Life is an exercise in context. I thought I'd already plumbed images from a trip to Iceland but 2018 & 2019 were filled with overwhelming family issues and I find, in retrospect, that I barely did more than glance at these...

I left JFK Airport on my birthday in late October 2018 heading to Iceland for a week long trip. While I was there I posted images to the blog and wrote stuff but I was also in near constant contact with my father's caretakers and my siblings. My father's dementia became much worse after my mother's death and as the executor, administrator and all around person most responsible it felt like a big reach to be away from my dad for even a week. If I wasn't the kind of person who, at that time, mostly operated from a place of general anxiety I might have soothed myself with the knowledge that my dad was in the best memory care facility in San Antonio and getting round the clock care. But with anxiety one is nearly always waiting for the next shoe to drop...

After I returned I backed-up the photos I'd taken onto several hard drives and promptly ignored them for several years. There were a few images that I'd included in blogs and they were within easy reach so I've used them to illustrate posts here and there. The rigors of navigating work, family and the care of my father demanded my full attention at the time. The images from Iceland weren't needed in the moment and so laid fallow.  But recently my re-entry into the Panasonic m4:3 world prompted me to go back and make a more thorough evaluation of my best examples from that previous tenure with the system. And the images from the G9s loomed large. 

I remember bringing along two Panasonic G9 cameras and a handful of lenses. I brought along the Olympus 12-100mm f4.0 Pro, the Panasonic/Leica 15mm f1.7, the Panasonic 8-18mm and the Sigma 30mm f1.4 Contemporary. Everything packed down into a small, easy to manage backpack and that backpack fit under the airline seat in front of me. The system was manageable and easy to use. I remember, at the time, being impressed with both the battery life and also the incredible image stabilization but later realized that the quality of the raw files and Jpegs were the real selling points of the cameras. That and the "all weather" handling.

The finder in the G9 is still competitive in the current market and successive firmware updates have actually ensured that the video performance of the camera is also highly competitive with current camera models from various systems. In all I shot well over 7000 images and fewer than 1% were marred by technical issues stemming from the cameras or lenses. Most of the failures were from attempts to handhold the system at far too low a shutter speed (too much subject movement) or my own failure to fine tune exposure. The usual dig at Panasonic's m4:3 cameras is focusing accuracy but there were no signs whatsoever that this was a weak point in my use of the cameras. 

My father is gone. My mortgage is paid off. The happy burden of paying for Ben's university experience is in my rear view mirror. I have time now to look back at projects, many of which I probably rushed through too quickly. With my renewed interest in the small format system it seemed only natural to go back and re-introduce myself to my own "lost" work.

My biggest realization is just how good the lenses for the m4:3 system are. From both makers. I'm re-amazed at how wonderfully sharp and satisfying the 12-100mm lens is. It's even better in 2022 than it was in 2018 in large part because I shot so many raw files and now Lightroom and Photoshop have become better and better at digging into, and revealing, the detail and scope of the files. The post processing control is downright intoxicating. And perhaps some of that feeling is down to being able to take time to really work a file when I want to. The 15mm f1.7 was a wonderful street shooting lens for me because it's small and light but gives a wonderfully even tempered look to the files it creates. The 8-18mm lens was a sleeper. Now the software corrections are so good that the lens looks miraculous.

I re-imported all the files into Lightroom and I can see some faults in the way I shoot in general. I tend to shoot too many frames with too few substantive changes between frames. I guess, in the moment, if one frame is good then a dozen seems better. The mindset being that I might stumble across a slight difference that makes all the difference in the world to the photographs. I'm also reticent to change lenses when I really should. I try to cram whatever I'm shooting into the parameters of whatever lens I currently have clicked onto the front of the camera. I should be less lazy...or carry more cameras with different focal lengths attached to each. 

The current rev of Lightroom has powerful masking tools that allow for quick, localized color and exposure corrections. This capability didn't exist when I first barreled though the images in 2018. Now I use it liberally and it's a godsend for skies that are too light or foregrounds that are rendered too dark. I'm evolving a more "hands on" methodology...

