Who will make the move when......

I have a D40+ 18/135 for this. A bit larger, but not heavy. Sure there are better lenses for it and I own some, but one must resist temptation.

No.

I don't want that confined a tool. I find what inspires me much of the time is the use of varied approaches with lens changes etc.

I have a G9 and have looked at the LX3 as the next possible P&S tool. I even think the DP1 will be a great camera for many things. Each of those is less capable than the G9 in terms of a "one size fits all" approach. More like a "if you don't get it, don't buy this" approach.

Each to his or her own, but I want more refined tools in a P&S.

My ideal P&S would be a 1.5 crop sensor that produces around 10MP; 3 fps or even 2.5 fps would work; Iso capable of clean results up to about 3200; a lens around 28 - 85mm equivalent; excellent functions via buttons not menus.

So far the Panasonic Lumix LX3 is close but lacks the sensor and fps.

oh yeah, the lens needs to be about F2

No, I wouldn't consider it at the moment. My partner has a G9 which she uses for casual snap shooting and I've borrowed it many times; I spent a week with it skiing earlier in the year. So my response comes with some experience of what it can do - and what it can't do. It's a fun camera for quick shooting in good light. As you say, colour and sharpness are excellent for a compact, and pictures enlarge very well. But it's lousy for low light - noise levels are poor above ISO 200 - and it's not much good for PJ photography due to noticeable shutter lag, which makes getting the perfect moment quite challenging. And of course it's close to impossible to get a shallow DOF. That's something that's important to me and the reason I only shoot with primes. And I really, really can't stand EVFs or holding the camera out at arms length. :- )

Which kind of means my ideal compact has a small form-factor, a great range of fast prime lenses, excellent image quality and an optical viewfinder. For which reason I prefer an M8. Still not perfect, but a bit closer to my needs than a G9.

Let me clarify....i'm not taking about the G9 as it is. I'm talking about the possibility of a G9 like body that incorperates the responsivness, larger sensor, Hi-ISO to 3200 quality, at least 3FPS, real viewfinder, and F2.8 constant zoom range that has the DOF properties that the current FF systems have.

I don't belive that we will ever see ultra wide (10-20mm) or ultra fast zooms (F1.2 - F2.0) but, having a compact rangefinder body with the properties listed above would be a dream for me for 80% of my daily wedding coverage needs.

When the camera you describe actually exists then we'll consider making the move. BTW, your G9 has been replaced by the G10. You may also be interested in the new Micro 4/3 cameras like the Panasonic G1 and the Olympus mockup.

I've been reading about that G1 Walt and seems to be a foot forward in the process that i'm talking about. However, correct me if i'm wrong, it's still a SLR interchangable lens unit. I've have the SLR's and more lenses than i can count. I want the sleek G9 like body with a retractable lens for pocket carrying ability with all the features listed above. I'm spoiled now.....i want it all in the name of simplicity. An absolutle photographic machine that can be carried in a coat pocket :) I'm not asking for much am I ?

The G1 has removable lenses but it is not an SLR. They removed the mirror and replaced it with an electronic viewfinder. It still has a familiar SLR shape to it. This future Olympus camera has a more standard rear LCD for composiing the picture. They both use the 4/3 sensor size which is much larger than the G9/G10 and almost every point and shoot out there. It's essentially a 2X crop factor compared to the 1.5/1.6X of Nikon DX and Canon.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0809/08092208olympus_micro_four_thirds.asp

> Your thoughts? <

I agree with your line of thinking, 100%

A while ago I bought 2 x Powershot S5 IS.

Whilst the purchase was (mainly) for a sporting reportage & recording purpose, I have used them as the subject of interesting experiments in Wedding-like scenarios.

Though some of my experiments seemed whacky, the results (at ISO 80) were quite revealing and confirmed that even the P5 IS could be used successfully for some Professional Applications, at a Wedding.

I think added to your wish list of functionalities, should be: Dedicated Flash compatibility and Accurate Manual Focusing: obviously there are more, but these two, I particularly noted as a feature and limitation, respectively, of the P5 IS.

In summary I agree: ISO 100 to 3200 / F2.8 constant Minimum Aperture / Equivalent FoV 28mm to 70mm (135format), would be sufficient, for about 60% to 80% of my Wedding Coverage.

