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Entries in vacation (2)

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

5:39PM

I Miss my DSLR

Chris H. |

5:39 PM |

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Another Day, Another Amazing Sunset on Maui by Chris Hlady, on Flickr

I miss my DSLR. My wife Megan and I went to Maui for our honeymoon recently, and for the first time since I took up photography, I travelled sans DSLR. For those that are thinking about replacing a DSLR with a micro four-thirds camera, I am pointing out here the that things I miss about my 5D Mark II. Of course, you should also keep in mind that the E-PL2 is much cheaper than my DSLR was, though many points apply to a certain extent with entry level DSLRs such as the Rebel XSi, which I owned before the 5Dm2.

Things I miss:

optical view finder – the electronic VF didn't look great in sunny Maui, and I prefer the OVF for composition regardless
speed (autofocus, boot) – I missed several shots waiting for the camera to turn on and focus
autofocus accuracy – lots of hunting, blown focus
my R strap - E-PL2 doesn't sit right with this strap, but I hate having a camera around my neck for a number of reasons. The R strap is probably my favorite DSLR accessory
low light sensitivity – limited to ISO 1600 means missing shots I could have gotten with my 5D Mark II altogether, and I'm unhappy with the amount of noise in ISO 1600 images.
good battery life – 170 shots / charge; down from 800
battery life indicator – seems to jump from 3 bars to 1 flashing rather than a smoothly descending percentage with an estimated number of shots remaining
stable camera settings – focus related settings seemed to have randomly changed on a number of occasions (focus point, continuous tracking --> manual)
the Canon menu system
battery status indication during charge

To be fair, there are some things I'm reasonably happy with:

automatic exposure level setting
auto white balancing
image quality at low ISO settings

I'm not sure that I'd recommend against getting a micro four-thirds camera, as it does deliver on its selling points of being relatively cheap, small and much higher quality than a compact camera. However, it doesn't quite live up to my (high?) expectations under these relatively tough circumstances.