Ray Sachs
Legend
- Location
- Not too far from Philly
- Name
- you should be able to figure it out...
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.
-Ray