I really wish I could be showing you great images from our exciting trip to Morocco, but … it hasn’t happened yet. We don’t leave for another four days. So I need to fill the airtime with stuff like how many socks I’m bringing, or whether 24.5 megapixels is enough resolution for a camera. And I added the image above, which has nothing to do with Morocco but is pretty nice, don’t you think?

Feel free to skip this. Or read it and wonder just where on the OCD spectrum I lie.

Okay, cameras. If you’ve read any of the other trip blogs, you came across a post or two that talk about my camera strategy for that trip. This has evolved over time for a number of reasons:

1. Camera technology has evolved (dramatically)

2. My photography style, interest and skills have evolved over time (also dramatically)

3. The trips have been different, with different photographic requirements

Since our first big trip in 2012, camera manufacturers have packed more and more capability into their digital cameras. The ability of the camera sensor to capture more light accurately has improved to unimaginable levels. Mobile phones have achieved quality and ease-of-use levels that surpass most “point and shoot” cameras of the past, and have driven them from the market.

My photographic interests have changed as well. When I first got into it seriously, I was mostly interested in landscape photography. Which was helpful given that our first really big trip was a tour of the western national parks. Our last two trips, and my last several photography workshops have either had a strong street and people photography emphasis, or been exclusively in that vein.

So let’s cut to the chase – what’s the story this time?

For the last 11 years, I’ve been using mostly Olympus “micro four-thirds” cameras (with a few Panasonic ones mixed in). I moved to this line because the cameras, and especially the lenses, were materially smaller than the Nikon products I had been using. And I couldn’t detect any quality difference between the two sets of cameras. Both took great pictures, both were convenient for me to use.

Over the last several years, Nikon and the other major manufacturers adopted the technology that Olympus and Panasonic had pioneered, which did away with the complexity and size of the mirror and prism in each camera to enable you to see the image through the viewfinder, and replaced with with a tiny electronic viewfinder. This technology is cleverly called “mirrorless”. It pretty much eliminated the size advantage Olympus had with the camera bodies, but not for the lenses.

At the same time, the sensor technology that drives the ability of the camera to capture light had developed tremendously. Unfortunately, Olympus (1) and Panasonic have only ever had a tiny market share; the market is dominated by Canon, Sony and Nikon. So Olympus has been unable to benefit as much as the bigger manufacturers from the improved technology.

An inherent advantage from a pure technology basis is that the sensor used by Nikon (and the other majors) is four times the size of the one used by Olympus. So the sensor can capture four times as much light, thus allowing it to capture better images in lower ambient light than the smaller, “cropped” sensors. As a corollary, the lenses used for these larger, or “full frame” sensors, need to be larger to project an image that fills the larger sensors. Larger, and heavier.

I had the opportunity to try Nikon’s latest offering, the Nikon Zf camera, on the first day it was shipped in the US this month (2). After taking a few pictures with that camera and comparing it to my trusty Olympus E-M1 Mark III, I was sold. The image quality difference blew me away.

If you read any (credible) articles or watch any vlogs about how and when to buy a new camera, they make a few consistent points:

1. Never buy a newly announced product, as it almost certainly has bugs (these are computers with lenses, after all)

2. Never buy a new camera just before an important photography event, such as a major trip. You won’t have time to learn how to use it properly.

Obviously, I didn’t read or watch any of those. Because I have decided to take this camera which is brand new to the market, which is from a different manufacturer than I have used, and has a very different set of controls than I’ve used in 11 years, on our trip to Morocco. Perhaps as my only “real” camera.

I will definitely take my iPhone 14, which has one of the best mobile phone cameras ever made. And which is vastly superior to the cameras I took on any number of trips we made prior to about 2005, when I bought my first digital Nikon camera. So if the new Nikon fails me, I’m confident I can take very good pictures with my phone. In fact, I’m sure I will use the phone to take pictures on this trip. When I post them on this blog, you will most likely not be able to tell if it is an iPhone or a Nikon picture (3).

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(1) Olympus Corporation sold their camera business in October 2020 to a private equity firm which continues to operate it under the name OM Digital Systems. I’m using the name “Olympus” to refer to the business and products both before and after the sale. Their rate of product improvement has been dismal.

(2) I had the opportunity because I ordered one the day it was announced in September, expecting that I might cancel the order before they actually shipped at the end of October. Imagine my surprise when I got a delivery notice from FedEx on October 12 that it was on the truck headed for my house.

(3) I do believe that the iPhone is an excellent camera. However, in taking the picture of the camera above, I first tried using my iPhone 14. It’s very dim out today, and with the flash, the image looked garish. Without the flash, it was terribly noisy and blurry. So the image above was taken with my Olympus camera. Of course, I then had to go through the trouble of getting the picture from the camera into my iPad to write this post, whereas the iPhone picture automatically showed up.