Work flow thoughts from a job for architects. The hero of the story is the Panasonic GH3. Not 4. 3.

Portrait Machine Part.

Earlier in the year I got a phone call from the marketing director of a well known and very respected architectural firm here in Austin. I'd done a portrait of one of their principals the year before. They liked the portrait and kept my name on file. Now they were interested in getting a bid to make portraits of their full staff and their partners. The really nice thing for me is that they wanted to do environmental portraits that looked as though they'd been made with available light and they wanted to make the portraits in locations all over their offices. They were not interested in having people stand in front of seamless paper and endure the same light in frame after frame. The second part of the job was to create scenarios of people in the offices working collaboratively on projects. That was not very difficult to set up since they seemed to work collaboratively all day long whether I set them up or not. My main job in this part of the project was just to gently turn them toward the good light.

While we were looking for an available light aesthetic I knew that to make portraits of the quality we all wanted I'd have to supplement the light coming in from the windows and create fill light for the locations that were lit with over head fluorescent lighting. In order to get the look they wanted, which included defocused backgrounds I needed to shoot with very fast optics that were still sharp near their wide open settings and I would need the ability to focus with precision. 

At that time in the continuum I had not yet jettisoned the Sony full frame cameras and I had not yet bought the fast zooms for the micro four thirds cameras. I spent an evening weighing each direction and in the end I decided that I was a good enough photographer to work with the cameras that were the most fun so I tossed the Panasonic cameras and Olympus Pen lenses into the snake pit to see if they would walk out alive. 

There were three lenses I used for the entire project; these were the 60mm 1.5, the 40mm 1.4 (both older lenses for the manual focus Olympus Pen half frame cameras from the late 1960's and early 1970's) as well as the Panasonic/Leica 25mm 1.4 Summilux, a modern lens.  I brought along two Panasonic cameras and a light meter as well. Just to cover myself for impromptu group shots I brought along the much maligned but actually pretty good, Olympus 12-50mm kit lens.

I shot all the images in the raw format. For images mostly illuminated by window light I supplemented the light by filling in with large, white or silvered reflectors. I put theses on stands with adjustable arms so I wouldn't have to have an assistant tagging along in the crowded space. For the images that were predominantly lit by fluorescent lights I used multiples of the Fotodiox 312AS LED panels (with adjustable color balance). By the end of the day I was very proficient in getting reasonably good matches between the panels the artificial light of the fluorescents as well as getting a very good match between the LED panels and the diffuse, open shade, window light. With four LED panels at my disposal and twice as many batteries as units we made it through the day with power to spare. 

I probably don't have to tell you that everything I shot started with a camera well anchored to a favorite, old wooden tripod. I know that IS is magical but nothing beats really working in one's composition and having it stay during all the expression permutations of a portrait session. I shot hundreds of frames that day; maybe 650 in all. That might seem like a lot to people who don't photography real people for a living but what it really means is that even with the shyest or most difficult portrait subject I had a number of selections that would work well for the client's end use---marketing. 

After a long day of shooting portraits, small work groups, two person teams and an "all hands" working session in a large conference room I headed back to the secret underground processing laboratory of the Visual Science Lab. I ingested the images into Lightroom, did quick edit, then a series of mini-global color and exposure corrections before exporting a folder of images that I burned to a memory stick for delivery to the client. The client is very computer savvy and preferred to have galleries on their system rather than a web gallery. 

Not all clients are in a rush and not all clients need their stuff right away so several months passed between the time I delivered the images and the moment at which they sent along an e-mail with their 72 selections. I sat down yesterday morning to continue the process of making and delivering the final files. In between the time shooting and then receiving their selections I added DXO Optics Pro to the workflow. I thought I'd share yesterday's process. 

I sat down with the list of images to be delivered and opened Lightroom where I located the images and exported them as original raw files to a folder. I brought that folder into DXO and let the program run automatically for all the files. Then I went through, file by file, to see whether I agreed or disagreed with DXO. Since two of the lenses I used don't have modules all the program could do was assess the original file, coupled with the camera sensor information and make corrections based on that. All of the images were improved in one way or another. I made a few tweaks and changed to a "portrait" profile for some images, not for others. Then I exported .dng files to a new folder. 

