The Perpetual Dilemma

What cameras to take on vacation?

Finding the perfect balance of convenience and quality in the camera gear I bring on vacation has become my holy grail - seemingly up until now, unattainable. Either I'm lugging around my big heavy camera and feeling resentful of it's bulk, or being disgusted by the image quality and slow speed of the point and shoot camera (one of many I've purchased) I've nicely slipped in my purse. However, I think I've come closer to success since I' ve reinvested in my equipment (all my camera gear was stolen in December). After waiting several months, my Panasonic GX1 Power Zoom finally arrived, and it is nice and tidy, fitting easily in my purse or jacket pocket, and allowing me to shoot in Raw mode with pretty quick focusing and fast shooting. I was even able to shoot bursts of images with this for my stop motion videos - now that is something. 

The GX1 is a little overly complicated if you ask me - I've yet to give the time required to read the manual and figure out the zillions of options. That said, I was still able to take some pretty good shots, even in low light, with this little guy.

I also brought my new Nikon D4, which is a hulk for sure, but man, is it fast! And you can shoot at unthinkably high ISOs and still get relatively grain free images in low lighting situations. There is a dark side however - I was thoroughly dismayed and stymied to realized that neither my Lightroom 3 nor Adobe Photoshop CS 5 was able to open any of the images that I shot on the newly created (and supplied) XQD card by Sony. I spent hours researching this, and the only real help I got came from a B&H photo rep that I talked to who said that if I upgraded to LR4, and if I added the updated Camera Raw version of my Photoshop, I'd be in business. That did work - however it's still a little slow going. So, while preparing for my next trip to NYC I was yet again faced with dilemma - bring my Nikon D700 whose files are easy to deal with, or the new D4, and wait for software technology to catch up, dealing with the slow processing speeds for now. I opted on the D4 so stay tuned. Maybe, just maybe, having the D4 and the small GX1 are the answer….lug the big one around while touring and the little one in my purse if I'm out to dinner. I'm writing this from a plane en route to NYC, so we'll see...

Conclusion - the GX1 was really fun to carry around in my purse with no effort involved at lugging it around. However, it just didn't compare to what I could to with my big ole Nikon. Duh, you could say. I guess it's like anything - results require effort! I need a viewfinder to look through, and it's hard to hold a tiny camera still. Mostly I worked on a stop motion video idea I have, but below are a few shots from Easter weekend. Now if I can just find the right shoes for my NYC trips.....