Mike, I've noticed in your descriptions of photos (in the above post, for instance, or in the image caption of this earlier post, just off the top of my open tabs: http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2014/05/see-a-show-this-year.html) that in describing photographs you quite prominently mention the equipment used to make it. This makes me uneasy--to me, as a visual storyteller/artist/journalist/what-have-you, the content, aesthetics, and context should be the main focus of any description of a photograph. I understand in many cases the technical becomes part of the context (e.g. use of unusual equipment whose mechanics greatly affect the content or aesthetics of the image), but in these two cases, the fact that the sky image was taken with a D3 and 24mm, or that the linked gallery photos were taken with a Panasonic GX7, don't tell me anything about the image itself or what non-photographers would want/need to know to better understand/appreciate the image. I suppose the "non-photographers" bit explains your choices--since this site's audience is primarily other photographers, it becomes slightly more relevant, and since I'm a photojournalist (after a fashion, anyhow..."editorial photographer"?) I always think of my more general audience when appraising a photo. I look at that sky photo and want to know, roughly in order: what, where, and who (not really when or how). Some photographs might warrant the last two, and the order might shuffle a bit, but the "how" is almost always the very last item. (If you've covered this choice in a previous column, my apologies... seems like something you may have addressed in the past but if so I can't find it) [Well Josh I guess "it depends"...if you don't mind a cop-out answer. Here we're trying to give people information about what they're buying and the post is already too long and complicated, so apart from a few adjectives I don't say much about the picture. But some people do like to know the tech details of what they're buying as well as what it says about how the photographer works in that situation. I'd never mention the printer and inkset of a picture I was critiquing, for instance. But it's a fair point you make. --Mike]

Finally managed to track down a demo model at the airport in Hong Kong (living in a non-major city in China, all the big electronics stores have the fake display models on display, but no working models). I was *very* disappointed in the OVF! It suffers from internal reflection problems in bright light and is very intolerant of being off-axis, or too close to the eyepiece. To not have any fringing I had to have my eye a good 1/2" away and perfectly on-axis. I understand the compromise involved here--in order to have room for the pop-up flash they had to do fancy footwork with the prism to route around it, losing coverage and optical quality in the process. I wish they'd gone the route of the X100 and had a straight-through, 100%+ finder and a flash elsewhere (or not at all!). Definitely a won't-buy for me.

To stand this idea on its head, here's a recent keyboard photo taken with a film camera (Canonet QL17 GIII, in the process of being resurrected): http://d.pr/WbpT

Oof-- look at the picture of the bike against the corrugated metal-- quite soft at the edges, even at f/8!