I opened every file in PhotoShop CC and fine tuned where necessary. Then I sent selected files to Portrait Professional for some light handed retouching. Nothing like what you see in their ads. No giant structural changes to face shapes, no mono-textured plastic skin. Just a little help with rough skin tone, blemishes and small wrinkles. All of these files were output to Tiffs as were the files that didn't need to go through a final step of retouch. I took the folder full of full size Tiff files and, in PhotoShop, used image processor to make a set of high quality, full size Jpegs. The final deliver to the client will be a set of two folders; one with Jpegs and one with Tiffs. 

Again, I'll deliver on an eight gigabyte memory stick at a cost of less than $6. 

The one thing I wanted to discuss was the color I ended up with. I was struck with how accurate and pleasing the color of the portraits was. There was no global cast or global "feel" to the colors. They seemed separated in a way that I don't always see color from digital cameras. And not always from film cameras either. I don't know how to describe it other than to say that there was not a subliminal cast holding all the colors in a bounded camp. The colors were individually distinguished in a way that added depth to the files. In the moment I was quick to assign the credit to this to the Panasonic GH4 camera, which I've come to respect a great deal. But when looking at the metadata I quickly remembered that this shoot predated the GH4. 

Interestingly, the firm I was shooting for added some new employees and hired me to come by again and make portraits in the same fashion to add to the roster. On this outing I used the (new to me) GH4 and mostly the 35-100mm f2.8 X lens. In the course of processing the files alongside the GH3 files I found the same basic, non-globalized, color rendering of the previous camera. The main difference overall in the files was the use of the new lens. It is in the DXO modules and adds another layer of overall correction to the files. 

I am on my way out to deliver the images to the client. I am old fashion and still like to deliver the work into their hands and say, "thank you" personally. I may end up having to leave the package with the reception person but I'll be sure to thank her as well. 

What I learned in this job is that careful use of known, good lenses and the subsequent use of state of the art processing tools goes a long way to ameliorating any advantage or disadvantage between cameras. While the Sony cameras would have given me a different look it would not necessarily have been a better look. I am of the belief that color accuracy will emerge as the new metric for those of us obsessed with measuring the toys we shoot with. I also believe that Panasonic is doing something very right with their implementation of color. That, and the very sharp, detailed files certainly made my day of post processing pleasant and straightforward and I am sure the client will be pleasantly surprised at just how much better the images look than the proofs we started them out with. 

Ahhhh....

A Total Immersion Week with the Panasonic GH4. Or, Kirk Does the Math.

It would seem that the big news around here is the launch of the novel, The Lisbon Portfolio. But as much as I wanted to sit behind the computer and send e-mails to everyone I knew announcing it, the day after our publication on Amazon's Kindle Store I was on a Southwest Airlines flight heading to Denver Colorado to work as the event photographer for what has become my favorite show. It's the RLM Math Conference at which Inquiry Based Learning is discussed in depth by math teachers and professors from all over the country. I spent Weds. through Saturday soaking in the math gestalt in a wonderful building that was designed by the architect, I.M. Pei, back in the 1960's. And I'm not kidding, I had a blast.

But to stay on photo topic part of my reason for being happy was that this was my first chance to deeply immerse myself in shooting a full on event with my completed Panasonic GH system. I shot well over 4,000 images and the bulk of them were done with the new GH4. The rest were created on two different GH3s. And I will say that spending a cumulative 20 hours with one type of camera in your hands is a wonderful way to find out what you like and what you don't about the system....

But first a photo that the Panasonic marketing people should really enjoy:

Kirk With Cameras.

Image ©2014 Stan Yoshinobu

Used with Stan Yoshinobu's permission.

The image above is a fair representation of how I equipped myself for my time in Denver. Three cameras with three different lenses, extra batteries and a small flash in the pockets of the jacket. Totally equipped without a camera bag in sight....

Let me set the stage: The project was to cover a conference about Inquiry Based Learning in Mathematics. My brief was to document all the "main tent" sessions, the dinners and the social components of the conference. But the most time intensive part of the job was the need to photograph presenters presenting in five different locations, concurrently. An almost continuous cycle of parallel sessions that lasted almost all day long each day. 

The conference took place in the I.M. Pei Building of the Sheraton Hotel complex is downtown Denver, Colorado. That's nice for me since Denver is quickly becoming one of my favorite destinations in the country. It's only two hours from Austin by direct Southwest Airline flights and the idea of embracing 50 degree weather each morning with coffee and a warm croissant in hand is enticing. Especially when the humidity and heat kick in for the Summer here in Austin...

