Some, many, may call me a little crazy but I sold off much of my DSLR camera bodies and lenses. I guess one would say I have down graded. I have always held the opinion that it ain't the camera that makes great photography. The camera is only a tool. If you are in the business of making 60"x40" prints you better have the right tool to make those prints, if your a wild life photographer you better have the right tools. Photographs that move peoples harts can come from a variety of cameras, Its all about the image. Be it a smart phone, point and shoot, sub DSLR, or DSLR it doesn't matter. I once purchased a 35mm film camera at a camera show for $35.00, a Miranda a believe it was, it took wonderful images with beautiful characteristics.
So going into this.......
1.) I knew that I was tired of lugging around all those heavy lenses and camera bodies.
2.) My website is my gallery. no need for 60"x40" prints
3.) But I also knew that I wanted to make some sort of prints, in particular I wanted to explore prints on Aluminum.
4.) The camera I chose most be able to capture RAW files.
My believe is that photography does not need to be expensive. Sometimes we get caught up in all of the "fluff" and forget about the art of it all. My favorite tools/media to create art is still paper and pencil. I wanted a "point & shoot" under $500.00 that would free me up to just take the picture. So I started to explore and research what cameras are out there. Luckily these days its easy to research cameras, with an abundance of camera review sites and hours of youtube videos available it did not take me long to narrow down the field. Now I have a lot of knowledge headed into this, from my newspaper days, to giclée printing and digital imaging, to working for one of the worlds remaining photo film makers. And being an avid photog since high school I clearly new what I was looking for. And I found that in sample RAW files. This is where the rubber meets the road or better yet where the light meets the pixel. A sample RAW file will tell you just about everything you need to know. Thats where I started, I wanted the best image quality first (how good is the CCD), then came the lens quality (this kinda determines image quality too), then came features, then came design, thats the top four. So i bet you are wondering what I picked up? Well I had a bet of a hard time trying to choose between the Canon G12 and the Lumix lx5. But at the end i picked up the G12, in January, yes just before CES so I got it at a really good price well under $400. It has re energized my passion for photography. Its easy to use, packed with features, and fits into my cargo pants pocket. And most importantly the images are really good off of this camera. I have made prints as large as 34x24 with no issues. So I am very happy. After having used it for 2 months now, I have once or twice felt i needed a little more zoom, otherwise supper happy. I believe the G12 has been on the market for 2 years know, there is quite a few G12 user groups and such out on the web, witch i find very cool. This story does not end here. I recently purchased that other camera, the one I was debating with the G12. Yep picked up the lx5, its not here yet, but coming soon. The big reason was the price, on sale well under $400, I could not resist getting that quality of camera for that price. So i will have 2 cameras to go out and be creative with. Can't wait to go and burn some pixels.
Note: The Canon S95 has my recommendations also.
Below is my Canon G12 with the adapter tube on.
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