My Photography Passion

This morning I woke contemplating which camera I would use later from the several choices I have. Photography is another and possibly the second of my very earliest formed hobbies. I bought my first serious camera in 1991, an Olympus OM 4Ti which was a peculiar choice since it was essentially a manual focus camera in a time when autofocus had established itself amongst the other Japanese makers.

Without giving you the whole history of my photography hobby and the obscure lanes and sometimes highways it has taken me on; I recently sold off much of the stuff I had acquired as part of finding the perfect setup. I had 2 micro-four third mirrorless cameras which had started with the Olympus E-P1 and a Canon 5D Mk II. I sold my Panasonic GF1 and the 5D together with all its lenses to finally buy a Leica M9P and lens combination. I'd been dreaming of a Leica as early as the 1990s but one thing or another kept me away. So I finally had it, a Leica. Surely that was it. I'd never need to consider another camera again.

Not quite. I'd already replaced the Panasonic GF1 with an Olympus E-P3 but shortly after this Olympus announced the Olympus OM-D! A camera that pulled very strongly at my heartstrings given the love I had of the original OM series.

So even though I had the Leica M9, and an E-P3 which I think is a fantastic camera btw, there was a new camera on the horizon with better sensor, and better image stabilisation. But then the realisation that there will be another iteration of the camera in another 6-12 months.

And that's where I think I left it. Consider that when I bought my Olympus OM-4Ti, that camera had been in production for at least 7 years (as the OM-4 on which it was based). I first remember it as a product placement in the James Bond film Licence to Kill from 1989. Even more impressive is the fact that Leica only went through 3 models since I first became interested in them back in the early 90's. The M8 has been the shortest lived camera in Leica's history in this respect.

This acceleration of product cycles has been a feature of computers and I guess it is logical that as cameras became digital and increasingly dominated by microprocessors that they too would undergo a transformation into the same sort of product development cycle.

And it is something with a two-edged nature. On the one hand it means we get better and better technology at a more rapid pace, but on the other it means an endless wake of products that become obsoleted and destined for the landfill at ever quicker rates.

At some point I am certain that we are going to find that the modular approach may take hold. What I envision is that a camera like the M9P, a beautifully made camera will have a structure such that its electronics can be overhauled by the swapping in of a module or component, leaving its mechanical elements intact. Leica already offers this sort of upgrade and it is definitely an enlightened approach imo. Or we may naturally reach a point where the advances are progressively smaller and smaller so that products once again have longer and more stable lifecycles.

After all that I think I'll take the E-P3 out with me today.