All photo jobs are different and all the parameters are different as well. For about eight hours each day the conference ran the parallel sessions which lasted about 40 minutes each. The classes, filled with academic mathematicians were spread out all across one large area of the conference center. I would start the cycle by photographing the speakers and activities in the main ballroom and then move on to classroom A, the B, then C, and finally classroom D. I shot a lot of frames because I was trying to capture good expressions in which  subjects' eyes were open, hands were gesturing in a natural way and peoples' mouths looked as though they were caught, mid-sentence, saying something really bright and insightful. The important idea here is that I did this circuit, from ballroom to class to class a dozen or more times each day and I packed gear with a conscious thought to keeping my load of equipment as light as possible.

I did the same conference (here in Austin) last year with the Sony a99 and Sony a77 cameras along with some giant lenses (the five pound 70-200mm 2.8 comes to mind as a particularly painful thing to sport around on the front of a camera...) and a large camera bag packed with all kinds of stuff with which to support the "full frame mystique." The gear was heavy and many times the limited depth of field worked against me as I attempted to shoot in a documentary style using available light for small groups of people.

This year (as you can see above) I brought two Panasonic GH3 camera bodies and one GH4. (I wish I could wave a magic wand over them and convert all the cameras to GH4's....). For most sessions I actually carried only two cameras: the GH4 with the Panasonic 35-100mm f2.8 X zoom lens and a GH3 with the 12-35mm f2.8 X wide angle zoom lens. With one camera on each shoulder and a third sometimes draped around my neck (GH3 with 25mm f1.4) I barely noticed the weight or the bulk of the gear. 

Two things to mention here: I was happy to shoot wide open with any of the three lenses as they perform very well at their respective maximum apertures. This is something I was rarely able to do with my previous cameras since the edges and corners of the lenses for the larger formats were never as well corrected when used at their maximums. Lens designers have pointed out for years how much easier it is to design well corrected lenses for smaller formats----at least theoretically. 

The images I'm seeing today in Lightroom are sharp and well constructed and the extra DOF, even with the lenses wide open, is welcome. This selection of lenses really does prove to me that the smaller geometry of the sensors was quite welcome. It meant that, in most cases eyes and ears were both in focus but I could still drop backgrounds out of focus with the longer focal lengths of the 35-100mm lens. 

One of the way I kept the file management manageable was to shoot high quality Jpegs instead of Raw files. My take on the real, current reason to people prefer Raw files is that most people don't take the time to do really good white balances while they are shooting! Seriously, if you shoot without getting the color right--in Jpeg or raw-- correcting in post after the fact makes a huge negative difference in both noise and exposure accuracy. 

While the effects are evident in both kinds of files (in my experience) it's obvious that there is less potential to make large corrections in Jpeg files because each color correction step introduces complimentary color shifts somewhere else in the spectrum (or usually at multiple points along the color distribution) as well as causing non linear shifts in each of the three color channels.  And some of those non-linearities are not correctable. 

Sharing my first impressions of the Sony RX10 video. And a little twinge of hesitation.

No beating around the bush here. I wanted to know what the RX10 would do if pressed into service as a video camera. I had some time this afternoon, no models around, no ready subject matter and the ominous threat of rain so I pressed myself into service as on camera talent. That's probably why I'm showing you a still of the camera instead of some web compressed footage...

The VSL Five Star Award of the Year goes to a camera I don't (currently) own. The Olympus OMD EM-1

The new Millennium Falcon of cameras. The EM-1.

I'm being silly this year and doing silly awards for cameras I think brought cool stuff to the table. I've already made a plug for my favorite economy priced camera, the Panasonic G6 but it's only going to appeal to the kind of practical people who make their own coffee at home and drive no nonsense cars for ten years at a time. It's a sensible choice. There are lots of other cameras this year that deserve some kind of mention for moving the game forward for their loyal band. In the Canon camp I think the full frame 6D camera is a great way to get into a professional system at a much lower cost than ever before. As a high ISO machine it's pretty much right there in the top ranks. And I'd say the same thing about the Nikon D610. It no longer seems to squirt industrial waste onto the sensor like the camera it replaces and that, coupled with great sensor performance, is a good thing. Even the Pentax K3 deserves some kudos for being a rock solid and very advanced last decade sort of camera. 

But the reality is that there are two cameras that have captured the fascination of the camera cognoscenti and the battle between them for dominance is as unexpected as can be. After handling and researching both cameras I am even more fascinated by the logical results of an in-depth comparison. There is a clear winner if your objective is to find a camera that feels like a perfect artist's brush or a well broken in pair of running shoes. There is a different winner if you are in a race for bragging rights for maximum horsepower and maximum straight-line acceleration. But the Devil is in the hairpin turns...... (enough car analogies, it brings out the real car nuts and then things heat up quick....).

