A fantastic affordable camera you can still buy new from eBay

Guy Parsons wrote:

Tom Caldwell wrote

(Joking)

GM5+, sigh .... why don’t they make the cameras that the users really want and not the ones that sell well on the market? This is one of life’s little conundrums ....

The huge problem is the uncharted waters that the industry is now encountering. The smartphone has totally destroyed the compact camera market and threatens ever higher spec models. So makers are retreating to the high end of the market where smartphones cannot compete at the moment and they know that they will sell less cameras so each one has to create a greater profit.

Though there is faint hope, for instance my adult daughter has finally realised how crappy smartphones are for photography and has bought an ambitious bridge camera and is having enormous fun.

Maybe it is because those that know that they have a good one tend to keep it and not upgrade.

Comes a point when something is good enough, so why change? For maybe the last 5 or so years just about all cameras have been good enough, so that also will also explain some of the camera sales slowdown.

The situation is really dire, email in this morning Digidirect with 20% off on some Olympus lenses and bodies, plus other brands as well. Usually that only happens at 10% and only at other times of the year. I suspect that we will see a rush of bricks and mortar stores closing this year.

So take advantage of sales and make sure that you have all that you really need to get through the next few years.

Plus, stop waiting for GM5 MK2.

This is a very good remark and reuires a personal explanation:

Like you I am blissfully happy with what I have had the presense of mind to have bought.  When I sensed that the GM series was on back foot I made sure that I had enough bodies to realise my dream of multiple small “cameras” each with a semi-fixed lens attached.

To my mind this is a far better concept than the one camera body many lenses paradigm of all but the most advanced user. To do this you must either be a professional with the impressive kit and an assistant and big budget or have “small camera body”.  And yet the popular idiom is that small camera bodies are not capable.  I doubt if this will ever change and although Panasonic tried (very hard) it seems that only large camera bodies have “status” and although the forum complains that “they are as big as some FF sensor camera bodies” that is what apparently sells to the bulk of M4/3 camera body users - otherwise they would not be made.

However I make my pleas for the GM series so that someone at least is banging the drum for this size of camera body in a high quality build.  I realise that I am not alone but it is far too easy to categorise small cameras as second rate and deficient.  The GM cameras ar not deficient but I also realise that many prefer the larger size body.  Furthermore the size issue trotted out (that M4/3 bodies are as large as some FF camera bodies) is downright silly as they are sold just as fast as they can be made, there are other sizes and types (smaller) that are also avaialble to buy and if anyone really wanted a tiny M4/3 body then the GM series was there ready and winking at them and largely ignored by those that just had to have a larger camera body .... with all the added features ....

So I am happy with GM, I don’t want a GM5+ at any time soon, but I do want these cameras to be re-marketed and even Olympus should look at something similar.  But to do so we have to convince enough M4/3 people that tiny M4/3 camera bodies are very capable.

If the GM5+ were launched farly soon it would cause me untold grief - my GM5 bodies work well as serparate cameras - they use the same bodies and use the same control structure.  As yet, unlike the Ricoh GXR, there is no easy way to keep setup synchronised - but the G9 ability to save setup to SD card is promising. I just laboriously set each GM series camera to my own preferred settings and then keep them more or less tuned to that.  Unfortunately if I decide to change one of my basic settings I have to do this separately on every body - but this is not a big deal.

But the big deal would be a seriously upgraded “must have” GM5+ as this would presure me to upgrade a raft of present GM5 bodies and not just one camera body.  To do it in steps and stairs would be like any other backup  superseded model - not quite the same as multiple identically-controlled “cameras”.

So I wish the GM5 concept to be continued but I personally am in no rush for a new upgraded fleet of GM5 “cameras”.  I saw this coming and am well provided myself - thank you.

I just think that more users could well use multiple small very capable camera bodies used as seperate cameras - the interface should be identical and here should be a ready means of keeping their personal user setup synchronised.

I would also like to see this realised about the time when my present GM5 bodies wear out from use - maybe in another five years perhaps - but others should not have to wait that long - that is precisely where I am coming from.

Beside this whole forum seems to be into “upgrading camera bodies” - I am past that and now “wallowing” in the fact that great lenses also make your present camera body work better. But it seems that the “quick fix” of a new camera body is generally preferred.

To answer your other comment:  all current regular camera sales have hit a bit of a wall with the announcement that Nikon and Canon are (effecively) quitting the dslr line.

For the average punter out there who simply wants a proper camera and the shop owner gladly obliged with an entry level dlsr kit the whole world has changed and presumably all sales have stopped and not just the dslr type - more to do with just what shops will recommend to the punter looking for a proper camera - they can hardly sell them a new FF ML body and lens at a price that would break the average “proper camera” purchasers jaw (when it hit the floor), nor could they ethically sell them yet another entry level dslr kit - but many would and will.  Meanwhile the slow filtering of the news thtough to newbies would lead them as perplexed and perplexed people perefer to do nothing.

Soon enough the newbie market will be fixed up with affordable “proper cameras” for the meantime superseded A7 camera bodies are probably cheap enough.

Here is the chance for the M4/3 vendors to snap up a few newbies looking for proper cameras - of course they have to be big enough to look impressive and cheap enough for the newbies to make themselves afford.

Regards......... Guy