The G9 is a five or six year old model now but the images seem to me to have just as much overall quality as the files I'm getting from current cameras. It makes me consider buying another one. But I'll wait and see if Panasonic comes out with an upgrade to that model this year. For now it's the lenses that have me captivated. 

I guess this whole experience is a lesson I need to learn over and over again. That it's better to dive deeper into images from a project than it is to move more quickly. That, and perhaps it's a good idea just to hang on to cameras that deliver the goods. No matter how much greener the grass looks over on the other side of the glaciers...

 

Marshes next to the coast line.

I despair of never becoming a decent landscape photographer. 

But that doesn't mean I won't stop trying...

A personal historic perspective is useful. Lens selection reveals itself in tens of thousands of files. Or more.

 

I've walked around with enough other photographers to see that there is a vast difference in shooting styles and focal length preference among us. I'm a profligate shooter. Promiscuous with the shutter button. And wedged into a focal length preference of something between 35mm and 85mm. That's my sweet spot. My comfort zone. My photographic happy place. 

I was out in the downtown area one day, a few years back, with a friend who wanted to go out and make photographs. I carried a single camera with a 50mm lens while he insisted on bringing along two hulking Nikon D8xx bodies, one with a 70-200mm lens and the the other with a 14-24mm lens. I'd see something I wanted to photograph and I'd work the scene by moving all over the place and playing with different angles, different exposure settings and different distances between the camera and subject. My friend would "lock on" to a subject, address it as a target shooter might, zoom in and out to test a range of focal lengths, etc. all without clicking a single frame. Only after much concentrated appraisal would he click his shutter and make a photograph. If the subject was especially captivating for him he might splurge and take three or four almost identical frames. Then he was done with the subject matter and ready to move on. 

I was so put off by his rigid approach to photographing that I never went out photographing with him again. His hesitancy and single-minded approach to each subject encountered was anathema to me. In retrospect I think I should have recommended that he acquire an 8x10 inch view camera and spend that same amount of time and care making images that would better reflect the sheer amount of time he lavished on each frame. 

Often people will tell me that I shoot too much. Or I shoot too fast. But I remember many years ago being at the HRC (Humanities Research Center) at UT looking at contact sheets of Henri Cartier-Bresson and realizing that he didn't just capture one decisive moment (the popular assumption..) rather he worked a scene and shot multiple frames at multiple angles until he finally zeroed in on what it was he was looking for. Sure, there are images of his that depended on perfect timing but it's important to remember that had he chosen a different frame from the same roll of film that too may have been considered a masterpiece. HCB was curious and not overly frugal with his frame count. He shot it until he got it. 

It's funny when people instinctively want to limit their shooting and are parsimonious with their digital "frames." At the same time they talk about wanting to establish a personal style. But in my mind the two desires are diametrically opposed. In order to evolve a style, as opposed to just aping the fashion of the day, it seems obvious that you have to look and look at stuff and photograph with intention over a long period of time. The iterative nature of photographing in this way allows the photographer to be like a sculptor relentlessly peeling away the unnecessary "marble" to reveal the final art. 

When we start out we all copy our photographic "heroes" but over time and with lots of looking and photographing we (hopefully) cut away the clichés of our craft and hone in on what excites us personally. We begin to form a style when we begin to ignore everything outside our own individual tastes. And I posit that this comes from a dedication to photographing in bulk and with passion. Almost akin to a pianist practicing daily for years and years. Or swimming every day to develop and maintain an efficient stroke coupled with endurance. 

For years and years I worked on getting paid work and on shooting the kinds of subjects I thought other people would like. At some point I started shooting more and more just for myself. A while after that point an art director said (for the first time) that he was hiring me for my style. I remarked that I was not aware I had a style. He point to a stream of work in my portfolio and said that it was evident to him. We had working history together and his observation of my "style" came after years of working together on routine projects. We dug down a bit and he suggested that when I stopped "caring" about what other people thought about my work that I had opened up to making more images that reflected my own tastes and judgements. That's when the work began to differentiate from all the other beginners. Insouciance it seems is a good reagent. 

