Happy President’s Day 2017

Today’s Post by Joe Farace

For blog readers who live outside of the USA, President’s Day is a holiday celebrated on the third Monday in February in honor of George Washington, the first President of the United States, who was born on February 22, 1732.

While widely known as President’s Day it’s an excuse to remember all presidents, not just George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, whose birthday is February 12’th. The day is a holiday in many states with some celebrating Washington and our third president Thomas Jefferson, whose birthday is April 13, but not Lincoln.

What brings to my mind the question of what kind of mirrorless cameras would these presidents use if they we’re alive today. Washington was known for his wisdom, judgment, courage on the battlefield, dignity and of course his honesty. There’s that whole cherry tree thing… He would, of course, be shooting with an Olympus.

All you have to do is look at all the recent Olympus cameras, especially the Pen-F, Heck they even named it after a real camera and it sorta kinda looks like a film camera. The film Pen F used a 18×24mm film format that’s pretty close to Micro Four-thirds 18×13.5mm format.

Lincoln was a hat guy and was known as The Great Emancipator although history has shown that he was actually slowly drawn to that position. Instead I prefer to think of him as The Great Pragmatist. That’s why I think he would shoot a Fujifilm X-T2— isn’t it time they dropped the whole “film” from their name? It looks like a real camera and uses an 24.3 megapixel APS-C format chip that sits comfortably in the middle between full frame DSLRs and Micro Four-thirds.

I’ll confess that Jefferson is a personal hero of mine, partially because he was a Renaissance man who invested his time with new ways of thinking. That’s why I think he would love a Lumix G85 because every new model of Panasonic’s cameras seems to goes off in a different direction. Look at the previous G series camera and the only thing they have in common is G on the front and the lens mount. Like Jefferson, Panasonic is always looking for new ways of doing things—look at the GH5—even if they drive us all crazy doing it.

Note: In the list of cameras above, Joe has no axe to rind as you can tell by the list of cameras he owns (both Olympus and Panasonic) as well as Canon SLRs. He holds true to the old sixties axiom—different strokes for different folks—and thinks people should shoot whether they like and can afford.