Let's talk a bit more about the new craze of compact cameras. The ones with zoom lenses and lots of features.

 

I took a small, compact camera with me on a commercial job in Santa Fe this Spring. It was nearly perfect. It was the Leica DLUX8. It's currently one of my favorite cameras. Just one or two little flaws...

Nothing gaffer's tape can't fix.

I've always been a fan of small, self-contained, compact cameras. I illustrated an entire book once with a Canon G10 camera which was a small camera with a fairly good zoom lens and 14 megapixels of resolution, which at the time was "class leading." That camera worked well for my 100+ illustrations because I was mostly photographing objects that didn't move. I could put the little camera on a huge tripod and shoot at the base ISO. And at the optimum aperture (f5.6?). If I needed to photograph models or lifestyle scenes for the book I had time to light them with strobes or high powered lights and, again, use optimum settings. 

The Canon G series camera I have right now is the G15 which is very easy to use, very reliable and offers RAW files as well as Jpeg. It has image stabilization, blink detection, and shoots fast. It has a 5x optical zoom that starts out at f1.8. It's a solid brick of a camera with 12 megapixels of rez, and it's even got a built-in ND filter. Its only downside, really, is the small sensor size. 1:1.7. That sensor size limits dynamic range and high ISO performance but for an all-around, carry everywhere camera it's been great. 

The compact camera I give the most attention to right now is the Leica DLUX-8. It's a modern version of the compact zoom cameras and it's got really good image quality. I wish it had the 3 stop ND filter of the Canon which would allow greater exposure flexibility in bright sun... But there's a lot that Leica/Panasonic got right in this current camera.

The DLUX-8 makes really pretty files. If you shoot in raw you can push the files around in post production to a much greater degree than earlier generations of compact cameras with smaller sensors. Since the sensor is based on the m4:3rds format it gives up a bit of resolution and sensor size to several non-zoom compacts like the Ricoh GR iii or the Fuji X100Vi. But its advantage is the flexibility of having a good zoom lens which, to my mind, in a small, everyday carry camera is a distinct advantage. 

For my use the EVF is the stand out feature of the DLUX-8 when compared to other small cameras. I was not interested in this camera until I had lunch with my friend, Andy, who is the quintessential early adopter of eccentric cameras. One day at lunch he pulled the tiny DLUX out of a bag and handed it to me. At first blush it seemed like every similar model from major camera makers. Then I brought the camera to my eye and looked into the EVF. It was outrageously good. They had me at the EVF.

When I took delivery I was expecting the usual nice Leica features. A very good and easy to use menu/interface. The category killer finder. The industrial design... But I expected the camera to operate and deliver like similar cameras from Panasonic that I had used in the past. On paper it seemed that they used the same lens and rumors were that the lens on the new camera was decent but nothing to write home about. Once again "reviewer failure" struck. The lens was actually extremely good in conjunction with that camera's sensor. Really good. Sure, reviewers get a lemon from time to time. But I think what happens more often even is that the supplied "demo" camera from a camera maker gets sent along, serially, to reviewer after reviewer. Since the camera belongs to the company and not to the reviewer I think the reviewers, generally, are less careful, less protective of, and less liable to treat their temporary review product with care. They bang them around, test them out in conditions that fall outside the engineering parameters for the device and also do their actual tests shooting mostly handheld in a car with bad springs while driving over potholes and railroad tracks. 

The DLUX-8 has a 24-75mm lens that starts at the wide end with f1.7 and ends up with f2.8 at the long end. My own DLUX8 is fitted out with a half case, a thumb grip and a high quality protection filter (something I don't use on my more expensive ILC lenses mostly because if they become damaged beyond repair they don't take the host camera along to the graveyard....). 

I bought three extra batteries at time of purchase but that was a mistake. The camera is easy on batteries and I could have erred on the other side of caution and gone with just one extra battery. 

I mentioned one "con". There are really two. One is operational while the other is aesthetic. I'll start with the nuts and bolts issue: the diopter adjustment wheel moves from its set position far too easily. When I start out a walk with the intention to photograph the first thing I have to do is to re-adjust the diopter. It needs much firmer clicks!!! That's where the gaffer's tape comes in handy. 

