Alas, for it is in so many ways a sweet little camera. But a couple days using it divulged some critical flaws:

First and foremost, it eats batteries. It burned through a set of expensive CR2s in the first four rolls. So I put in a new set, different brand — and they went dead in the middle of the third roll. Minimal flash use, autofocus, reasonably warm weather. Nothing strenuous. I could get a battery grip and use AAs, but then the camera loses one of its great charms: Its small size.

Next, the exposure data imprinting feature doesn’t really work with Tri-X. The numbers are there, on the film margins, but they are so overexposed that they can barely be read, if at all, with a magnifying glass and a great effort. Apparently the feature doesn’t work for all films, as the manual notes.

Finally, the fact that the MZ-S doesn’t deal well with current lenses that don’t have aperture rings was more irritating than I expected. You can use the 70/2.4 Limited, for example, but only in program mode or shutter priority mode. Weird. What you want with that lens is aperture priority.

So I’m back to square one on the impossible dream: To reduce the amount of camera gear I own to a bare but productive minimum.

Here’s what I would like in a single system. The ability to shoot film as well as digital with the same lenses. That essentially means full frame digital. I thought Pentax, with its broad lens compatibility, would be a good approximation, even though they don’t have FF. But to have the lens coverage I want with Pentax really just means two sets of lenses. That’s what I’m trying to get away from.

The cost, though, is high to move to full frame because the bodies are so expensive. I probably don’t need a 5D or D700, as much as I might enjoy them. And they’re heavy.

But there is a certain attraction to the idea of a basic system with a 5D/EOS3 or D700/F100 and a small set of lenses useful on both bodies.

What I hope to do is get back to taking pictures and not think about any of this for six months.