Choosing a camera - this is not a review

A friend asked me if I knew about the new micro 4/3 cameras, which caused me to consider where they fit in today's universe of photographic tools. My conclusion - cameras like the Olympus PEN and Panasonic GF1 are very cool walk-around tools, but they don't really fit most people's needs just yet.

Most casual photographers, capturing their 'pets, kids, and sunsets' as a Kodak executive once explained to me, have to satisfy a broad range of needs with their gear. Our little Panasonic ZS3 needs to capture videos of kids skiing, piano recitals, casual wedding snapshots, and travel events. The 12x zoom lens becomes a tremendous asset and well worth the cost of fairly poor low-light performance relative to a 'big-sensor' camera. It's definitely a tradeoff, but this camera will take some very nice photos in friendly lighting conditions.



This year we added a Pentax K-x DSLR to our household. The kid's sports events - soccer and baseball - require more length and light-gathering than the little Panasonic ZS3 can deliver. It's far from pocketable with that 55-300mm lens on it, but with clean images at high ISO and a fairly fast burst mode, it lets us capture some great action shots (well, as great as the action permits!)



And there is the rub with the current generation of micro 4/3 cameras - at least for our family. They don't have the signal cleanliness, focus speed, or burst speed of the best 'entry' APS-C DSLRs, and even if they did, the auxiliary viewfinder and a long lens turn them into an awkward do-anything package.

Dedicated 'street-scene' photographers will surely love these compact, high-quality cameras for their discreteness and clean images, but they will remain a niche product until they can go head-to-head with the current generation of amateur DSLR without looking like a compromise in performance.