The compact rules once more...

I've lost track of how many times I hear someone mention that It's the photographer, not the camera, that makes the image. I think people have got a little overly used to hearing this too and it's a saying that might be in danger of loosing it's impact. However you'll have to excuse me for preaching this once again!





Without my tiny compact camera I'd have missed more shots as cool as this

This week my 17-85mm lens packed in: aperture flex ribbon problem - something that EF-S lenses seem to be plagued with. My heart sank as I've got quite a bit of travelling coming up and the 17-85 is on my must-have list for going away. I have since got the lens repaired (for a reasonable fee of £45 from APM Camera repairs in Newcastle) but during the week or so I was without it the North of England was blessed with some pretty awesome sunsets/rises, some of which were more spectacular than I've seen before (typical!) Since the 17-85 is also my go-to lens for shooting autumn woodland scenes I was fairly hacked to put it mildly. My 10-20 is too wide for everyday use and the 70-200 too long (plus about 1.5kg too heavy.)

As such my G12 was abused considerably. As usual it was a case of me treating the little gem like a measure of last resort, which considering I'm surprised by the quality it can spit out time after time, is unfair...and it put me in my place once again.

Over the last 10 days, the majority of my shots were made on the G12 and I've been more than happy with it taking over the role of my main workhorse camera. In fact it's not too much to say that I might even have produced some of my favourite images to date!

I guess the message here is (wait for it...) it's your mind that matters, not the camera you have in your hands. All it takes is a little faith and a willingness to drop your obsession with absolute quality: sure there is a bit more grain than I'm used to with my 7D and the slower burst rate meant I needed to rely on a surface in order to shoot images that overlap for exposure blending, but instead of thinking of your compact or even your smartphone as the "inferior camera you're stuck with" just use it as your camera..! You're a photographer, so go and make pictures using whatever means you can.

Once again the G12 showed up my "gear freak" tendencies and surpassed my expectations.

Have a good one folks and hope you're enjoying autumn as much as me! :)