The two cameras I'm talking about are the two cameras that come from antithetical extremes of camera philosophies and yet the same company makes the sensors inside of both cameras. One is the highest res tool one can buy today in the FF format while the other is perceived as the lowest pixel count class of what might be considered as professional quality instruments. I mean cameras. I'm am, of course, writing about the Olympus OMD EM-1 and the Sony A7r. 

On paper the Sony has everything but in reality it's all a compromise in terms of usability. The Olympus camera seems like a staid upgrade of a decent predecessor but one cobbled with a low pixel count, and much smaller, sensor. One is priced like a pro-tool while the other is priced just in the middle of the hobbyist-indulgence category. But in real world use the Olympus is a svelte, alluring seductive temptress that combines a tactile rightness with a wonderfully muted and understated shutter noise and action. It's EVF finder is probably the best in world and all in all the files are just what most photographers are looking for.  Right and thick and ready to be used with little heroic effort. It's the charming kind of package that emulates what the introduction of the Leica M3 must have been like to image makers working in the 1950's. Quiet, quick and disciplined. 

I first used one at a dinner with the president of Olympus USA while I was in New York and, like some insidious addictive drug once I got some on my skin I've been orbiting closer and closer to the camera with each passing cycle. In point of fact I had no interest in the camera before I used it in the flesh. None. And now I'm making lens buying decisions with the near certainty of that camera's acquisition in my overall plans. 

My experience with the Sony A7r is quite the opposite. I learned about it ahead of the initial announcement and my excitement built by the day as my introduction to the camera at the Photo Expo show drew nearer. My first thoughts were that this camera would be a wonderful partner to the Sony a99 I already own while adding more resolution, sharpness and more lens flexibility at a much lower initial price. In fact, I had liquidated my cropped frame Sony cameras and lenses in anticipation. And then the day came. I was supposed to be in the Samsung booth but before the show started I walked over to the Sony pavilion and played with the product. It was then that my whole plan began to fall apart like wet cardboard box.

A PSA for Zach Theatre's Show, "This Wonderful Life."

This Wonderful Life 2 hi res SQ from Kirk Tuck on Vimeo.

The folks at Zach Theatre needed a PSA for their one man play starring Martin Burke. Martin plays all 37 main Bedford Falls characters in this somewhat wacky play based on the Jimmy Stewart movie, It's a Wonderful Life. I had some free time on a Saturday afternoon just before one of Martin's first performances so I was happy to help out.

I used four of the Fotodiox 312AS LED light panels to light Martin on the stage. I stuck a Panasonic GH3 camera on a tripod, used a Rode NTG2 boom microphone and ran the audio straight into camera. Since Martin was moving off his mark I was able to set the microphone on a stand and aim it pretty precisely. I monitored his levels through a set of headphones plugged into the camera. The taking lens was an older Olympus 40mm 1.4 Pen manual focus lens used at around f2.8.

This was a classic "one man crew" project with me doing the grip work, the audio, the direction and at the end, the editing.

The folks at Zach had local radio talent, Dave Jarrett, do the voice over and we dropped that into the mix. The 30 second spot was edited in Final Cut Pro X running on an ancient Mac Pro laptop.

Every time we do one of these I realize that I need to move the camera more and I need to edit tighter. I'm sure friend Frank will have some good critiques for me. I listen to him because he knows what he's talking about. An even better idea would be to start with a script instead of just starting with a loose idea.

I promise. Next time I'll write a script. And the time after that I'll do a story board.....

edit: If you want to see the high res version click on one of the links under the video window and go see the HD version at Vimeo. 

Top Camera of the Year? That would be a three way tie. The winner depends on your point of view...

The Nikon Df.

If high ISO image quality is the number one priority on your camera evaluation spreadsheet, and you are a Nikon shooter. This is your winner. It's also the perfect nostalgia booster for anyone who started photography with an SLR (no "D") in their hands.

Sony A7r.

If you are looking for an incredibly detailed sensor and the ability to use it with Canon, Nikon, Leica, etc. lenses, and you want all that at a reasonable price, then this should be at the top of your short list. It's the D.I.Y. fanatic's dream. Can I wedge a Nikon 43-86mm zoom on there? You bet!