The second con has nothing to do with image quality or usability. Not at all. It's totally a visual preference thing. When the camera is turned off the lens is close to the body, like a pancake lens. It looks perfect. Just perfect. Then, when you turn the camera on the lens extends out from the body to its fullest extension and stays there. It looks awkward. It looks visually unbalanced. I understand that the lens has to be a certain size to work; especially with a wide to short tele range as wide as the one in the DLUX, but it would look so much cooler if the camera worked instead at the fully retracted position. Since you don't notice it when you have the camera up to your eye I guess it's really a moot point --- but there it is. 

The camera doesn't come with a stand alone battery charger. You can charge the batteries in camera via the USB connection but I chose to buy a third party charger to hurry the process along. 

I've had nothing but good luck with the images out of camera. I'd use it most of the time but I keep a Leica Q2 in the car for the days, like today, when it's pouring down rain. The DLUX8 doesn't even pretend to be weather sealed. Not weather resistant --- or even the least bit enabled to resist moisture intrusion. You have been warned. 

Would I buy it again? If I could pick up another one at the originally introduced price I would already have my credit card out and be the punching numbers into a website. At $1900+ I'd want to have a specific project in mind that would benefit from me having back up camera. At $2400+ ? Nope. Not for a second body. And even if I wanted to buy one and saw that price I'd buy a mint SL2 body instead. Not every shooting situation calls for a pixie camera. 

Why does this category exist? It continued life as a follow on from a vast range of very successful and popular compact film cameras that hit the market in the 1980s and 1990s. Cameras like the Rollei 35S which was small and light but, of course, used the full frame of 35mm in conjunction with a Zeiss 40mm f2.8 lens to deliver incredibly sharp and detailed files. The Nikon 28Ti and 35Ti compact cameras which were made with titanium shells and featured wonderful lenses. The Minox ML. And then going back all the way to the 1970s with rangefinder (real rangefinder) compacts like the Canonets and the Olympus RC cameras. The difference being that most of the film compact cameras came with single focal length lenses. That changed with the introduction of the Contax Tvs which was a film compact camera with a Carl Zeiss 35-65mm f2.8 to f5.6 zoom lens camera. High end compacts starting becoming available with good quality, short range zooms. They were a fundamental back-up resource for photographers who were traveling light, with only one pro camera, but who understood the need for a decent back-up camera; just in case. 

In the last ten years the camera makers, who continued to make digital compacts cameras even after conventional wisdom seemed to doom the category because of ever improving cameras in iPhones, soldiered on with cameras like the Sony RX100 series, the Leica X Vario, and a subset of "Super Zoom" fixed lens cameras from Olympus and Panasonic. Most of them good enough for just about any situation in which the images will be destined for the web. 

Panasonic and Leica made a number of models based around a small camera design featuring a short range, standard zoom, an m4:3rd sensor and a nice overall package. The DLUX8 is a continuation of that family of cameras. 

While most photo bloggers assumed that consumers would opt for either using their phones for photography or stepping up to mirrorless cameras or DSLR cameras the market had other ideas. The Fuji X100 (original) sent up a signal flare announcing that the category of smaller, compact but optically powerful cameras was far from dead. As the line of X100-x cameras progressed consumers could not get enough of them and by the time they introduced the X100V the product was so popular that they were almost unobtainable. Other camera makers took notice and came back to the fold to profit from a newly reawakened product category which could compensate, financially, for the rapidly declining, sub $1,000 small DSLR products. The compact, non-interchangeable lens cameras offered consumers a significantly better choice between the phone cameras and the full fledged interchange lens mirrorless and DSLR cameras. 

The compact, fixed lens cameras now offer much bigger sensors than their digital predecessors, more advanced processors, more features, more resolution and more advanced image processing. For most uses where the photos will end up on social media or on websites these cameras can be quite competitive. While they won't totally replace professional cameras in the camera bags of professional photographers they will provide really great images within a wide but not "ultimate" range of uses. And usually at a much lower price.

There are many people, in addition to rank and file consumers, who want to do really great photography but don't want to carry around the bigger cameras or mess with changing lenses while out on the street or while traveling. If they know their technical chops they can get the kinds of images they want from the best of the compacts. 

I chose to pick-up a DLUX-8 partially because, over the years, I've owned at least a dozen of the luxe compact film cameras from Leica, Minox, Canon, Nikon and Contax. All were very, very good and they are the cameras with which I first started making photographs. They could be dedicated monochrome cameras if all you ever bought was black and white film. They were able color cameras with no loss of detail to anti-aliasing filters. Or they could be an all-around camera and make use of both. Many of the earlier cameras were able to be used even if the metering batteries failed. Mechanical shutters were there for your use. 