Looking back I can see that any style I have evolved over time came from being out with a camera and photographing at every opportunity. And holding onto the hard to describe feelings of contentment or satisfaction that seems to come from looking and interpreting the external world and re-making it in a way that made me happy. 

When I first started making portraits for clients I was nervous and apprehensive. I tried to make formal images in the way I'd seen others do in magazines and advertising. I tried always to follow the rules as if that would ensure success. It was only after years and years of meeting strangers and trying to get a nice expression that I started to feel comfortable with the process and started spending much more time trying to establish some sort of emotional bridge with the subject rather than depending on following the rules of composition and lighting that everyone else followed in order to make the portrait work. It was almost an epiphany when I realized that if I didn't make a human connection all the technology and rule following in photography would not result in a "good" or "effective" portrait. And the "rules" certainly would not be sufficient to create what I wanted to see in a photograph of a real person. 

A few years back I spent an afternoon walking around Reykjavik with a camera and a lens taking photographs of the architecture in the city. My choice of lens was not the same as someone else would have made. I spent my time with a 30mm f1.4 lens on a G9. That gave me a perspective equal to about a 60mm lens on a 35mm camera. Too tight as far as most architecture photographers are concerned. But for me, especially shooting in my favorite square crop, it was just perfect. How do I know? Because it felt comfortable instead of limiting. I was happy to comp images within the constraints of the system. I didn't feel the need to include everything nor did I need to burrow down to smaller details. Sure, I'd step forward or backward of left or right but only to make the frame feel more comfortable. It was a wonderful way to photograph and I was sad when the light faded and I had to call it quits. 

In whatever downtime I have these days I'm making an effort to throw away images that are now useless to me and only take up space in the archives. I'm trying to make sure the images I do like are well backed up even though I have no expectation that they'll live on after my demise. I like the idea of selfishly being able to review and savor what I've done for my own pleasure. But in the process of reviewing thousands of frames it's interesting to me to see now that there is a style to my work that's identifiable to me. I couch it as having a respect for the space around an object. Not too close and not too far away. Not too wide and not too tight. Room for the subject to breath but not so far away that a frame is too safe or too sterile. Certainly not a case of not being able to clearly identify the subject that was important enough to me to want to capture it. 

I'm not as good a writer as I'd like to be. It's been difficult for me to put into words why I like to be out examining the world and photographing it all the time. Why I spend afternoons walking through town and plan solo trips to other places specifically to walk around and look and sometimes photograph. Why I'm constantly looking for the camera that results in the greatest transparency for me.

 If I could write better maybe you would understand that it's all part of me trying to drink in as much of the world as I can while I am still able to; even if what I define as the "world" is only what I find in my own backyard, my own neighborhood or my own city. That I share it with you is immaterial to how I shoot or what I shoot. I'd shoot the same way for an audience of only one. But I share it because it's part of my process. The very act of sharing compels me to select, edit, prepare and commit to the image. And that's an important part of growing and evolving my own style. And continuing to evolve it...

It's silly to say I wish I had never had to earn a living or be responsible for anything so I could be out photographing all the time but the reality is that the constrictions of everyday life are part of the very ingredients and friction that make the between moments, when I can go out and photograph, so happy for me. The times when adult life intrudes are the accelerants to light the fire for the photography when I get to do it. 

I can't explain very well why the 50mm lens is so comfortable for me. I can't explain why wide angle work leaves me bored or why the dependance on a specific lighting method or subject matter generally seems contrived. But when I look through zillions of my files I find that I consistently gravitate to the 50mm or, at most, up to 70mms as my preferred window onto the world. 

I do know that the process of photographing as continuously as I do is part of the reason (probably most of the reason) that I feel I've finally worked my way into photographing in a manner that seems just right for me. The exercise of going back and reviewing what works and what doesn't in past work is so important but it's equally important not to get stuck in an endless review when there is some much more to photograph and, contextually, so little time in which to do it.

