G9 too big?

If you are a one camera person then there is probably a size and shape camera for you among the M4/3 camera bodies marketed.  This is especially so if we don’t write off some of the older camera bodies that are no longer current but still punch considerable weight.

If you see camera bodies as being as swappable for purpose as lenses have always been then the  range of body styles starts to look more like perfection.

I can swap such luminary lenses as the Olympus 12/2.0 and 40/150/2.8 between a GM5 camera body and a G9 camera body at will. Not everyone will agree that a GM5 + 40-150 is a good choice but it works well enough in practice.  However nobody will tell you that a 12/2.0 on a G9, or even on an Olympus E-M1x is downright silly.

It is a pity that the extreme bodies such as the GM5 and E-M1x have been panned as being unsuitable for M4/3 - to me they only are the niche extremes of a mount system with a huge number of lenses to choose from.  Nobody has been forced to buy them and in fact perhaps not enough were sold to make them a regular continuing catalogue item.

If you missed out on a GM5 when they were going for a very reasonable price then you had best not miss out on an E-M1x once this “giant” classic of the M4/3 system is gone.

For myself I could find no more use for an E-M1x than many others could find for a GM5.  But the choice is there and we should not pan either just because it is a choice we would not like to make.

Nor could I envisage being back in my dslr camera body days where you could buy a camera in various sizes and price slots but they were always a dslr.  Where the upgrade path was yet another dslr.  One camera shape (more or less) size fits all needs.  Think Sony A7/9 until after so many years they suddenly discover the “flat top” (RF-Syle) shape and “do a FF sensor style compact GM5.  If Panasonic has not been listening to wonderings about an updated compact GM5 then surely Sony for all its stolid regurgitation of endless A7/9 bodies has at least been watching the need for an ultra compact camera body for the FF mount.

M4/3 might not make a single average body that suits every taste but surely it has made a range of camera bodies for a huge range of need-purposes.

M4/3 is as much directed to making a body for different use purposes as much as lenses for different use purposes and why just buy and use one type of body when “everyone” is quite cool about the advantages of lenses made for a variety of purposes.

I have previously said and will say it again: “The paradigm of one camera body - many lenses dies hard”.  But you can probably satisfy your need for that one camera body more precisely with M4/3 than you can from the one size/shape fits all of other mount systems.

.... and give you a GM5 that will drive your 40-150/2.8 just as well as an E-M1x can handle the 12/2.0.  And you can have both for all your lenses and quite a few camera body shapes/sizes exist exist in between.