Olympus OM-D EM-1

Looking for a camera that's so well stabilized that it takes five times as long to hit the ground when you accidentally drop it? How about the camera that's the most fun to use? Or the one with boxes full of cool lenses? So, what's a few fewer pixels between friends?

It's been an interesting year for cameras. Not that there was a record number of them introduced or that there were tremendous technical breakthroughs to celebrate. This year was like a maturing process for the main camera types. But there's enough going on to keep the enthusiasts clutching their checkbooks and trying to decide if now is the time to plunge in and buy......more cameras.

For full on marketing innovation you've got to hand it to Sony, they turn total product indecision into a plus, wipe out whole product categories and re-label stuff with reckless abandon. We'd call it the "throw it at the wall and see what sticks" methodology but so the consumer wall has proved to be more or less Teflon(tm) until now. 

But let's drop back a few years and look at where Sony has come from. Five years ago they introduced the rock hard (and heavy as a brick) ultra-traditional DSLR, the a900. They quickly followed with almost exactly the same camera in the form of the a850. These were both built like tanks and made very few concessions to the digital age. No live view. No video. Just full frame sensors (which were rare at the time) and lots of heavy metal. Popular with the Sony faithful (all 50 of them) and a good platform for using Zeiss primes and G series zooms. 

But by 2010 these two cameras were getting long in the tooth and the Sony-ites were screaming for a new full frame body. It came in the form of the a99 which was both loved and hated. Loved because it used a state of the art sensor and put Sony shooters in range of the Canon and Nikon faithful for high ISO performance. And it was optimized for best color. But it was also hated because Sony pulled a "Sony" and gave us yet another flash shoe standard. One that is anything but standard. Just ask anyone who tries to put a radio trigger on the new flash....

THE FIVE CAM SLAM.

Samsung Galaxy NX. Kit Lens.

I had a fun, raucous and loud assignment this past weekend. I was asked to photograph the opening of the new location for the Children's Museum (re-named, The Thinkery) on Saturday. I spent most of my day there and, capriciously, used five different cameras to take nearly 2,000 images. When I left my house at eight in the morning it was the coldest day we've had yet this year in Austin, with the temperature hovering aroun 27 degrees. I packed two Panasonic GH3s, one Panasonic G6 and a Sony a99 into my big Domke bag, along with a fun assortment of lenses. But wait, that's only four cameras... Oh, yeah, I also had a brand, spanking, new Samsung Galaxy NX body and a kit lens lingering on the passenger seat of the car. It had been there overnight for a routine "chill test."

When I got to the new museum location at the old Mueller Airport (now a trendy, cool and growing neighborhood) I grabbed the bag and left the Samsung in the trunk along with my swim bag and an extra tripod. The first stop was into the main museum building to check in and then across the street to the big, multi-level parking garage. The wind was whipping and their was moisture in the air. We would start in the parking garage and there would be a mariachi led parade over to the museum. I grabbed out the Sony a99 with the 24-105mm lens and a flash and started making images of kids and their parents enjoying hot chocolate and coffee. The light levels in the garage were very low and it was a difficult location in which to shoot. If I pointed the camera at the walls the outside lighting overwhelmed the interior light and burned to white, even with the flash. I tried to compose images without showing the outside but it wasn't always possible. 

We started the parade and I made images of the whole short procession. When we got into the museum there were a few speeches, a ribbon cutting and then the kids got to tear through a big paper barrier and enter the guts of the museum. I shot the speeches with a mixture of flash, fill flash and available light and figured I would sort out the right direction in post. The paper barrier shot was very much an on camera flash shot.

After the images that required flash were over with I dripped the Sony and the flash into the bag I left under the client's desk in the second floor warren of offices. I spent the rest of the morning shoot with three other cameras: A GH3 with the 14-42mm, a GH3 with the 45-140mm and the G6 with the 25mm 1.4. The cameras all focused quickly and accurately and the files from the GH3s are good and clean up to 3200 ISO. Occasionally I would switch the 25mm to one of the GH3s just to see how the cameras looked with that lens at higher ISOs. After a couple hours shooting available light with that combination I pulled out a 40mm 1.4 Olympus manual focus half frame lens and put in on the G6 in order to try out the focus peaking feature. It worked great, even at f2. 

