Kids @ 17mm, 25mm etc. – Part 31

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If there is one large down side about owning multiple m4/3 camera bodies, it’s trying to decide which one to bring along for vacations when space and portability is premium. I’ll have to decide soon enough which two of the four m4/3 bodies – the E-M1, E-M5, GX85 and E-PL6 – will come on our June trip to Western Australia. The E-M1 is a given for certain and coming, since the 40-150mm f2.8 works better on that body than the others. For the other three, and particularly in reference to the trip’s requirements:

E-M5: EVF, uses the same battery as the E-M1, so I don’t have to bring a different set of batteries and chargers.

E-PL6: lovely styling, great touch-AF and release implementation, super portable, articulating screen for wefies. No EVF though.

GX85: USB charging so no additional charger needed, 4K video so that I don’t have to bring a camcorder, EVF for the more tricky shots.

I’m leaning towards the GX85. So of late, I’ve been putting the 12-40mm f2.8 (which will be also coming for the trip) with the GX85 to get use to its handling and if there are quirks I need to be mindful of. The below is a selection of pictures taken with the 12-40mm + GX85, all set to f2.8, multi-segment AF, and the last three also with the Meike-MK320 flash unit.

This one was a bit of a test shot to see if the GX85 will correctly detect AF points – our two kids at extreme edges, and not the persons in the center. The GX85 got it right for 7 out of 8 shots.
Keropok Conference with Grandparents (keropok = Malay for deep fried crackers). Mom does enough of these every now and then to fill up a couple of jars.
Peter has inherited the set of six Mickey Mouse Clubhouse pocket books from Hannah, and enjoys putting them together to form a picture puzzle. This BTW is just 15 minutes after he was disciplined for essentially not behaving himself over dinner. Guess boys at this age don’t get too hung-up over being punished for misdemeanors!
In large part that we wanted her to provide her an opportunity to buy responsibly, we let her use the first of the Popular store vouchers she received from her Edusave award to buy anything from the book store. She chose the set of coloring pencils here.

All in; the GX85 works well with the 12-40mm, though AF is still very slightly less blazing-fast compared to the same lens on the E-M1. Oddly too, several pictures in the series were registered with incorrect image rotations: basically, shots that were taken in normal landscape fashion were determined by the GX85 to be portrait instead. Not a killer by any measure since the photo just needs to be rotated 90 degree clockwise in edits, but still annoying.