Some thoughts after a 2-week England vacation

Some thoughts after a 2-week vacation in England:

G85

I'm still going through my photos but I have to say that I'm VERY happy with the results so far. I've had the G85 for almost 2 mos. now and it has proven to be a very versatile and good handling camera. Although I prefer a smaller sized camera like my GX7 or even my EM5 II, the G85's size was not a problem. Considering its excellent price vs performance, there were only two things I wish were different on this camera:

1. I wish the memory presets was implemented similar to Olympus where you can be in Aperture priority mode and then re-load your desired preset, vs having to be in Custom Mode 1 in order to use the presets you saved to Custom Mode 1.

2. I wish the control buttons had a higher profile so they are easier to find by touch.

Having high quality video and great still images from a single camera body makes this a fantastic tool for people who work in both mediums.

The in-body stabilization (IBIS) was very useful because we went to several castles and museums which meant that I used my Olympus 9-18 a lot. Thanks to the IBIS I was able to keep the ISO at 3200 or lower and the resulting raw photos had enough headroom for any needed post processing adjustments.

The built-in flash was also useful on a few sunny days when I needed to fill in some shadows when photographing people. I love having it on the camera at all times instead of having to take the time to mount a hotshoe flash.

Battery life was quite good. There were two, or maybe three, days when the battery level dropped to two marks. That's definitely better than what I've experienced with my GX7 and EM5 II.

The panorama feature also worked very well. It was much better than on my LX100, that's for sure. The exposure bracketing feature was also used a few times. As for its 4K photo features, I didn't use any of them.

LENSES

I brought 4 lenses:

Panasonic 12-35/2.8

Panasonic 35-100/2.8

Olympus 9-18/4-5.6

Panasonic 15/1.7

The 15/1.7 was the least used. I thought I'd use it for street photography but I ended up using my 12-35/2.8 since it was usually on the G85 which was my primary camera. The 15 mostly stayed on my backup camera, a GX7. But most days I went out with just the G85.

Since we visited a lot of museums and castles, I made frequent use of the 9-18. A lot of people associate the 9-18 with landscape photography but for that, I typically use my 12-35 or 35-100.

In London I did a lot of lens changing which was an annoyance but my Think Tank Turnstyle 20 and Pacsafe Camsafe V5 waist bag reduced the hassle. Looking at my photo stats, f/2.8 was used not very much on the 35-100, so the experience did make me think about the Olympus 12-100.  But I don't know if I'd want to carry such a large lens on my camera for 80% of the time.

BAGS

I used 3 bags for my cameras. The primary two were the Turnstyle 20 and the Camsafe. The Camsafe was the easiest for accessing the camera and lenses but it was also smaller than the Turnstyle. So when I just needed my G85, 12-35, 35-100 and 9-18, that's what I used. When I needed to carry other stuff, like a Gorillapod or another body, I used the Turnstyle.

The third bag was a collapsible backpack (https://www.mec.ca/en/product/5034-451/Travel-Light-Pack-Top-Load?org_text=light%20back) which I sometimes used with the Camsafe. The fact that is collapsible is important because I can carry it in my roller bag and it takes up very, very little space. But once we were at the destination, I could use it to carry bulkier items like an umbrella, jacket, water bottle, etc. It's also very useful on the plane because it gave me an additional option for what I could use as a carry on bag. For instance, on the flight home, my wife needed more room due to souvenirs that she bought, so she put stuff in my carry on roller bag and we checked it in as baggage. The expensive stuff I had in it (multi-country power source, batteries, chargers, hard drives, etc) went into the backpack which then became my carry on in addition to my Turnstyle.

MICRO FOUR THIRDS

I have never seen so many m43 cameras as I have on this trip. I even saw some G85s, a GX8, and a handful or more of OMD bodies. Also, they weren't primarily owned by Asians, which is a first, in my experience. Naturally, Canikons consumers DSLRs were still the overwhelming majority but it was nice to see m43 to be better represented.

PHOTOS