Must Be This Way

This place is going to become very famous! Any photographer worth their salt could spend hours photographing this quarter square mile!

For Mike Pitt — Bar Jobi

Just for MIke, some photos from his favourite Rio Bar!

SLR Weight — Going backwards

The discussion following my recent photo post is quite fascinating. Understandably, as most people here are backpackers, weight is an issue.

Last night I dug out my old Olympus OM4. This was a superb camera. I’d forgotten how small and light it was — amazing compared to even medium sized digital SLRs.

I wonder why we can’t got back to these sizes. The OM 4 only had one fault, the battery life. It was powered by two small pill-type batteries and they tended to drain quickly especially if the camera was out over a cold night.

These days you might need a little more space in the camera to take a modern battery. But then again do we need all of the features we get these days?

Do you really need Auto Focus? This is helpful (especially as you get older) but it is amazing how often the focus is not quite spot on.

Do we need all of these exposure modes on high end camera? I stick mainly to manual and aperture priority where I can trust it. I don’t use shutter priority or various programme modes.

Is it just me or old fashioned aperture rings easier to operate that all of the new fangled ‘wheels’?

What I really value is quick on/off, high ISO, different metering options and sometimes auto ISO.

Some of the new compacts and 3/4 cameras seem to be going back towards basics.

Digital SLRs are just too heavy. Cradling my OM4 it seems to me that there’s no need for it!