I've owned fewer of the digital versions but have always seem to have one sitting in the camera bag or in a desk drawer for those times when I thought stealth and compactness were more important than "ultimate" image quality; if such a thing even exists. Until recently the Canon G series was my favorite. The cameras were dense, solid and well engineered. And more importantly they made files that looked great. I got back into the compact premium cameras with the Fuji X100V but sold two of those cameras to skew my budget toward a new (at the time) Leica Q2. I still consider the Q2 and the Q3 to be two of the best ever compact, non-interchangeable lens cameras but sometimes I want something smaller, lighter and more adaptable to a wider range of situations. The new DLUX-8 seemed to fit the bill perfectly. And, with the two "cons" I mentioned above I think it does. 

If I were the manager or owner of a big camera company I'd be moving full speed into high end, compact, zoom lens cameras. It seems that everyone has more or less settled on shooting with 28, 35 and 50mm lens and nearly everyone I know would almost always prefer to pick a compact camera over a full sized pro camera for just about all of their work. Maybe that's why the Canon G7X mark iii is sold out everywhere. Same for the Fujis and the same for cameras like the Ricoh GR series. Those are the cameras that tyros and pros alike are clamoring for. Tastes may change again but the phones have taught consumers that you can do a hell of a lot in a smaller package. Cameras makers are paying attention. 

Below: Images from the Leica DLUX-8:

Steel-Toed Birkenstocks. And a progress report. Oh, and an announcement that the blog just clicked over 34 million pageviews. All good.

 I originally had an image of my face from five years ago with a bandage on my cheek, here.

But I hated seeing such a glum image so I replaced it with a favorite of mine. 

Lou. It makes for a much more upbeat blog post. At least for me...

Nearly five years ago. My first run-in with Mohs Surgery. Didn't imagine that five years later I'd be back for more. But as my surgeon said, "A bit of downtime to watch old movies and catch up on reading is a lot better than being dead."  I had to agree. 

Last time we did this it was a December. Nice and chilly. This time? First of July when it's hot and, this year, more humid here than the tropics. First few days after surgery one fears getting the big, pressure bandage wet because....if you have to change it yourself you might find gross stuff under the padding. Which mostly means no showers for the first three days ... or so. I finally hit the shower this morning and also successfully, though not beautifully, changed the dressing and applied all the stuff I was supposed to in order to keep the incision from festering. No one suggested applying snails as part of the healing so it's less icky than it could be. But just washing one's hair can be such a treat. And not just for the patient.

Everything is going well on the healing front and I look forward to getting the stitches out at the end of next week. So I can go sunbathing in the islands... just kidding. I'm turning into a vampire and hiding from the sun whenever possible... Another new hat is on the way. Can't wait to review it.

On a fun note this old blog just crested the thirty four million page view mark. That's a lot of eyes on the blog. I am amazed. Not that I could pound out 6099 posts but that people would actually come back again and again to read them. And without ever diving into the ancient history of mid-20th century tennis. Pretty remarkable huh?

I don't think there is any such thing as Steel-Toed Birkenstock sandals. I've never seen them in the wild nor on Birkenstock's online shopping hub. But it came to me over dinner and I thought the bizarre juxtaposition of aesthetics and purpose was hilarious. I can imagine a time when Birkenstocks get so popular that even construction workers want to wear them all the time, and to comply with OSHA regulations (if we continue to have any safety regulations at all) Birkenstock rolls out a model with the required steel toes. Not sure what they would name them but my suggestions, given that they like to use city names for various models, would be something resoundingly blue collar. Like, The Akrons. Or, The Pittsburghs. I am assuming they would also have non-slip safety treads. It could happen. Fuji came out  with an odd half frame camera after all...

I was doing some research and....

I came across a camera that I'm really, currently, quite interested in. It's the Lumix S1R ii. Apparently it's a wonderful camera with great handling, a mid - 40 something resolution sensor, fast AF (not really needed), a built in cooling fan, backward compatibility with the half dozen batteries I have for the S5 and more buttons and dials than any but B-52 pilots require. The camera has a sibling, the S1-ii that's twenty four megapixels of resolution from a partially stacked, BSI sensor that's supposed to be near magical. Both are under $3500 which, considering that they are in the L mount family mostly makes them half price substitutes for the SL series from Leica. Pretty interesting. Is anyone else buying one or both?

