My month in New York City

Ray, I'm waiting for your answer to Djarum at #156.

Sorry - I missed that one, and a couple of other nice comments too.

There's no answer. I absolutely will not declare a winner because, with a winner, that implies a loser and there isn't one. They're both wonderful cameras. I think I knew that going in which is why the choice was so difficult and ultimately didn't allow itself to remain a choice...

To break it down a little bit:

I like the OMD more for street shooting with the 12mm. I just love the flip screen, the TOUCH screen, and the zone focus implementation of the 12mm sooooo much. BUT, the X-Pro is no slouch for street shooting. The high ISO is so good you can pretty much always find a way to zone focus with it, even in VERY low light, the manual focus is fine for zone focussing, and I like the 28mm focal length just a bit more than the 24 I use on the OMD. The ONLY quibble I have with the X-Pro for street shooting is the "aperture dance" that it shares with the X100 which can cause a bit of lag in bright light when the aperture has to open and close back down again before it fires. But once you get used to that, you can half press to nail the exposure when you even THINK you're about to have a shot. So with a little experience both are fine street cameras.

For everything else, I prefer the X-Pro when the focal lengths are right. For me, 28mm can be right a frightening percentage of the time, so that's my favorite walk around combination - the X-Pro and the 18mm lens. The feel of the camera, the controls, the OVF, even the sound of the shutter just work for me and feel right. And the IQ is good enough to make even ME care, and I generally don't.

BUT... When the 18 or 35 don't work, I'm really glad to have both longer and wider with the OMD and every now and then, particularly when travelling and just walking around and exploring, I'm really happy to have a zoom. And I'm finding I quite like the range of the 12-50 and I'm happy with the output from that lens as well. Its not a low light lens, but for decent light, its a very enjoyable lens to have available. And even though I slightly prefer the feel and handling of the X-Pro overall, on any given day I might prefer the OMD - its such a solid little camera, all of the controls are in the right place (love the dual dials on top) and sometimes its just fun to shoot with a really quick and athletic little camera and the OMD is that in spades.

In low light..... they're both great but the X-Pro is just simply ridiculous. I got better low light results out of it than the OMD, but I did some OMD street shooting one night that I was VERY happy with, so if the X-Pro hadn't come along, I'd probably have been very happy with the OMD as a low light camera. There will be times when I'd take either out in the evening - the X-Pro for IQ and the OMD for quicker shooting. Generally - lots of overlap there.

So I love them both - equally but differently. If I had a strong preference I might have kept only one. As it is, they answer all of my gear questions between them. I'm selling everything else with the possible exception of the X100 (which I just don't know if I CAN sell) and a couple of little compacts that aren't worth anything but occasionally come in handy. But these two cameras are gonna be the heart of my system for a while. But I'll no doubt stay abreast of what's coming around and how Fuji moves forward with this system. I'm sure there will be incremental improvements to to the m43 line, but there have been some pretty big jumps lately - I don't see how anything is going to be much better for my needs in the m43 world until another generation of sensors comes along and that should still be a little ways off. The OMD is everything I ever even dared to hope for in an m43 camera and now all of the pieces and features I've wanted are together in one great little camera body. The Fuji still has questions to answer - will the OVF work with future wider and longer and zooming lenses? If not, will they bring out a lower budget body with more emphasis on the EVF (and put a GOOD evf in it?). Etc, etc, etc. Depending on how that goes, the Fuji might become my primary system and m43 more of a specialty setup. Or I'll very happily stay with m43 as a primary setup and use the Fuji as a specialty setup but one that may even get more use then the primary setup...

There you go. Sorry, no verdict. :cool:

-Ray
 
In short, Mr. Sachs, you are telling us that if you could just keep one, it would be the XPro1.

Where, might I ask, did you get THAT from what I said???

I suppose as long as I could still keep an epl3 and all of my m43 glass, maybe so. But if I had to choose one whole SYSTEM today, no question it would be m43. But these are academic games. I love 'em both. If I had to choose, maybe I would. But I'm not gonna - no matter how much you try to goad me into it! :D

-Ray
 
OK, at long last, a book emerges. One of those things I couldn't really get started on, but then once I started, I finished very very quickly. Like I started this morning and now its up. I'd been slowly working through the photos and reprocessing several, sort of trying to narrow it down to 100. I made it to something in the 110-115 range I think - the book is 120 pages but there are at least a couple with no photographs on them. Anyway, I'm happy with it. It was a hell of a month and that was the main point, but this will be a good keepsake of it. Here's the link to Blurb:

New Yorkers | By Ray Sachs | Category: Arts & Photography | Blurb

If any of you want to check it out, the preview on-screen is free (but it looks HORRIBLE on my monitor), the hardback and soft-cover will cost about $52 and $41, but the bargain is the e-book for $2. For that you can stick it on your ipad and the images will actually look quite good. Anyway, thanks for following me through this process to those who did. This should put it to bed. Now to figure out where to go plant myself sometime next year. Or the year after. But this was too good an experience not to try to do again, probably somewhere else...

-Ray
 
Very cool ray. I wonder if the I pad version would work for android devices? I don't know anything about e books.

I get the impression it doesn't - the spot where you buy them on the website is pretty specific about Downloads for Apple iBooks, so I don't think so. I'd be surprised if they're not working on something but it doesn't look like non-Apple gear is supported yet.

-Ray
 
Well done Ray, I ordered my Ipad version. I am impressed.
I think the number of images is fine, but if next time you want to hit 100, I could edit for you, it is always easier to edit others than it is oneself.
 
Well done Ray, I ordered my Ipad version. I am impressed.
I think the number of images is fine, but if next time you want to hit 100, I could edit for you, it is always easier to edit others than it is oneself.

Thanks Bob. I'm ok with the length, really. I did an end of year book once that was really long and I didn't want that to happen again, but the difference between 100 and 120 isn't much in terms of how long it takes to look through. And I'm not really expecting to sell more than a few of these, so for my personal use, I'd rather err on the side of including more rather than less. But if I ever really need an editor, I appreciate the offer!

-Ray
 
Very cool ray. I wonder if the I pad version would work for android devices? I don't know anything about e books.

Just found this page, and its pretty clearly only Apple gear right now, but they have a greyed out tablet that looks like some sort of Droid, and says, "more devices to come" so it'll happen, but not sure when. Its a great option for people who publish and leave that open. I see a lot of books I like on Blurb, but I'm not likely to buy them for $40 or more except for a couple of copies of my own stuff and maybe VERY occasionally I'll see something I like so much it'll be worth it. But for $2, if I like it, I'll buy it and stick it on my ipad and check it out and enjoy it more slowly and in a more relaxed fashion. I'm not looking to make money on my stuff - I don't have any indication I could and it would require a level of energy and commitment to really trying to push it out there that I don't have. It wouldn't be worth it for the relatively modest number of books I'd likely be able to sell, if any. But I'm happy to get the work out there if folks are interested and the ebooks seem like a good way to go for that.

-Ray
 
Ray,

Thanks for the info. I don't have any I-devices so I'll wait until it comes out for android devices. I completly understand in regards to the level of commitment. I've really enjoyed your series posted here, and an ebook is a really nice way to go to get stuff out there. Very nice work and very well done!

Jason
 
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