Over the last 5 days, I snapped 450 photos Typical of my editing process, I kept about 95 of these (1:5 ratio). I have used SLRs over the years off and on with Nikon and Canon being the primary formats. I’ve used the 5D Mark 1-3 and the Nikon D80, Canon 7D as well as a few Rebel models in between. It’s nice to own my DSLR after borrowing or renting them of many years.This will mostly be a negative points post and I’ll save a lot of content for when I’ve been able to put this camera through its paces.
- The lack of a flip out / swivel display is going to take a while to get used to. I could hold my Olympus at stomach level or above my head and snap a photo. Live View works okay but SLRs are really best looking through the view finder. I love using the view finder but when I’m on the ground or trying to get an aerial shot, I really miss that flip out LCD display
- The view finder is great but, other than the meter at the bottom of the screen, it’s challenging to know how the photo will come out. In one way, this pushes me to measure the area with my eye-ball instead of technology. I look at the subject, pick an aperture, ISO and exposure time and usually get pretty close to the exact figure but it’s going to take a while to learn this for every Canon EF-L lens that I’ll eventually own. M43 cameras show you a good view of what the image will look like. Canon does not. I’ll get used to it but it will take some time. I often underexposed my photos as the meter would measure the light behind a subject and I’d set the exposure based on the meter and not my gut and boom, underexposed photo.
- I’m using a Compact Flash + SDXC Card setup in the M3. Last night in Adobe Lightroom CC, half of my photos didn’t show up and I had to do some memory card musical chairs to find my images. I think sticking with a one-card setup will save me from this and using Compact Flash will speed up my photo burst significantly.
- The Bokeh on Full-Frame SLR is insane compared to M43. F/1.4 @ 25MM with a 2x Crop Factor on my Olympus M43 is great for photos of a salad. The Canon 50MM f/1.4 with no crop factor had just a small piece of cucumber in focus and rest of salad out of focus. It’s going to take a while to get used to this. Luckily, the ISO sensitivity on the M3 is great. Up to 8,000 ISO, I can still get by which is about 6.5x what the Olympus could handle. This enables me to tighten the aperture so Bokeh is reduced.
- I also have to get used to the focal length differences. A 25MM and 45-200MM Olympus gives you a 50-400MM real-world focal length due to the crop factor. Not so on the Olympus. The 105MM max focal length I have currently means 105MM. I’ll have to spend thousands on a 400MM lens to get the same focal length I had on the Panasonic 45-200 that was around $500.
- 20+ Megapixel RAW Images are huge and take longer to import and edit and render in Lightroom. I’ll have to get used to it
- The camera is very heavy but honestly not that noticeable for me. I have big hands and enjoy the size of it. The Olympus OM-D battery grip was added simply because I wanted more places to grip. I don’t need one on the 5D for size and for the fact that it is rated 950 shots on a charge (4x what I had on the Olympus)
That’s all for now, I’ll certainly put together more as I have it but I’m still very much getting used to the camera.
Some recent photos from my weekend in Quebec Canada are on Flickr and 500px.
