Pondering Systems Yet Again

 

Fujifilm X-T2, 7Artisans 25mm f1.8

I've been thinking about a second body for a while now, what would work for me as a complement to the OM-1. This has me strugging with m43 again.

What do I want in a body split?

1 larger body, PASM style controls, beefy grip, good performance, good EVF

1 smaller body, PASM or traditional controls, can be lower performance but same basic IQ wanted, I want a good EVF though. 

I'd really like common lens/battery/cards across the two, with battery actually being the key item (I rarely change cards when shooting, and frankly I kind of want to be zoom primary on the larger body, prime primary on the smaller, although being able to cross-swap would be useful when hiking).

The OM-5 fails on batteries and EVF. The Panasonic lineup has mostly the same set of issues.

Fuji on the other hand offers the X-H2(s) bodies and X-T4/5 in this space, which all share the same battery, support UHS-II cards (the X-H2's also support CFE B cards)

The downside, in holding the Fuji bodies it's clear that Fuji still hasn't figured out buttons. Even the latest of their bodies still suffer from chiclet buttons, although they have improved a bit. Honestly I could live with that on the dial-based smaller camera, but not on the larger PASM body.

The other issue is that simply even the X-H2s isn't as capable a camera as the OM-1, despite a higher cost. VERY limited computational capabilities (high-res only really, and that requires post-processing on your PC), and the AF doesn't stand up either, as Fuji lacks a basic AF-C+Tracking option, which is the weakest mode on the OM-1, but is at least there. Subject recognition is better on the OM-1, it's also faster (50fps vs 40). Video is better on the Fuji side, but if I was video focused I'd be shooting a GH6, not an OM-1. 

I actually did box up my gear and head in to Henrys to look at Fuji options. This usually results in my coming home with a different camera, but this time the OM-1 came home with me. None of the options I looked at were as good as the OM-1 as a primary camera. 

The takeaway? I think I'm sticking with m43 for now, but I still need to figure out what I'm going to do for a backup/city camera to the OM-1. Who knows, maybe I'll just get an X-T series and some cheap manual focus primes and shoot Fuji in the city, OM System in the field.