Like so many news photographers, I thought the back pains and neck
injury were inevitable occupational hazards.
I used to proudly carry my Domke bag loaded with 20 pounds
of SLR camera gear – a couple Canon bodies, four lenses, a strobe, filters and
film. It made me feel like a professional.
Some of the lenses were exceptional, and I still yearn fondly for my f2.8 20mm wide angle that was fast and
distortion-free.
But just as time has left the SLR behind, it is leaving the
bigger and heavier DSLR behind. Yes, if you need Big Glass – the fast long
telephotos need for sports – you will always need the big rig. But in the new
world of new media, small is truly beautiful.
The gallery below this post contains images from the Olympus mirrorless.
For the past five years, I have been using a mirrorless
micro 4/3 Olympus, and I don’t look back. The drawbacks are obvious. If you
mount big glass on it – yes, you can use your old lenses in manual mode – the
camera defeats itself, since its size is its advantage. The micro 4/3 format is a “crop” format. The
sensor is half the size of a full DSLR sensor, so unlike a DSLR, if you crop
out half your image while editing, you start to really lose quality.
What I like best about my mirrorless is street shooting. Its small size lets me channel Cartier-Bresson, whose small mirrorless Leica was unobtrusive. I can be on a street corner in Istanbul with the camera hanging at my waist, the rear sensor flipped out for framing, and shoot the scene without being noticed at all. On the streets of New York, I see Gary Winogrand shots all around me and often shoot without even framing.
But in today’s media landscape, the mirrorless camera is ideal. The crop format is perfect for online uses and big enough for print media, even glossy magazines. The small size means a journalist doesn’t have to agonize over whether to take the gear along. I’ve taken my Olympus gear - three lenses that take me from 24 mm wide angle to 300 mm telephoto - to Turkey and Peru and still had room in my shoulder bag for my laptop and all the essentials you need to carry for when the airline loses your checked bag.
In an era when many media sites require reporters to double as photographers, a mirrorless rig that costs less than $1,000 makes sense. These cameras have just enough controls to set up defaults for good quick grab-and-shoot uses and do a fine job with HD video (although the sound is always an issue with in-camera mics).
I know several other newspaper photographers who have drifted to mirrorless in retirement or for off-the-clock personal work. It feels good to lay your burden down.
What I like best about my mirrorless is street shooting. Its small size lets me channel Cartier-Bresson, whose small mirrorless Leica was unobtrusive. I can be on a street corner in Istanbul with the camera hanging at my waist, the rear sensor flipped out for framing, and shoot the scene without being noticed at all. On the streets of New York, I see Gary Winogrand shots all around me and often shoot without even framing.
But in today’s media landscape, the mirrorless camera is ideal. The crop format is perfect for online uses and big enough for print media, even glossy magazines. The small size means a journalist doesn’t have to agonize over whether to take the gear along. I’ve taken my Olympus gear - three lenses that take me from 24 mm wide angle to 300 mm telephoto - to Turkey and Peru and still had room in my shoulder bag for my laptop and all the essentials you need to carry for when the airline loses your checked bag.
In an era when many media sites require reporters to double as photographers, a mirrorless rig that costs less than $1,000 makes sense. These cameras have just enough controls to set up defaults for good quick grab-and-shoot uses and do a fine job with HD video (although the sound is always an issue with in-camera mics).
I know several other newspaper photographers who have drifted to mirrorless in retirement or for off-the-clock personal work. It feels good to lay your burden down.
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