After nearly six months without a camera, after my Nikon D40 was stolen from our Hotel room in Ibiza, I have finally splashed out and bought a replacement. I was not looking for a full DSLR, but something more portable yet still in the pro-sumer space. A good friend of mine Hamish had been using a Canon G10, which took great photos and was nice and sturdy and the new Canon G12 10MP

model looked very appealing.

I had heard a little on the Micro Four Thirds system and I felt this probably offered me a little more longevity than a standard portable. The other cameras that peaked my interest in this space were the Sigma DP2

, the Olympus PEN E-PL1

, the Sony NEX5

and the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1

.

I began comparing these cameras on various review sites and weighing up the cost, features, megapixels and image quality. After a while I was more confused and felt no closer to a decision. Then I remembered the Flickr camera finder which allows you to search all the photos on Flickr by their EXIF data. I was able to view the types of photos that people were actually taking with these cameras. This made things much easier and now one camera stood out as more than all the others their users took the kind of pictures I like to take.

and the winner is…

Now I’m off to shoot some pictures, I’ll return with my first impressions soon.