You may dismiss my style of photography but that doesn't dismiss the pleasure I get from re-living those moments of photography or the enthusiasm for going out and doing it some more. 

Happy Easter. 

It's just an ISO 5000 day. Interesting noise with the Leica CL....

 Leica CL + Sigma 56mm f1.4 lens. ISO 5,000. 

Some thoughts about the Panasonic G9 in mid-2022.

 

Panasonic G9 + Leica 15mm 

I realized yesterday when looking at images from the GH6 and then comparing them to images I'd shot back in 2018 with the Panasonic G9 that the older camera is quite unfairly overlooked by people interested in shooting great images with micro four thirds cameras. We tend to be attracted to the idea of "newest."

There are specific areas in which the more powerful image processing electronics of the newest cameras offer image improvements but these are mostly in the realm of high ISO noise reduction and speed. When used at ISOs from 200-1200 and in good light the differences between a four year old camera and a brand new one are not particularly noticeable. In my experience the quality of lenses being used is a much bigger and more obvious determiner of a system's overall performance. 

While the GH6 touts spectacular image stabilization numbers the G9 is certainly no slouch in that regard and my experience of having shot tens of thousands of landscape, street, people and event photographs with the G9 convince me that its image stabilization is still among the top tier of cameras. 

The G9 was the first of the Panasonic cameras I'm aware of to use the current color science tweaks that come standard on the full frame S series cameras as well as on the GH5ii and the GH6 so it's more or less current in that regard. It's in line with Panasonic's current and much improved ways of handling Jpeg files.

When it comes to video Panasonic's consumer friendly and consistent firmware upgrades raised the performance of the G9 to a more professional level about two years ago. It's now capable of shooting 4K video with 10 bits and generating very competitive video files. It was always capable of using the DMW-XLR-1 audio interface from its inception and able to grab good audio. (with the right microphones..) I remembered this incorrectly!!! It looks like the camera doesn't have the smart interface in the hot shoe needed. My apologies for inaccuracy. It's the first time that's ever happened at VSL 😆

My regard for that camera as a video camera is also high. I had other cameras at my disposal for a large project we did over the course of several weeks back in 2020 but chose to use the G9 because it was up to the imaging challenge and was by far the best choice for use on a gimbal. Since 80-90% of that project was done with a gimbal-mounted camera the smaller size, deeper focus and long battery life seemed essential for a good outcome. And the resulting files looked great. 

While one might think that camera makers can now turn out great products without exception it doesn't really work out that way in the "real world." Every once in a while a camera maker gets everything just right. Or at least most things just right. It seems to be the exception rather than the rule. 

Sure. For the most part everyone gets the sensor and internal electronics to work well enough but there is still an art to the exterior design and the usability of a camera in the field. Some cameras seems to check all the boxes but feel sterile and boring in daily use. Some are designed for someone else's hands but not mine. Some get right up to the line of near perfection only to be laid low by one glaring fault or another. Example: I'd love to have a Sony RX-1Rii but the idea of spending three grand for a camera the battery capacity of which is measured in gnat minutes is too far beyond the pale. Even for me. 

Which brings me right back to the G9. It's a small and light body which feels at the same time dense and comfortable. It's got (relatively speaking) a huge battery that lasts a long time. The physical controls are well laid out and always seem to be exactly where I'd like them to be. And the sound of the shutter is very satisfying. When you add in the great imaging performance for many uses the overall potential of the camera is amazing...in the right hands.

If you want to enter the m4:3 world of cameras but also need to stick to a budget this camera would be my first choice every time. If your budget allows for more it seems a better tactic to buy two G9s instead of one GH6 so you have a perfect back up or, if you are a prime lens enthusiast you can shoot different lenses on two different cameras and not hassle with the perils of changing lenses in the middle of a dust storm, high winds, kinetic situation, etc. Hard to change lenses while crossing a rope bridge in a blizzard...

