I’ve stopped using my old Nikon D70s after it gave up once again during my last vacation (random failures in recording the photos on the flash card). For now I’m stuck with another remain of the past (Canon Ixus 60, small point-n-shoot with a 6Mp sensor) and my iPhone 3Gs. My plan is to get the Panasonic GF-1, which looks like the perfect solution for me: image quality on par with SLRs yet portable (almost) like a compact camera. However, I’m still waiting for the perfect deal (i.e., someone that goes to the US and gets it from amazon.com or B&H), so I can’t help but wondering when Nikon or Canon or Panasonic starts putting these features in a complete package:
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small form factor: the GF-1 wins for me over the other entry-level SLRs just because it’s (almost) pocketable.
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interchangeable lenses: being an old SLR fanatic, I don’t want to be stuck with a single lens, even if at the end of the day I only use 2 lenses on my D70s: 20mm f/2.8 and 50mm f/1/8.
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wireless data transfer: I hate cables. Put a wifi or a bluetooth chip on the camera !
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GPS: I’m a metadata nerd, so I love the fact that the iPhone camera, despite its low quality shots, gives me location data.
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HD video: no time limits (such as the 10mins of the Nikon D3100), full HD quality please.
However, I doubt to get all these things in a camera by next year, so I guess I’ll have to shell out for the GF-1 now and hope that Panasonic and Olympus get their engineers moving on to the future. Conventional SLRs: the entry level models from Nikon or Canon are very attractive, but I don’t see how they’ll ever manage to get so small by not removing the mirror. And I don’t see Canon or Nikon embracing the micro 4:3 standard.