OMG. The weather!!!!!

Parts of the neighboring Hill Country (just to the West of Austin proper and in our aquifer recharge zone) got over one foot (ONE FOOT) of rain in a few hours last night. The small city of Kerrville is flooded and evacuations are taking place. Another foot of rain is expected in places around our area during the day today. The temperatures haven't been out of the eighties for the last few days and this is a time of year when the weather is constantly flirting with triple digits. It's raining here now. It rained all of last night. It poured down rain when I was out grocery shopping yesterday (I made a four cheese, thin crust pizza covered with wild caught smoked salmon for our dinner last night. Fresh chives added as well. Time on my hands....) and some of the downtown Austin streets were already flooding as I headed home. We'll take it. We need the rain to disrupt the drought. And our main lake is about 28 feet down right now. Can't wait to get back to Enchanted Rock Wilderness Area to see how a wet June and early July have transformed what is usually a semi-arid environment into tropical rain forest... Or maybe that a bit too much hyperbole....

After this last week of being sliced and diced by a dermatological surgeon I am on a renewed quest for the perfect light blocking hat, and believe me, it's not spelled T.I.L.L.E.Y. 

I have a Stetson straw hat coming from one source; delayed, of course, by the storms,

but not really needed until the sun breaks through with a vengeance around mid-week.

Hat Parade. Not my color...

By the end of this coming week I should have the okay to get back into the exercise routines. My new strategy for retirement this Summer is to devote all free time to getting into magnificent physical shape. Back in the pool. Back to the trails. Back to the weights. Everyone needs some goals, right? Oh, and photograph fun stuff every day!!!

There always seems to be something to worry about...

with the hiring of swim coach, Bob Bowman, Austin has solidified its reputation as the international hub for all things swimming, and swimming competitions. World record holders are flocking here to train with Bowman. Summer McIntosh, the young Canadian super star is now training here. As is French gold medal winning phenom, Leon Marchand .... and so many more. I'm waiting for the University of Texas to decide that having a perennially losing football team is just throwing good money after bad and hope they cancel the last century sport franchise and go all in with swimming. And only swimming. 

World domination through swimming. It could be a thing....

that's all I've got for right now. The stuff below is just fun 

photographs I found in a file to share. Hope your 4th is great.

Don't light off sparklers while you are pumping gas into your cars....

Rain in downtown Austin.

Fashion boots. 

Work boots. The predecessors of the Steel-Toed Birkenstocks. 

those who live in glass houses.....

Included for R.R.

Supplies for future showers. 

Old photo of Boy. A medium format digital frame from 2008.

Leaf Aptus i7. 

Overjoyed to have regained the Homeostasis of Joy here at VSL

 

Homeostasis of Joy.

From Google: Homeostasis is the process by which living organisms maintain a stable internal environment despite changes in external conditions. It's a dynamic equilibrium where the body regulates various factors like temperature, pH, and glucose levels to ensure optimal functioning. This regulation is achieved through feedback mechanisms, which detect changes and trigger responses to counteract them.

So, that's the way the term homeostasis is used in the physical world, but I have a secondary use for homeo (same) stasis (staying still) and that is about the homeostasis of joy. 

I think I am, for the most part, a happy person. In the realm of Maslow's Hierarchy of Basic Needs I am fortunate. Physically, I live well and am privileged to live in a time of great affluence and "relative" peace. Even though the world seems to argue that relative measure. 

However,  the different but equal need, based not on physiology but on psychology and happiness, is to maintain an overall homeostasis of joy as well. Not every day or week or month will be perfect and filled with things that reinforce our feelings of wellbeing and satisfaction but taking life as a "long game" I find that there is very much, in people disposed to happiness, a stasis or baseline of joy to which they seem to return to as surely as the body regulates temperature or blood pressure. 

The last couple of weeks were bumpy for me. But that's so relative. My overall health is good and I'm secure in that all my physical and fiscal needs are well met, but things pop up. The air conditioner died and needed replaced. I needed to scrounge up nearly $20K to pay the bill. The installation took longer than I wanted. My dermatologist called with news of a biopsy. A malignant and somewhat aggressive skin cancer diagnosis. I sat through a four hour procedure and dozens of pokes with pain numbing injections. I wore a bandage the size of a Maxi-Pad to coffee out later with an old friend. I've been temporarily banned from the pool by my surgeon. My face looks icky under the bandage. I'm not allowed to exercise until the end of next week. I have to take antibiotics for seven days.... etc. etc. Oh, and America is stumbling into a  dictatorship...

