Today’s Thoughts from Joe Farace
“More smiling, less worrying. More compassion, less judgment. More blessed, less stressed. More love, less hate.” ― The Light in the Heart
A friend and neighbor of mine liked my Olympus E-M5 Mark I so much that he decided to purchase a Mark II model that was introduced around the same time we were talking. He really loved that camera until one month after it was out of warranty, the EVF failed. Olympus, not OM Systems, decided that one month was really, really outside the warranty period and so charged him $300 to repair the camera, he was not happy, His next camera was not an Olympus.
My own crazy camera story
Shortly after it was introduced in May 2014, I received a Panasonic Lumix GH4 as a birthday gift from Mary and I was happy with it as far as handling and image quality went until a couple of years ago. While photographing a model during a studio session and after making about 100 exposures, the camera made a loud beep and crashed. But the photos I just made were OK. To correct the problem, a Panasonic rep suggested I update the firmware; which I did with no improvement. He then suggested switching memory card brands. I did that with no improvement.
How I Made this Photograph: One camera that I would love to own is the Olympus E-1MX but even after being discontinued, they are still expensive.KEH offers a used one in EXC+ condition for $845, which is getting closer to my budget,
The Infinite Monkey Theorem states that a monkey hitting random typewriter keys for an infinite period of time will type the complete works of Shakespeare. That perfectly describes my attempts to photograph motocross riders in the rain. Here, the brave rider is airborne and I am below him. With the help of the E-1MX’s Intelligent Subject Detective AF settings I managed to catch him mid-flight. The lens used was the 40-150mm f/2.8 and MC-14 1.4X teleconverter. Exposure was 1/500 sec at f/4 and ISO 200.
So What Happened…
After looking around on line I discovered that I wasn’t the only one having these kinds of problems not that it made me feel any better. The workaround was turning the camera off then back on and it would keep working but once it started glitching it would continue to sporadically crash. Then one day, the camera started doing something worse; it would shut down and this time I lost the photo I just made. Turn it back on and it would only work for a few exposures before crashing again.
A friend of mine had a GH4 body in his garage that he wasn’t using and suggested we swap cameras. I used this loaner body GH4 this for a few years and after a while the replacement started having different kinds of non-fatal problems and I just lived with them. Then my friend lost his job and we swapped cameras back again, with him getting his original camera body and me receiving my original problematical one. Now the story gets weirder…
After I received my old camera back that had been siting in his garage for several years–you can read my take on leaving cameras sitting unused here–I’ve had no problems. Did the camera need a rest? Were my problems what my pal Kevin Elliot calls an “Incident” and not an “event?” Who knows? I wish I knew but will let you know if that ever changes.
Here are my camera plans starting sometime after Labor Day: If you look at the Gear section, you’ll see that, although I sold my Lumix G9 and another Panasonic camera that I wasn’t using, I have too many cameras. So my plan is to have a shoot out with what should be the most capable Canon, Olympus and Panasonic cameras and then compare and post the SOOC images here and on Instagram along with my impressions. No favorites will be played.
Do I hate my cameras? No, not by a long shot. I love photography along with all my digital and film cameras too much.
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