The Wanderer's Wetware

I don't think anyone suffers from the illusion that this is, in anything other than a very vague sense, a "photography blog". It is a blog about whatever I happen to feel like writing about, and it just so happens that I often feel like writing about photography. But this post is definitely one for the camera buffs: the rest of you may be happy just to look at the pictures, or to sit this one out altogether. 

Some photographers value brand loyalty, as if it were a mark of integrity: "I married Nikon, and never fool around with other brands, however attractive they might be, or however badly Nikon keeps letting me down". Others go even further, with the "one camera, one lens" approach, under the curious belief that their "vision" – actual or metaphorical – is adequately matched by just one particular optical combo. "Yep, I'm a hammer guy: to me, everything looks like a nail!" In a world of overwhelming choices, I can see the attraction of choosing a single blinkered path, or buying into a single "system", but it's not for me. I may have remained loyal to one life-partner for half a century, but when it comes to cameras, I'm The Wanderer (that is, the 1961 hit from Dion, not the Old English poem).

In a previous post, I mentioned that back in 2014 I was transitioning away from cameras that used the "Micro Four Thirds" sensor to the larger Fujifilm "X-Trans" sensor. But before that I had been using Canon film SLRs and then DSLRs, as well as various Olympus cameras, film and digital. Mustn't forget my medium-format film cameras, either, Mamiya, Fujifilm, and the extraordinary, combat-ready Koni-Omega Rapid... I could go on. In fact, my photo-philandering has often run in parallel, as well as serially; luckily, cameras are easy-going devices, happy to share a bag. Once I had begun using them, however, I was sufficiently convinced by the outstanding qualities of the Fujifilm X-Trans "system" that the Micro 4/3rds cameras and lenses (mainly Panasonic, but also Olympus) would remain in a cupboard for most of the next decade.

Then, more recently, and much to my own surprise, I became convinced of the virtues and above all the sheer convenience of iPhone photography, and the Fujis started to join the Panasonics in the cupboard much of the time.

But there's a cyclical pattern at work here. Inevitably, after a while I realised how far the limitations of the iPhone had begun to define what I felt able to photograph. It was partly the camera's "noisiness" in low-light situations, but above all – for me – it was being stuck with a permanently wide-angle view of the world. I did try using one of the supplementary lenses made by Sandmarc that gives a narrower, 60mm-equivalent angle of view but, although the image quality did not suffer as much as I feared, it just felt a bit silly, having this weighty chunk of glass hanging off the back of my phone. The phone had suited the sort of photographs I had wanted to take for several years – in a way, it was my own "one camera, one lens" experiment – but it seemed my internal weather had changed. I still wanted convenience, yes, but image quality and flexibility of angle of view were equally important.

So I succumbed to "photography as window shopping" for a while – like biscuits, a temptation best kept well out of reach – and started to look for very small, high-quality cameras which could either take interchangeable lenses or had a built-in zoom; second-hand, of course, and knowing full well that this was likely to be one of those triads of choice: convenience, image quality, flexibility – pick any two. All of which seemed to lead inevitably back in the direction of Micro 4/3rds and Panasonic.

Now, whenever possible, I buy stuff from a reliable used-camera site like MPB or Ffordes, but if what you're after is scarce and you're willing to take a risk on eBay, as I am from time to time, then real bargains can be had. So last year I eventually found what I was looking for: a Panasonic GM1 on eBay at a reasonable price (in Italy, in fact), which is the smallest Micro 4/3rds interchangeable-lens camera ever made (and the body really is hilariously tiny, about the size of a pack of playing cards), together with its dinky little collapsible 12-32mm lens, and a supplementary grip.

Despite its diminutive size the GM1 is an excellent camera, yielding the same image quality as a full-size camera with the same sensor, and I'm not surprised they're hard to come by, although not as scarce as the elusive GM5; much the same camera, but with the desirable extra of an electronic viewfinder. You could almost hear the ironic cheers coming out of the camera cupboard as I dusted off the old Micro 4/3rds lenses. Add the equally tiny and collapsible Panasonic 35-100mm zoom (equivalent to a 70-200mm lens in 35mm terms) and you have a perfect "travel" kit, so light and economical of space you scarcely know it's in your bag. Convenience, image quality, flexibility: sometimes, it seems, you can pick all three.

But, as I say, these things are clearly somewhat cyclical and unpredictable, just like the weather: no doubt I'll be returning to the Fujis or moving on to something new in due course. They call me The Wanderer...