But surprisingly, after being glum for a few days I woke this morning feeling a renewed surge of my usual, basic joy and satisfaction with life. When I experienced this I thought about it and realized that, to a certain extent, my resilient feelings of joy come from a life time of things and people that have made me happy and continue to make me happy.

It was then that I thought about there being a thing such as the "homeostasis of Joy." That our cumulative life experiences create a buffer that protects us from going too long with negative feelings --- if everything is working as it should. Meaning: If I keep interpreting my feelings about my life in a way that benefits me that's stasis. A mindset that fills me with a sense of gratitude. A sense that I can do anything. 

I have so much to be thankful for that sometimes I take the good stuff for granted. Sure, I was in a chair having my face carved up with scalpels for half the day on Tuesday. But what I really took away from it was that a beautiful and high energy Mohs Surgeon named Megan was chatting with me as though I was an old friend --- while she worked. That she was doing something that would, in the long run, extend my life and extend my enjoyment of life. And there were all the little things I always appreciate, like walking in for an 8:15 a.m. appointment and being greeted warmly and offered coffee. That my nurse, Bree, came out to find me in the waiting area exactly at 8:15 a.m., and with a big, welcoming smile. That Bree is a magician with numbing injections which dissolved any anxiety I might have had about that part of the procedure. That my surgeon never seemed rushed or in a hurry to move on with some schedule. The kindness both showed me at every step of the way.

The Haagen-Daz rum raisin ice cream my wonderful spouse left for me in the freezer. The DVDs of my favorite sitcom she gifted me so I could chill and not get too bored. The endless stream of texts from my swimmer friends and photographer friends either wishing me well or demanding to be brought up to speed. And all questioning how soon I could be back in the pool. 

I constantly hear about how bad medicine is as practiced in the USA but when I told my team of medical experts that I was squeamish about taking off the big, pressure bandage today and cleaning and redressing the site myself they instantly invited me back to the practice at 9:00 a.m. today so they could do it for me. The surgeon was waiting for me when I arrived and removed the huge and dramatic looking bandage and spent time examining her handiwork. Asking me about my antibiotic compliance, telling me how great I looked. Her nurse, Bree, redressed the wound and put on a smaller, less imposing bandage and then spent time showing me how to do it myself going forward. But, as I was checking out, she said that any time I didn't feel up to it I should come by and they would continue redressing it.

My out of pocket expenses so far? For everything? A $40 copay. 

Since every appointment was warmly and professionally conducted, started right on time and ended with sincere fist bumps and satisfaction, I couldn't imagine in the moment getting better care anywhere. Which, of course, adds to my store of good feelings, which keeps my homeostasis of Joy clicking right along. 

On my way home I dropped by my locally owned and wonderfully managed coffee shop where I ordered a large coffee and a piece of banana bread. The owner noticed (how could he not?) the bandage and wanted to know what the deal was and, more importantly, how I was doing. The coffee and banana bread were on the house.... Amazingly, people do care. 

There was the gift bag from my long time friend, Debbie, (our former CFO) at my front door when I got back home. It had a plush, stuffed puppy that you can stick in the microwave for a minute and warm up. Or stick in the freezer and provide a chilly compress for swollen tissues. And a note that was so dear it made me tear up just a bit...

At 69 I've never felt more loved by more people than ever before in my life. That bolsters my homeostasis of Joy. And these are feelings you can bank against the rough spots in life. 

When I got home I had this phrase, "The Homeostasis of Joy" in my head. Don't know where it came from but when I sat down to write this I looked through a gallery of images to pull out some examples that exemplify for me just basic happiness. I'm blessed to have an archive just brimming with happy, alive and wonderful images. It's like having your own Louvre Museum of Personalized Happiness right there on one's screen. 

Damn. That banana bread and coffee is a wonderful combination!!! It's 79° outside and raining again. Joy! A break in the Summer heat. 

Listening to "Happiness" by Pharrell Williams. Waiting for the next great thing.

Here's some happy photos: 

 

Is the Leica SL2 still relevant in 2025? Was it ever relevant?

