When is enough enough? Locked

TrapperJohn wrote:

Normally, I subscribe to the Bill Turner camera body philosophy: stay at least two years out of date, you save bags of money, and you're still amazed at what you get. And in general, that worked out fine: I never got that much out of body upgrades, a bit better here, a bit better there, so why pay premium price for that? Also, bodies depreciate like crazy as newer ones obsolete them, while good glass does not - hard to obsolete a really fine lens.

But, when the EM5 came out, here I sit with a pile of ZD glass that's clumsy handling on a Pen body, while my old E3 was definitely showing it's age. And that EM5 had a battery grip, just the thing to solve the handling issue. So I ordered one on faith in January, 2012, before I knew how much of a leap the sensor was over previous efforts, and how much better the IS was.

In this one case, getting the latest and greatest was a good move: I'm learning better PP skills, now that I have RAWs that can be PP'd without creating artifacts, banding, or amplifying noise. The new IS means I can leave the tripod at home, more often than not. The improved ZD AF still isn't action fast, but it's consistent, not the 'push shutter button and pray' that ZD AF on the EP1 was. Oh, and with the battery grip, my ZD zooms handle very nicely on the EM5.

Other than the EM5, which is definitely an outlier on my body upgrade curve, I tend to agree: it has been glass additions that have made the greatest difference. Body upgrades were largely convenience, whereas adding glass like the 7-14, PL25, ZD 50-200 or an old Nikkor 400 3.5, that made possible shots I couldn't get at all before.

But, it's not like we haven't had any new and interesting lenses added lately: 12-35, 35-100, 75 1.8, 60 2.8, 17 1.8...