – Feisol 3471 and Markins M20L, a superb combination for equipment of any size; Velbon whatever, a really nice tripod that I have had for 20 years or more; the new Slik Compact II; and finally the whip antenna travel tripod that is just too flimsy for anything as big as my G5. It partially crumpled with the GF3 :-)
Edit: Thanks Piotr for catching my brain fart … 