But the real bargain I picked up along the way, surprisingly cheap on eBay, was a Panasonic "superzoom", the TZ70 (ZS50 in the USA). I was looking for a more camera-like substitute for the mad Canon Zoom monocular that I was playing around with earlier in the year. The TZ70 has an even more insane 30x zoom, equivalent to 24-720mm in 35mm terms (that's "pretty wide" to "blimey!" in lay terms). It's small, flat [1], light, and easily as pocketable as the Zoom. It's image-stabilised, too, and even has a little viewfinder so you can steady it further by pressing it against your brow, in classic style (essential at the longer end of the zoom, even with stabilisation).

But the main thing is that it's great fun to use, which to my mind is an important (if subjective) attribute, often overlooked in detail-obsessed reviews. I really enjoy being able to stand on one side of a wet and muddy field or a busy road, and zoom in to compose a nice conjunction of elements on the far side. "Foot zoom" be damned: if you get up close you quite literally can't see the wood for the trees. Best of all, the combination of deep depth of focus (small sensor) with flattened perspective (telephoto lens) is a good match for what my eyes tend to spot and isolate within any scene in front of me, far better than a wide-angle view. Which, of course, is also available at the other extreme of this lens's range, should I feel the need, along with everything in between.

Sure, that triad of choices does come into play with the TZ70: it offers convenience and flexibility, but at the expense of technical image quality. Without doubt – in comparison with the GM1, say – this camera's IQ is somewhat less than stellar. Which you would expect from such a crazy lens stuck in front of a tiny sensor, even if it is badged "Leica" [2]. But the lesson it has reinforced for me is the importance of recognising the difference between photographic qualities and pictorial qualities. In the end, I'm looking for pictures, not opportunities to demonstrate or test the outstanding metrics of my camera.

Camera reviewers obsess over "sharpness", for example, as if this were an absolute, as if a soft or grainy picture is inherently inferior, pictorially, to a sharp picture. I suppose to many the ideal model of photography is a perfect pack-shot or a studio shoot for a glossy magazine: the more flawless, the more like a perfectly clear window onto reality, the better. But our own inbuilt optical system of "wetware" doesn't actually care about any of this (see the post Cambrian Specs). Otherwise, how could anyone ever have celebrated generations of iconic photographs made with fast, grainy, "soot and whitewash" 35mm film? Or admired Impressionist paintings, come to that, or the likeness of a lion, scratched onto a cave wall with a burnt stick? In fact, the brain actually seems to get more pleasure from joining the dots, as it were, than from gazing passively through some simulated window. [3]

Quality-wise, I should say, we're by no means in Krappy Kamera territory with the TZ70. However, I won't pretend that I haven't had to do a fair amount of work on the raw files (What? JPGs, you say? They're not bad, I suppose, but I never use JPGs, given the choice...). Besides, this work "in post" is, for me, a large part of the pleasure of photography. I discovered some very neat new tricks when wrestling those truly awful Canon Zoom files into submission, for example: nothing stimulates creativity like the challenge of making a useable sow's ear purse. [4]

So, I hope that the pictures on this page (all TZ70 images) demonstrate that you can have all three elements of that aforementioned triad – convenience, quality, and flexibility – for very little money, provided most of the "quality" is supplied by you and your own optical wetware (with a little help from some decent software), and doesn't depend on the camera's mechanical contribution alone. If you're not convinced, well, I'm still having a lot of fun wandering about at the wetware / software / hardware interface we call "photography", looking for pictures.

1. Unless you accidentally turn it on, that is, at which point it's a case of "Is that a camera in your pocket, or are you just (very) glad to see me?"

2. The ongoing relationship between photo-legend Leica and electronics giant Panasonic is a curious one, but really only of interest to students of business economics and the psychology of "branding". From a photographic p-o-v, suffice it to say that a miniature 30x zoom is unlikely ever to appear on any actual Leica camera.

3. My (not very thought-through) theory of visual art is that it is humanity's attempt to reverse-engineer pareidolia, our brain's tendency to see faces and other meaningful images in random patterns.

4. For non-native speakers: "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear" is a venerable English proverb, presumably dating from the times when a sow's ear might be something to be found just lying around looking useful, in an ugly kind of way, and which typifies the paradoxical self-evidence of folk-wisdom (a.k.a. "the idiocy of rural life"). See: "a watched pot never boils", "all things come to those who wait", etc. If you say so, Gran!