When I traveled to Iceland in 2018 I carried two of the G9s and an assortment of lenses. My most used lens was the Olympus 12-100mm Pro which worked perfectly on the G9. A surprise favorite was the 15mm Panasonic/Leica lens. And the 25mm Summilux (first version) was also most welcome. The final lens that I included was the 8-18mm which was perfect for all those shots that were just begging for the correct wide angle focal length. 

Everything fit nicely in one small backpack and everything worked well despite cold, sleet, rain and more rain. 

I'm happy to see that the G9 is still available and seems to be selling as well as ever. If I were to travel the world to take only photographs and needed a reliable system the G9 and a very few carefully selected lenses might just be my first choice.  Just thought about this while swimming this morning and thought it might be helpful to share. 

G9 + Olympus 12-100mm 

Iceland.

We've got our first 1,500 photographs on the GH6 and a two day corporate job in the can. Now I feel like I can say a few things about the new camera...

Disclaimer. The images here are casual shots from this afternoon's walk around town. They are not meant to be definitive samples from the absolute cutting edge of the GH6's performance envelope. Nor are they destined for the portfolio. They were shot solely for the fun of photographing and also to have content with which to check out how well the raw files work with the new Adobe Camera Raw converter. If you don't like the images I suggest you ignore them and just read the text...

And just like that, all of a sudden, I'm back into the micro four thirds fan club. I bought a GH5ii to use as a "B" camera for video with the Panasonic S5 and liked it so much I just had to grab the GH6 when it came out. And, yeah, a few lenses as well. My intention was to make good use of the smaller sensor system for video jobs but I couldn't resist the implicit challenge so when a nice, multi-day assignment for a fun high tech company rolled around on the calendar I packed the two GHx cameras along with the S5 and drove off to a Hyatt resort property to ply my trade. 

I am blessed to have wonderful clients. The event director for this particular client is a person I have worked with now for at least two decades. She gives me a vague brief and an agenda, and a lot of leeway, and I more or less shoot according to a pattern we established many years ago while photographing for Motorola.  If it's interesting to me I photograph it. If it's not interesting to me and I don't think the client will really use the image I pass it by. 

While the resort hosting the two day conference is just 22 miles from my front door the client arranged for a nice hotel room at the resort for my convenience. It beats having to drive home in the evening and then fight rush hour traffic to get back the next morning. And the Hyatt did a very nice job with this particular property.

There was nothing during the course of the job that was rushed or anxiety provoking and if I missed a shot of a speaker or presenter I had plenty of opportunities to get a better photograph moments later. The nature of a job like this is to do a very nice documentation of each speaker, get plenty of images of audience response, cover the social aspects like dinners and happy hours and snap away during team building exercises. The event covered sensitive internal information and since I was working with an NDA in place I can't discuss the content or the name of the company. "I will neither confirm nor deny the identity of my temporary benefactor..." 

I came to the job prepared to test cameras as a pastime and an exercise in sessions where the same speaker was on stage for an hour or so at a time. It's pretty easy to get a good range of speaker photos in the first 20 minutes or so of a presentation, easy enough to get a good and diverse range of audience reaction shots in the next 20 minutes so it seems efficient and reasonable to spend the rest of the time checking in to see just how good the higher ISO settings are on the GH6, how well it handles color in mixed light, how good the image stabilization is with and without dual stabilized lenses, how the new camera compares with the GH5ii and how those two cameras compare with the Panasonic S5. Right?  Otherwise there's just the temptation to graze the pastries and the coffee bar...

But before we hop into any details I should let you know that the raw file converter in the Adobe imaging programs is now fully working with the GH6 raw files. Hooray. Nice. I missed that window (being able to shoot and process raw) for the event but I was pretty much planning to shoot Jpegs anyway. I shot all of these images in this blog post in raw and played around with them in Lightroom Classic. I pushed, I pulled, I tried to "break" the files but the conversions are pretty solid and I can't see any big gotchas. Granted, I haven't tried the converter with the HHHR settings (hand held high res) yet so this isn't the deepest dive but if you shoot like a normal photographer I think you'll be happy with your results. 

