It has become clear in the last couple of months that L-mount is not in my future for bird-chasing. The more practical lens options are in other mounts. Too, one begins to wonder what—if anything—will happen with the alliance moving forward. The Lumix S 70-300mm, announced a year ago, has yet to appear in stock at any of the online stores I use.
Adding m43 to the arsenal was a positive step after repeated useless purchases in an effort to shoehorn some decent long glass onto the SL2. And being able to head outdoors with quality reach at between 1.6 and 2.2kg makes an hours-long stroll a lot more pleasant.
When I head out with the SL2 and just the 50 ‘lux-SL, that one focal length option puts me well over two kilograms. Compare that to the M10R and any 50 ‘lux-M, which add up to less than half that weight.
The M system has been around for ages and isn’t likely to dead end the way the R system did some years back. The main reason I stopped using M gear was in the hope that L-mount would finally offer me a chance to be a one-system photographer, something I no longer believe to be possible. So why not migrate back to M for shooting short?
“Crop to zoom” is a great concept, but the limits of even Leica’s fantastic optics too often fall short of what’s needed. No longer applying “crop” to pixels, the next thing left for me to crop is weight.
E-M1 II/300mm f/4 Pro