Can I still come to the Group Shoots if I'm not shooting a dSLR?

I need to stay away from Sam, it winds up costing me way too much money every time I see him. At the last few group shoots Sam had his Panasonic GF-1 with the Panasonic 20 f/1.7 Pancake lens. At lunch after our trip to the Mission he let me take a few shots with it, and I was impressed. Of course, we also all know about the fireworks shot he got with it on July 4th. Since I shoot only jpeg, and also wanted a slightly wider field of view, I went with the Olympus version instead, the Pen E-P2, with the Olympus 17 f/2.8 Pancake lens. Basically the same camera, but with different ergonomics and a few different features, including an in-body image stabilizer like the Pentax dSLR. The 4/3 system sensor is a little smaller than the APS-C sensor in my Pentax dSLR, the crop factor is 2x, making this the rough equivalent field of view of a 35 mm lens on film, which is one of my favorites for a walking-around nothing-in-particular lens. I'll start out by saying that this won't be replacing my Pentax dSLR, but there are times when the much smaller camera will be really nice to have. Here it is by itself, and sitting next to a Pentax K7 with Pentax 21 f/3.2 lens (which looks bigger than it really is with the hood on). The field of view of these two set ups is pretty close, the Pentax being just a bit wider.

So, enough pictures of the camera, how does it handle and shoot? Pretty well, actually. I was worried that without a viewfinder it would be difficult to compose shots, but so far that has not been the case. The autofocus is certainly slower than the dSLR, but it sure is accurate. Manual focus is available, and the magnified view is nice, but for my type shooting it's pretty cumbersome. The lens focuses by wire, and there is no way to see where infinity focus is, or any sort of distance scale. I have figured out an easy way to set the hyperfocal distance for f/8.0 when I want to, which makes it very fast to shoot.

Here is a shot taken in one of the museums in Old Town, it is a heavy crop, mostly to see how it would hold up to cropping. The full image follows for comparison. Not bad for f/4.5 at 1/20, ISO 800.

Full version of the same image, all that was done was the crop.

I find this little camera works great for something to just have around when you don't want to carry a lot of weight or bulk. The Pattern Metering system and Autofocus are amazingly accurate, and for my taste, even the Auto White Balance works the way I want it to. Here's a handheld low light shot in a restaurant, at f/3.5 at 1/8, ISO 800. Sure there is blur of the people, but the Image Stablizer does work to keep the camera steady. I like the way it handles the mix of lighting.

Even Calli the cat finds it intriguing.

Just for fun, to see how it handled, here is one of the Coronado Ferry, handheld, f/3.2 at 1/10, ISO 800. That boat is moving a bit, by the way, which does contribute to the blur.

Here is pretty much the same shot taken with the Pentax K7 at the same settings, also handheld, just to see how they compared in this really non-scientific comparison. The Pentax had the 21 Pancake lens, for just about the same field of view.

This thing does pretty well outdoors in bright light as well. Focused on the lilies, 1/250 at f/9.0, ISO 200.

Here are 2 more taken today in the San Diego Museum of Art. This is the first type of compact digital I've found that does what I consider to be a half-way decent job in low light. There is almost no shutter or focus lag, and even though I was worried about not being able to hold it steady without a viewfinder to press against my face, it seems to work. This first one is heavily cropped (and straightened a bit), 1/25 at f/3.5 ISO 400.

1/8 at f/2.8 ISO 500. The added depth of field from the smaller sensor is not always a bad thing.

 All in all I would say that one of these little cameras, the Olympus or Panasonic, would make a great addition for most of us here. There are lots of times when a dSLR is just too big, and a compact or point & shoot just doesn't cut it.  I've put up a SmugMug gallery with all sorts of stuff shot over the last week or so that I've had this thing, you can click here to see it.