WW

Meanwhile, on a tangent of your thought, whilst pursuing other, but similar lines of development is . . .

I don't belive that we will ever see ultra wide (10-20mm) or ultra fast zooms (F1.2 - F2.0) but, having a compact rangefinder body with the properties listed above would be a dream for me for 80% of my daily wedding coverage needs.

A compact rangefinder body is available now. I've been using the M8 as my main wedding camera for around 18 months. High ISO quality tends to top out around 1250 rather than 3200, but seeing as there are plenty of 1.4 lenses or better it's not a major obstacle. The lenses are expensive but good, with an image quality that is very hard to match. Strong IR sensitivity is the only downside, but is easily remedied with a filter on the lens, or of no consequence if shooting b+w.

Neil, i believe it would be very difficult to put the M8 with a 35-210 comparable lens in your pocket :)

I've heard great things about the M8 system and i'll agree with you and say that it probably no doubt is the best current availalbe solution for compact/ HI ISO quality shooting at the moment. However, it still isn't a single compact unit (with retractable lens - non detachable) that i see hopefully coming around the corner. If there were such a camera as i ve mentioned above that had close to the quality that we see in current canon or nikon DSLR's, i'd pay 4 times the current price or more for it......however that is still no where near what the M8 costs with a comparable lens (probably about a 1/5th or more less). I refuse to pay the required amount of money for a name such as Leica M8 that, from what i can tell, produces the results similar to that of my old 10D (Based on a recent review i read, a blogger actually uses his G9 instead of his M8 for the very reasons i'm mentioning here). I'll try to post a link to that blogger later.

It was actually on Luminous-landscape.com/reviews...see below. I found it a good read for practical application and understand what he means.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/G9-Japan.shtml

I always carried an Olympus Stylus loaded with Tri-X when I shot weddings with film. I didn't take a lot of photos with it, but it came in very handy on occasion. I think I'd still stick mostly with DSLRs, but if my G7 had an 8mp APS-C sensor in it I'd probably go ahead and tuck it in my gear case.

I think that the small-sensor cameras will become a tool to create a certain effect in a similar way to which lenses are used today. For example, with wedding photography, the small-sensor camera will be used to get those shots with high depth of field or where unobtrusiveness is required. However small-sensor cameras simply cannot get that full-frame's razor-thin dof that's so important in wedding photos that I for one cannot ever see it taking over. However, landscape photography it could be a different issue...

Neil, i believe it would be very difficult to put the M8 with a 35-210 comparable lens in your pocket :)

Michael - you're not wrong, as the longest lens usable on any rangefinder is a 135. If mid-range telephotos are your thing then a rangefinder is not the camera for you. But speaking personally, I've never taken any lens longer than a 90 to a wedding. Nothing is ever far enough away that I could find a use for a longer length. Most of the time I'm in the 21 - 50 bracket. And that's the perfect territory for cameras like the M8 where you can carry two lenses in a jacket pocket with ease.

I'm not endorsing the M8 particularly. It's not suitable for everyone, and it certainly has a few idiosyncracies. But I was interested that your thinking was about moving away from larger camera systems, as that was similar to my own thinking a year or so ago. For which reason I found a rangefinder met my needs perfectly.

Michael C said "I want the sleek G9 like body with a retractable lens for pocket carrying ability with all the features listed above. I'm spoiled now.....i want it all in the name of simplicity. An absolutle photographic machine that can be carried in a coat pocket :) I'm not asking for much am I ?"

Hi Mike, don't know if you know this but look at the lens range available for micro 4/3rds.

There's the 14-45mm/F3.5-5.6 O.I.S. and 45-200mm/F4.0-5.6 O.I.S. that will probably come as a 2-lens kit.

There's also a 14-140mm/F3.5-5.6 O.I.S on the cards, a 7-14mm/F4 and a 20/1.7.

I know it's not you're 'super zoom' 1-lens-does-it-all approach you desire but that 14-140 surpases that 35-210mm of the G9, it'll also have more ISO range and better IQ throughout same. The lack of a mirror will make it quieter, it does 3FPS and you have a 14-28/f4 zoom for wide-angle and a 40/f1.7 pancake for narrow DOF/low light stuff.

If you can live with panasonic's choice of image quality in their jpgs, it's an option. Plus there's always RAW with a 3rd party convertor. I know I sound like a panny salesman but it is a new approach to things and it seems like a good fit to your wants/needs... plus the next model of the Panny m4/3rds line will have a HD movie mode.

