Traded my D90 to an EP-3 and now starting to ask why I did it.

Charles Pike wrote:

When I started shooting back in 1965 primes ruled, and zooms were not very good at all. If you shoot with a prime, you get used to the view of the lens that you are using. You learn what it can do, and which prime is best for which kind of shooting you are going to do. You can use a faster shutter speed with a prime. With a fast prime, you can close the lens down a couple of stops from wide open and hit its sweet spot. A fast primes sweet spot is still gathering more light than a zoom is wide open. But for me it is the fact that a prime is much smaller than a zoom, and brings less attention to the shooter.

I started looking for a smaller camera around three years ago. I didn't even know about m 4/3 cameras at the time. When I bought one, I thought that if it didn't turn out a quality print as good as my DSLR, I would sell it. I sold the DSLR instead. When I went uptown with my large DSLR and a 17-35mm f/ 2.8 lens, building security would come out and ask who I was taking pictures for. I was often run off from taking pictures near their buildings (against the law to stop a shooter on the sidewalk). When I switched to a m 4/3 with a small pancake lens, no more problems. In fact, I even had a few tell me where a good photo could be had. But over the last 40 years, I have owned some very wonderful glass from Nikon, but except for two zoom lens, all the others were prime.

Primes owned over 40 years: All Nikon, 28 mm, 35 mm, 50 mm, 85 mm, 105 mm, 135 mm, 180 mm. All of these were f 2.8 or faster. I had to buy more than one set when Nikon switched from everything being manual focus to auto focus. During the time I owned most of these at one time, I shot for a newspaper and photographed weddings.

Now I own (2) Panasonic G3, 14 mm, 20 mm, 25 mm, 14-45 mm (kit lens), 45-200 mm. I have not used the kit lens since I purchased my first prime, and only use the longer zoom to shoot birds off my back deck or go to the mountains.

www.photosbypike.com