Around one in the afternoon I decided to put all the rest of the cameras up and go out to my (refrigerated) car to get the Samsung Galaxy NX and use it for a while, just to mix things up. Rookie mistake here. As soon as I walked into the well heated museum space with the 27 degree camera and lens everything condensed over. Instant fog filter. I put the camera under a hand dryer in one of the restrooms and gave it twenty minutes or so to warm up. As soon as the moisture cleared the camera was up and ready. In the next few hours I shot nearly 800 images with the camera and the kit lens at every setting from ISO 400 to ISO 6400 and I decided that, now that I'm shooting with a full production version of the GNX instead of a series of prototypes and pre-prototypes, that the GNX is a pretty good shooting cameras with really good files. Now I regret sending all the super cool lenses back.... 

As the day wound down I finished up with the 25mm Pana/Leica lens on the G6 body and was very happy with how fast (very) and fluid the operation of that combination was. 

So, when I finish shooting a job like this I try to get into post production mode the very next day. I shoot large, super-fine jpgs in all of the cameras (this is to be interpreted to mean that I shot at the largest size setting and the lowest compression setting for each camera) and I am able to do a fair amount of Jpeg file tweaking in the Apple, Inc. program, Aperture 3. 

First thing in the morning, before coffee, I head to the office to ingest every file into Aperture, renaming them with a different code for each camera. I also append metadata and caption info. Once I have them ingested and I've had some coffee I make a quick pass through the whole folder looking for obvious trash (blinks, wildly bad exposure or pegged color) and I dump those files.  Then I go through files with lots of versions and try to find the best versions from each group while dumping all the lesser versions. Once this is done I get down to the work of post processing. Nearly every file is touched; either in a  batch mode or individually and it can be as time consuming as the post processing that wedding photographers do. 

I start with color correction because doing exposure first and then color correcting will shift the first exposure correction and require a second pass. After the color correction I move to exposure  and brightness settings, then on to contrast, then to definition and clarity, then to saturation (most cameras need a slight decrease, the GH3s need a tiny increase...) and finally on to sharpening. I try not to sharpen much as the camera Jpeg engines are already tweaked with my preferred sharpen settings.

Once everything is tweaked I go through one more time to see if there is anything I can throw away. That done I burn three sets of DVDs. One for the client and two for my archives. I know DVDs aren't archival but I also know that some jobs have lifespans that are measured in a few years, even months and not everything I shoot is so amazing that I need it to outlive me. I also have the originals backed up on two hard drives. A final fallback is my written disclaimer to clients advising them that once I have delivered a set of final files they are responsible for archiving their copy. We have no legal obligation after 30 days to maintain the files or provide replacements. In practice we keep them for as long as we can but it moves clients to at least think about safeguarding the IP they've paid for and will need to use in the future. 

How do I like the cameras? The Sony has the best files of all but the worst exposure consistency and the worst auto white balance. I'm starting to think of these full frame, DSLR cameras as more studio cameras or cameras to shoot when you can tether them and take your time to assess the shot closely. The Samsung has the second best files in terms of depth, resolution and low noise. The AWB is somewhere between the Sony a99 and the m4:3 cameras. The best compromise (and all cameras are compromises) is the GH3.  The files from those two cameras stand up well to scrutiny even at 3200 ISO at 100%, if you shoot them bright enough. Underexpose and you'll get back high ISO files from just about all cameras. For sheer joy of shooting the G6 is the best of the bunch. It is so small and light that it becomes almost invisible in actual use. I love it with the 25mm Pana/Leica on it. It weighs next to nothing but the EVF is good and the files, though not as noise free as the GH3 are very good and sharpen up nicely in post. It's a least a full stop noisier than the GH3 but with a fast lens you go right back into the whole compromise thing.

Next time I shoot a day long event I'm leaving the Sony stuff at home and shooting exclusively with my trinity of Panasonics. I love pre-chimping with the EVFs and I love carrying around three cameras with different lenses that, in total, weigh less than the one DSLR with a zoom and a flash. 

Your mileage may vary and you may have emotional reasons or nostalgia to deal with in selecting your gear. It's all a compromise so everyone gets to make the compromises that work best for them. That's the way the photo world works. That's my story from the weekend.

I will say one more thing. I was familiar with the menus and the operation of the cameras and had shot all of them pretty extensively before but if you really want to know how a camera handles then use it for a fast paced, all day assignment. I guarantee that by the end of the day you'll find out what bothers the hell out of you and what makes you smile. Saturday reinforced my feeling that the G6 is a wonderful and well thought out camera for the money. Its only flaw is that there is no "constant preview" (or setting effect, in Sony language) in the manual mode and I think there should be. Even if we can never fix this one thing in firmware I'm happy with the camera.  Too plastic?  No, that's just silly.