... or you could wait for the Canon or Nikon 'mirror & prism-less' APS line that, no doubt, will be under discussion as we speak. ;-)

"….the G9’s lens range is 7.4mm to 44.4mm (35-210mm). This means that you can hand hold images at 1/8th of a shutter speed equal to that of 1/35 shutter of the DSLR full frame…..for the same 35mm image! Now equate that to ISO and your probably looking at 80 being equal to that of FF DSLR ISO400. Which would mean that G9’s 400 would be hand holding equal to that of the FF DSLR 1600. "

I could be wrong, but that statement seems incorrect to me. Perhaps you are taking the image stabilization feature into account. The "1/focal length" guideline should apply to the FOV and have nothing to do with the actual focal length. If you crop down a wide angle image, (say 7.4mm), to it's 35mm equivalent, the camera shake will be more pronounced, exactly as if you shot it at 35mm on a full frame camera.

I had the G9, and now have the G10 and a Sigma DP-1 for compact use. The Sigma is fantastic for per-pixel quality. But you only get 4.7 million of them. Down sampling the G10 to 4.7 MP gets very close to the Sigma for pixel quality. The perfect compact in my opinion would be a G10 with a DP-1 sized Foveon sensor that had around 10MP. That sensor would actually surpass the M8, but the lens would probably not be able to keep up with Leica's spectacular M lenses for quality.

It has been a very long time since I've had anything to do with wedding photography, but don't you think that using a digicam as a primary tool might create some doubts on part of the client? I always thought the folks who wrote the cheques were reassured to see the photographer schlepping around professional gear. Make it look too easy--or like something Uncle Bart could do for free--and they'll start wondering why they're paying your hefty fee. Just a thought.

Believe it or not I'm still shooting film, I do carry a 5D + mkIII when it comes to weddings etc. But the leica m6 is my everyday companion. hate the thought of having to charge batteries if I were to carry a G9 though. On my own terms it's still film.

I would love to see the revised G9 you envision. I wouldn't use it for weddings, but like my G9, it would become a primary body for personal travel and probably even photojournalistic ventures since most of my PJ clients have much lower expectations about image quality.

I would be interested in knowing for sure Ed. I've read that statement several times by online reviewers and the logic made enough sense to me that i adopted the idea. I do know however that i can hand hold the G9 at 1/2 second at 35mm which is pretty darn good IS or not.

Interesting thrread, this. I have actually been thinking about getting a dP&S like the G9. I read the LuminousL review and was pretty impressed. I'm planning on a 5DII, but have found that I have been too often in a situation where I want to take a quick snapshot and can't wield my dSLR to get the shot, either because I packed it away, or (more often than not) security will come menacingly at me ;-) So, yes, I would very much welcome a compact dP&S with the features contemplated above...

Michael,

Here's one article:

http://www.earthboundlight.com/phototips/digital-crop-factor-hand-holding.html

What I read is that crop sensors will increase the required shutter speed due to increased magnification for a given focal length.

Here's another that mentions it:

http://www.diyphotography.net/shutter-speed

Crop sensors mean more apparent camera shake. 1/[35mm Equivalent Focal Length] applies for the general rule of thumb.

So, just because the G9 has a 7.4 mm wide end, does not mean that the rule of thumb requires 1/8th. It would be closer to 1/50th.

Still shooting lots of film coverage -have used the G9 --just was not quality enough above ISO 100 --and I never shoot above 400 with film or the 20d ( I use bounce flash to create most the ambient in low light ) >> last wedding calling for digital ...my second shooter used her Canon A 570 ..very decent in the ISO 100 range.

The A570 in the iso 400 range ( auto ) The G9 is a great manual camera :: easy access to everything. I need knobs not little buttons / menus.

I got the G10 a while ago, and it is a very capable camera. I've actually done some shooting with a Qflash on a stand and the wireless transmitter on the G10, and got some very nice results. I don't see myself using it at a wedding, although I am planning to use it as a photobooth camera-set-up a light and camera in the corner with some props and leave a remote for people to snap photos of themselves.

I don't envision myself choosing the G10 over the 5D for a paid gig, but I may use it to supplement-maybe get some wide shots and some short video clips.