Owing to back, wrist, and shoulder problems, I've been looking for solutions to lighten my kit. After much research and agonizing, I decided to take the plunge with a Panasonic Lumix G3, a mirrorless micro 4/3 camera. To commit myself to making the switch, this was the only camera I brought with me for the family's long vacation to Maui. Having now shot more than 3,000 photos with it, I absolutely love the camera.

It is very lightweight but handles like an SLR. Every aspect of the image is under the user's control. Moreover, the kit lenses for this camera are incredibly versatile and useful. The autofocus is fast, accurate, and silent. The IQ is quite good, not up to the same standard as a Canon L lens, but very comparable to many of Canon's non-L offerings. While the IQ cannot compete in terms of the bokeh of my Canon 100mm macro lens or the speed of my f/1.4 Canon 50mm lens, the G3 and its kit lenses can produce some darn fine images. All of my Maui series this year were shot using these lenses.

The amazing thing is the versatility of this system. With kit that, in total, weighs only about 1 pound, I can cover 28mm - 600mm (full-frame equivalent)--everything from landscapes, to bird shots, to macros. I have yet to come to a shot that I could conceive of but not execute owing to equipment limitations. But best of all, I'm not in pain at the end of a photo shoot.

One limitation that is hard to get used to is the electronic viewfinder (EVF). The price you pay for going mirrorless is that optical viewfinders are not possible since this is no obstructed path from the lens to the back of the camera.

One solution to this problem is to use the display screen as the viewfinder. For those coming to micro 4/3 from point and shoot land, I suspect this will be the go-to option. Coming from SLRs, I prefer to shoot using a viewfinder rather than a display screen, but the resolution of the EVF does not compare to the optical viewfinder of an SLR. The EVF is fine for composition, but does not render colors accurately and really struggles with action. Still, it is quite usable. Indeed, one of the key reasons I chose the G3 over other offerings, including the many Olympus offerings, was the presence of an integrated EVF. (You can buy an EVF to mount on the hotshoe of the Olympus models for an extra $200, but this is far from ideal.) It also has the added benefit of dramatically extended battery life--I get about 400 images to a charge, which is very similar to what I get from an SLR.