Old school. New school.

A little throwback today. To the right is the camera that was basically my photography high school and college, the venerable Pentax MX mated to an equally venerable M50/F1.7. Fully manual. I made plenty of mistakes with this little bugger and learned a lot because of it. I also took a lot of shots that I now cherish.

To the left, the Panasonic GH2 fitted with a Pentax DA40 F2.8 Limited via a Fotodiox adapter. No mirror, but a lot more electronics and much bigger battery to boot. Interesting that they are roughly the same size, the GH2 a bit chunkier in feel and the MX a solid lump of metal.

Haptically speaking, the MX has this wonderful mechanical feel and elegant simplicity. I don’t have the owner’s manual but I can imagine it being less than 10 pages with one page per movable part!

The GH2 confounded me at first with the surfeit of buttons and controls. But I’m getting the hang of it, tapping into 10% of its capabilities with a twitch of my right thumb. I can’t see myself ever using many of the automated features though. At the end of the day there are just a handful of variables – the size of the hole, the speed of the curtain, the racking of the glass, and the amp of the sensor. I could live with a camera that gave me nothing more than direct control of those four things. Come to think of it, that’s the camera on the right!

Panasonic GH2 with Pentax DA40 F2.8 Limited (via Fotodiox adapter) vs. Pentax MX with M50/F1.7