Dark Or Light?

It's been years since I owned a silver-coloured camera - the last one was a Pentax MX in the 1970's. It was a superb compact film camera and one that i can readily recommend to anyone who encounters it in the S/H market. I noted at the time that even then, there were no silver chrome Pentax lenses to accompany it - they were all black.

Years passed, all the cameras were black until I hit the Hasselblad 500 C/M and 553 ELX era. Chrome bodies both of them, and I noted that this was a wiser choice - the black-painted Hasselblad bodies of the period nearly always seemed to wear poorly. I daresay they were all the same inside, but the chrome looked better.

Now we have the Nikon Df in silver or black. Also the Leica M cameras. also a number of the mirror-less Olympus, Fuji, and Panasonic cameras. In some cases there are lens option to match the body colour. I am shortly to acquire one of the Panasonic Lumix GX7 cameras and have asked for the silver version in both lens and body.

Why? I don't contemplate taking it into such high sunlight that the silver would be required to reflect heat from the body - indeed next month may well see the entire opposite for me in terms of climate.

Am I not afraid of appearing to be an " amateur " photographer? No, no a bit. I will be a travelling tourist photographer with it, and travelling where a tourist would attract less interest than a professional. I will be seen, but not, hopefully, as a threat to public order. Just a tourist.

Likewise the choice of lens for the front of it. Now you can get marvellous micro 4/3 lenses for the Panasonic cameras but if you put a big long one on there the people you point it at may take exception. Intrusive is as intrusive does, so I am going to pick the 20mm f:1.7 Lumix and just wander about harmlessly.

The results from it should be marvellous - I've tested the combination here in the shop. If you are going away for the Northern spring or summer you should call in here and see if the same idea will suit you.

Note: Unobtrusive clothing is a good idea too. Forget the camouflage gear - wear quiet colours in quiet locations and loud colours in tourist traps.

Printed messages on tee shirts also bear a little thought...I remember being behind a young Asian man in the checkout line at the old IKEA store in Scarborough Beach Road while he was wearing a tee shirt advertising the Waffen SS and it was all I could do not to welt him one with the table lamp I was buying. I suspect he was completely unconscious of what it all meant...