The Leica SL2 camera out in late 2019 at a price of around $5600 and I bought one early on. Late last year (2024) I bought a second one. Why? Well, I can blame the second purchase on my previous experiences with my first SL2, and mostly a drop in price on that camera to about $2200-2400 in the used markets. And those prices were for pristine, barely used specimens. The perfect back up camera to the first.  But why did I buy the first one? And why do I still keep it today?

The first SL2 adventure was a follow on from my purchase of an original model (digital) SL. I found that camera to be really fun to shoot and more or less indestructible. Sure, it ate batteries like Homer Simpson eating shrimp at an all you can eat restaurant but the  handling was fun, the viewfinder was state of the art and  the overall design was gorgeous. So when the SL2 came out with about twice the resolution, some design changes that made the body even more gorgeous, and a simplification and more elegant design of the user interface, I thought they (Leica) presented me with a compelling camera lust equation. 

From my perspective and my use cases the camera market overall hasn't introduced anything that's appreciably better, image quality-wise since 2019. The difference in resolution between 47 megapixels and 60 megapixels is really marginal and there's no savings when it comes to noise reduction. So even though Leica came out with the SL3 as a replacement the only reason to switch, for a stills photographer, is if one really, really needs phase detection auto focus. And I'd venture to say that most people really don't. But so as not to speak for everyone I'll just say that I never felt the need for PD-AF.

And I still don't. 

While the SL2 was a comfortable and high quality image maker at the time of its launch the company has done a number of firmware updates which have consistently improved the speed and handling of the camera. The biggest improvement for those of us who already owned the cameras was the company making the SCL-6 battery, which was introduced in the Q3, compatible with both older generations of the SL cameras. It adds about 25% more power reserve and that's important for a high data throughput camera that's battery sensitive. 

The SL2 was the first Leica I owned that could also be charged via the USB-C port and that gives zany working photographers a healthy dose of confidence that long running shoots that might draw down a couple of batteries can still be handled with the addition of external power. Nice.

My first SL2 has been in service now for about five years (wow! time flies). I would estimate that between work use and personal imaging use that body has seen about 200,000 exposures. It has yet to freeze up, lock up or fail in any way. In heat or cold. Or in rainy weather. It's built to be more or less impervious to weather. And I love the handling.

Late last year I picked up an SL2-S which is basically the same camera body and shutter mechanism but which uses a 24 megapixel BSI sensor instead of the 47 megapixel one. I bought it for the smaller raw files but I also found that its high ISO files were as noise free as anything on the market from Sony, Canon or Nikon. It's a great companion for the other cameras.

What we started with was a camera (the SL2) that still is highly competitive for resolution. Class leading for image quality. Has an EVF that makes manual focusing easier and more accurate. Has a thin sensor glass construction which makes it a perfect companion for M lenses. Does very good video. The camera has gotten better and better as firmware gets tweaked. All of this certainly speaks to its relevance at the time of launch. And since no one has made any meaningful and substantial improvements in the format and market segment the answer to its current relevance is.... very much so. 

Several of my friends who work professionally and had been firmly in the Sony and Nikon camps started buying SL2 cameras when the prices dropped below what they would pay for a Sony or Nikon body with a commensurate pixel count. They were universally blown away by the difference in operational philosophy. Happy to jettison so many useless and cluttered feature sets. And very happy to have a camera body that could make the highest and best use of their collections of rangefinder lenses; all at a higher level of quality than when they are used with competing brands of camera bodies. All for under $2500. 

If I get the urge to upgrade camera bodies it will most likely occur in the Leica Q family, in the form of a Q3 and then a Q3-43. And I can now get away with this because without specific needs of certain clients there's not a heck of a lot of imaging that can't be done with one of those two cameras. 

Would I get rid of the SL2s? Likely not since I perceive that their used pricing has bottomed out far ahead of my perceptions of their continued usefulness. In other words, the price drop seems too aggressive given the value the cameras still bring to nearly every shoot. 

In the past everything was changing quickly. Now we've hit a stasis in the camera industry wherein we can actually slow down and the enjoy cameras. And get a useable life of maybe five years to a decade before hints of obsolescence appear. Cameras from the best makers have become more comparable to the reliability of Toyota and Lexus cars that are well maintained. They are meant to be used for a long time and not recycle because to incremental steps forward. Witness my parallel use of the M240 cameras which were introduced in 2013. I love em. 

Keep those batteries coming....

All images from the SL2