I was thinking about the four thirds system I was using for a few years, between 35mm film and 35mm digital. Was it a mistake?
I don’t think so. Olympus E1 with the ZD 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5 lens was the best camera/lens combo I could’ve bought in 2004, especially since it was discounted. At full price, it would’ve been too expensive, but for what I paid for it, 1000€, it was a good deal. Compared to the 6-8MP Canons and Nikons at the time, it had similarly limited resolution – yes, percentage-wise the difference between 5 and 8 sounds like a lot, but it really wasn’t; whatever you couldn’t do with one, you couldn’t to with the other, either. So, as a singular camera-lens entity, it was great and it served me well in the transition from film to digital. Essentially, I used it for the same kind of photography I did on film, just with less money spent on film, development and scanning.
The problem with four thirds wasn’t that it didn’t make good pictures, or that I was unhappy with the camera and the lens. The problem was that I wanted to replace 35mm film with 35mm digital because that was the look that I wanted, and four thirds wasn’t 35mm. Also, the upgrade path was either very expensive, to the point where getting everything I wanted would cost as much as a 35mm system or more, and so when the 35mm Canon 5d became available, I did the math and decided that I might as well buy the stuff that I actually wanted in the first place, and I could get both resolution, dynamic range, and the reduced depth of field that I wanted, all at the same time.
So, the reason why I used the four thirds gear was the same as the reason why Canon and Nikon users used their APS-C cameras at the time. It’s not that they wanted APS-C, it was that 35mm was beyond reach so they used what they could get for reasonable money. I’m sure some stayed with APS-C even when 35mm became ubiquitous, but I’m also sure that most upgraded to 35mm. It was just a normal thing in that phase of development of digital technology, where not all was there yet. This is why I don’t consider it a mistake; driving a 1980s car in 1980s wasn’t a mistake, it was just what everybody had back then. Yeah, a 1980s car didn’t have airbags, wasn’t anywhere near as safe as today’s cars, and didn’t have equipment that’s anywhere near today’s standards, but nobody says buying an Audi 80 in the 1980s was a mistake. It was a very good car by the standards of the era, but technology progressed significantly since. If I had to go back in time and pick a camera to buy, I’d buy that same Olympus set in a heartbeat. What I would likely not do, however, is buy my first digital camera, the Fuji S602. Sure, it was a learning experience about digital, but it was a completely wrong camera for me and didn’t fit my style, requirements or criteria at all. For something as expensive as it was, I would have been better off buying more film gear immediately, rather than later, but then again, if I didn’t get burned on early digital, would I be able to tell what the problems were? I don’t think so. I think everybody needed to get burned somewhere in order to know what’s not good for them, what needs to improve and so on. Still, I have one good photo with that early digital camera:
In fact, I had a film camera with a 50mm f/1.4 lens with me when I took it, and tried to take it with film gear, as well, and the depth of field was so much of an issue that the photos weren’t anywhere near this good. So, a camera that sucked for me in most ways turned out to be just right for taking this picture. If it helped me do that, and if it helped me learn about what the limitations of small sensor digital were, and helped me figure out what I wanted, was it really a mistake?
That’s why I say mistakes are a part of the learning process, and I’m not worried about them. Mistakes are a problem if you fail to learn, and fail to move on. They are a problem if you get stuck in them. A correct path is sometimes navigation between wrong choices, between not enough and too much, between what you know for sure you don’t want, and what you think you want until you try it and see it’s an overkill. It’s not just a photography thing, it’s a life thing.