The first half of the first day on the job was spent in a medium sized ball room. Big enough to comfortably hold about 90 people and equipped with a custom designed stage set. I thought I'd be fine with the 12-60mm f2.8-4.0 Leica zoom for the GH6 but I misjudged. I guess my brain was rusty from a couple years of not shooting in-person events... Sure, most of the stuff I was shooting fit into that focal range but more than once I wanted to be a lot tighter on the speaker on the stage but without walking right up to the front of the house. Normally, I'm comfortable with something like a 70-200mm on a full frame camera. But I didn't even bring one of those along for the S5. I was too optimistic about the elasticity of the long, normal zooms. The longest lens I brought for the S5 was the Panasonic 24-105. 

When I really, really wanted to get tighter I made use of the incorporated "teleconverter" setting in each of the cameras. It required dropping the resolution of the cameras to 12.5 megapixels but I like that better than having to labor over cropping each image in post production. 

I tried to lean heavily on the GH6 because it was the newest toy. I photographed at ISOs as high as 6400 but tried valiantly not to go higher than ISO 4,000 if I could. The files looked great. I stayed above 1/125th of second for my shutter speed and had no concerns about using any of the lenses (except one) wide open. So, ISO 4000 is totally usable and ISO 3200 is surprisingly clean. And happily the noise reduction isn't making a mess of the details in the process. Eyelashes and fabric weave were sharp and detailed. The finder in the GH6 is bright and clean and matches the rear screen for exposure appearance which is a nice plus. 

When I used the 12-60mm lens I was able to take advantage of the dual image stabilization feature of the Panasonic cameras. Same with the 24-105mm lens on the S5. With both of these combos you can basically do away with having to use a tripod. This is probably the first time in, well, forever that I did not even pack a tripod for the job. Left them all at home. The problem with depending on either a tripod or great image stabilization when shooting action on a stage is that the real problem is never camera shake. The real problem is subject motion and that isn't fixed by better and better image stabilization or a good tripod but is only cured by raising the shutter speed past a threshold where you are able to freeze human motion. 

I am declaring right now that I am a new convert to the use of one customized function button but it's pretty specific to this job and I was pushed to pursue this option because I had too much hubris to bring the long lens I really needed. There is a function button I can reach on the front of the cameras, just to the right of the lens, with with right hand. I dedicated that button to switching the digital teleconverter on or off. In order to make it all work you have to make sure to switch the resolution at the same time. If you have the res set to 24 megapixels you always end up with the full frame. If you remember to set the res to 12.5 megapixels you get a nice 1.5X crop. It helps you dig in and get a tighter frame when you want one. 

The GH6 is very much aimed at videographers and that's why there is a built-in fan. You can turn it off when photographing but I never bothered to change the "auto" setting in the menu. But even when we were outside on Tuesday afternoon, wallowing around in the 94° direct sun, I was never able to hear the fan and it didn't seem to have much effect on the battery life either. 

1500 to 2000 frames is just about enough to start getting conversant with a new camera. I kind of cheated this time by preemptively picking up the GH5ii a couple months in advance. They share about 90% of the menu and neither of their menus are much different from that of the S5. The menus are logical and well laid out and if you are hazy on what a menu item does you can always push the "disp" button to see a little window with a terse explanation. Nice. 

With all the cameras set manually for white balance and exposure, as well as the same color profile settings, all of the Jpeg files were obviously of the same color family. No bad surprises there. If you just have to rank the cameras in terms of absolute quality you'll find that the S5 is the best for high ISO noise, followed at about a stop and a half behind by the GH6, followed at about a stop behind by the GH5ii. In terms of my latest metric: "Joy of camera handling" I found the GH6 to be perfect, the GH5ii to be perfect minus three percent and the S5 to be perfect minus 5.5%. The real surprise is something that shouldn't surprise anyone who reads the specs but the EVF in the GH6 is just much nicer than the lower resolution finder in the S5. I don't really see much difference in finder quality between the two GHx cameras but if you are one of those people who needs a more perfect finder you might find yourself trading off the lure of full frame for the actual performance of the GH6's finder image. 

