Choosing a new camera

I'm about to buy myself a new camera, my first digital with interchangeable lenses. I'm the sort of person who likes to do a lot of research before making a decision (at least partly because I don' t like actually making them!), and so I've read reviews upon reviews about different DSLRs. But then I stumbled across the comparatively new Micro Four Thirds system (“MFT”, also known as “compact system” or the snappy “mirrorless interchangeable lens digital cameras”). Being the sort of person who is a fan of technology I decided to research whether this new system or the traditional DSLR was the way to go for me – one of the things I kept reading is that buying your first DSLR is as much about buying into a system as it is about buying a single camera.

The key concept of the MFT is that they are designed from the ground up around digital technology, rather than adapting from the technology developed for film cameras. This means that there is no need for a mirror or pentaprism in the cameras, and the lens optics don't need to be so strongly retrofocal. As a result the key selling point of the system emerges – that both camera and lens can be made much smaller and lighter than is the case for DSLRs. Indeed the camera body can be as small as a point and shoot compact while featuring the interchangeable lenses.

Little and Large - an Olympus Pen E3 camera with a
Panasonic 45-200mm telephoto lens.