The Olympus E-P1 is a lovely little camera. It’s small, it’s light, it’s extraordinarily good-looking, it has great, almost DSLR-like image quality and with the Panasonic Lumix 20/1.7 pancake lens attached is the close-to-ideal allround camera.

Yet, the Leica M8 is stealing its show. Now that I have that M-Rokkor 28/2.8 on the M8, I get approximately the same field-of-view as with the Lumix on the E-P1. And the M8 is just sooo much more fun to use! Also, its output is miles ahead from that of the E-P1.

Since I’ve got the little M-Rokkor, the E-P1 is sitting on a shelf, collecting dust. Yup, even indoors in bad light I’ve been using the Rokkor at f/2.8 and ISO 2500 with shutterspeed down to 1/30 sec. Did I miss the E-P1 and the 20/1.7’s speed? Not once!

Okay, so here’s what I’m going to do. I’ll see for how long I’m going to be happy with the M8 alone. As I’m rarely ever using a tele lens (except for holidays), I actually don’t have much use for the E-P1, anyways. When my 50/1.5 Nokton arrives, I’ll also have a fast lens suitable for portraits and available light photography. The questions to ask will be: Can I live with only one camera? Do I need a fast wider-than-normal lens such as the Lumix 20/1.7? Do I need a tele lens such as the Lumix 45-200? Do I need an ultrawide lens such as the Olympus 9-18? Or could I make do with adding a 12/5.6 or 15/4.5 Voigtländer Heliar and a 90mm to my M8 kit? Depending on the outcome, I will have to consider whether I’ll be keeping the E-P1 or not, whether I’ll be keeping it all the lenses or with just one or two, whether I’ll be adding new lenses to my E-P1 or M8 setup, or both.

I’ll keep you posted!