Since all of the GH6 files were shot at or above ISO 800 (indoors) the vaunted dynamic range boost should have been automatically activated. But I have to say that all three of the cameras have good, long ranging Jpeg files at default. I didn't notice much difference but I did find that I could push the GH6 Jpeg files much more than I was ever able to with the GH5 cameras. At least when it comes to effective and non-intrusive use of the shadow slider in post production. 

There were two lenses that I brought along for the m4:3 systems that I didn't think I would get much use out of but which turned out to be my favorites of the two days of shooting. One was the Leica Summilux 25mm f1.4 ii and the other was the cheap, fun, solid, sharp, wacky TTArtisan 50mm f1.2. I used the 25mm for all the quick paced social photography at our happy hours and extended meals. It locked focus quickly and let me work the crowd with a small package and good results. 

The 50mm TTartisan isn't a lens I'd pick for close, fast work but when people are in their seats in their conference mode and I can take my time to finesse the focus I found shooting the 50mm TTartisan lens to be addictive. I used it mostly at f1.4 to f2.5 and almost always for loose head and shoulders candids such as when people would pick up a table microphone to ask a question or to respond to a query. Used within a five or six foot range at the wider apertures gets you a very nice and mellow out of focus background with a high degree of apparent sharpness at the plane of accurate focus. It's nice. It's kind of old school but nice. And keep in mind that this effect is with a "cropped" frame camera system.

My keeper rate with that lens was somewhere around 60% but as I mentioned before if I didn't get it on the first frame I had all the time in the world to correct and try again. It's a darn narrow slice of in focus real estate. 

If you've worked with a GH5 you'll find the battery life in the GH5ii and GH6 is about the same. I tended to keep the cameras switched on and I chimped a lot on the 50mm shots so I was only able to get through about half a day with the first battery and found myself reaching for the battery in my pocket when I still had two bars left on the little battery symbol. I brought a big Anker battery bank along as well as a couple of chargers so when I wasn't using a camera I could either pull the battery and put it on the charger or just plug the USB 3.1 plug between the Anker bank and the camera's USB 3.1 plug and charge the battery in camera. Nice to have PD (power delivery) in the big batteries. I'd circle back to the charging camera an hour later to find its battery nearly topped up. 

The obvious benefit of the smaller format system is in the smaller size and lower weight of the lenses. I think the GH6 actually weighs more than the S5 but when it comes to lenses it's at least a 2X or more difference...and not in the favor of the full frame camera system. Another lesser benefit is the increased depth of field for a given angle of view. A little safety margin for the sloppy photographer...

I found the image quality of the GH6 to be a big leap forward in overall image quality from my previous use of GHx cameras. The G9 seems to be the bridge between the two generations and I find the color and quality from that camera to be nearly as good. Where the G9 gives up a bit of ground is in the high ISO/noise realm but really, it's not a big leap. Even between a G9 and a full framer. If you have to have nose bleed high ISO performance you'll need to go full frame but for so much every day photography the three way gap between formats, ISOs and the final targeted use is much less obvious than most people think. If you are aiming at the web and you have good technical skills you can probably make images from any  of the systems that are indistinguishable from each other. 

I just realized that the real allure of the GH6 is fun. Just good, plain fun. 

Speaking of fun... We are celebrating our 37th wedding anniversary this week. I'm so lucky to have found someone who is much smarter and nicer than me. Thankfully she has a blind spot where I am concerned and seems oblivious to my many faults. My only advice to the young and unmarried... "Always marry someone smarter than yourself." You'll thank yourself for it in the long run.

Now planning which cameras and lenses to bring along for my banker conference in Santa Fe in a couple of weeks. I'm on pins and needles to see what I pick out for that adventure. We'll see.