Been mostly mirrorless for ten years

 It's been about ten years since I was mostly using mirrorless cameras.

I had the Olympus OM-D E-M1 in the summer of 2014 and the Panasonic GH4 in December.  I'd been using the Olympus E-1 since April 2004 and the E-5 since 2012, along with the Panasonic GH3.

 

I photographed sports with the E-1 for quite a while.  When I got the E-5, I also got the ZD SHG 35-100mm f/2.0, which was amazing for swimming and basketball photography.  You could practically hammer nails and dunk the equipment and it would still work.

The GH3 was a bad choice for me.  I didn't do video and it excelled at video and didn't do quite that well for stills photography.  The EVF had a purple tint.  The Panasonic X 35-100mm f/2.8 was 2/3 the price of the Olympus 35-100mm f/2.0 but it was 1/10 the lens.

In late 2013, I got a call from Olympus and they invited me to see some unannounced camera.  That camera was the E-M1.  It was supposed to take my lenses and make them work as well as on my Four-Thirds equipment.  That didn't work as expected.  I had my backpack with two SHG lenses and more HG lenses.  They worked but the E-5 was much faster to focus.  I declined to promise that I would buy one but that I would keep quiet about my experience.  I hoped that a production model would be much better.

In early summer 2014, I was frustrated with the GH3 and traded it for an E-M1.  It was better than the GH3.  The color of the viewfinder was more like real life.  The GH3 was purple-tinted.  The E-M1 responded like a real camera, not just a video camera with a modification for still photography.

I moved to California and my first week, I was photographing at skate parks.  My timing plus a fast burst mode got me a lot of winners.  I still used the dSLR and did just fine.  Having just the Olympus 12-40mm f/2.8 and the Panasonic X 35-100mm f/2.8, I didn't have as much lens versatility as I did with the dSLR.  I had an adapter but the speed just wasn't good enough.  It was better to use the dSLR and get the shots than to miss them.

When the GH4 was available in December, I started recording video.  It was cumbersome because the GH4 had no In-Body Image Stabilization and the Lumix X 35-100mm f/2.8 had Optical Image Stabilization that made video worse.  The Olympus 12-40mm f/2.8 didn't have any problem but it was too wide for what I needed.  That Olympus Pro 12-100mm f/4.0 would have been ideal, if they'd only had it sooner.

In the last week, I've seen quite a few videos on the E-M1.  The latest OM-1 Mk II seems very much like the original E-M1 but better.  To me, the E-M1 was the reason to have a mirrorless camera.  I remember trying the Fujifilm X-T1 but it wasn't very good and the mirrorless camera bodies from Sony were worse.  Photographing sports, I didn't spend 45 minutes photographing a flower.  I also didn't spent a lot of time in post processing.  I had a certain look and that took a little while for each, and I could put some samples up and wait for orders.

 When you look for cameras now, you'll see many more mirrorless cameras and lenses than you will dSLRs.  The dSLRs still exist and a number of them are being sold, but most of the old is being retired.  You can thank Panasonic and Olympus for this revolution.

I have continued with the Panasonic S5 Mk II, which is 135 Format and heavier than I've had for a while.  That Olympus E-5 in the photo was rather heavy and so was the 35-100mm f/2.0.

Update 2024.12.01: I was thinking about how much has changed.  They were trying to find a good way to identify mirrorless camera systems. ILC, MILC, CSC, and more were used.  I remember going to a store in Dayton, Ohio.  I'd been to one of the same company's stores in Cincinnati, Ohio and they had a decent selection and no brand fanatics.  A salesperson greeted me and asked how she could help.  I said that I was looking for micro Four-Thirds equipment and she took me to the Sony equipment.  I said "no, I want to see micro Four-Thirds equipment.  Olympus and Panasonic are the brands." and she replied "It's all micro Four-Thirds." and I walked out of the store.

Many people back then couldn't differentiate between mirrorless cameras as a category and micro Four-Thirds as a sub-category since Panasonic and Olympus developed the idea and made it a reality.