One Month, One Camera – April 2019 (III) – Last Dance Of The Lumix?

This month in my One Month, One Camera (OMOC) project, I chose the Panasonic Lumix GF1, a Micro Four Thirds (M43) body.

I had at my disposal one native lens, a Lumix 12-32mm (24-64mm in 35mm terms) and my last four vintage manual focus M42 lenses, using an adapter.

Unfortunately I dropped the Lumix lens and, apparently being as robust as a wet paper towel in a hurricane, it no longer works. 

So I have just the manual focus M42 lenses.

Which are fantastic – there’s a reason I still have these four (two Takumar 55mms, a Helios 44-2 58/2 and a Carl Zeiss Flektogon 35/2.4) out of the dozens of M42 lenses I’ve owned in recent years.

But shooting manually just seems too cumbersome, and the GF1, as lovely a camera as it is – and I really cannot think of a single complaint – is just too bulky for my liking once you add the adapter plus an M42 lens.

Ok, so I guess that is one complaint!

I’m reluctant to invest in another M43 lenses when even the very compact 12-32mm I have still made the camera significantly bulkier than my Gang Of Four favourite digital compacts.

With little, if any, other advantage over these more compact cameras, aside from the M42 option, which is less appealing than it used to be, I’m struggling to see a future for this Lumix.

So it’s likely I’ll sell the GF1, and perhaps one or two of the M42 lenses (I still have two M42 compatible 35mm film cameras).

For the rest of this month then, I don’t really want to continue using the GF1 with M42 lenses.

I know what it can do, and it’s not a combo I want to shoot regularly.

If the AF lens was still working I would have very likely continued to switch between it and the M42 option for variety to see the month out.

But with that broken and too expensive too replace when I’ll likely not return to it longer term, I think we might have seen the last dance of this Lumix.

I plan instead to put the OMOC project on pause (and as I found in March, its initial purposes and points have been well proven) and go back to my Gang Of Four, the cameras that have risen to the top as others have come and gone. 

Starting with the delightful little Pentax Q, which I’ve raved about on 35hunter previously, and has been neglected for months.

I’ll share more thoughts about – and photos made with – the Q in the coming days.

All photos in this post were made with the Lumix GF1 and M42 Carl Zeiss Flektogon 35mm f/2.4.

Thanks for looking.

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