Entropius

For that price you could get an E-M5 and a whole bunch of lenses that are a lot faster than f/6.whatever...

Are they, though?

I have an old book on nature photography, back in the film days. It specifically advises against getting a 50 f/1.2 lens, saying that "how often are you really going to use that last stop, anyway? That's not enough depth of field. Save your money."

Now we have immeasurably better high ISO performance; very fast apertures aren't as crucial as they once were. I do wish Olympus made faster telephoto glass (something faster than f/5.6!), but for shorter focal lengths there is a slew of excellent f/1.8 or f/1.4 primes, and a few f/0.95 things if you really need speed (although at that point you ought to go fullframe, as you say). These give you the equivalent of f/3.6 or f/2.8 on fullframe in both depth of field and noise performance. Is that good enough? For many people, yes -- it's worth the lighter weight, smaller size, and lower cost of m4/3 (plus, if you're trying to handhold in low light, m4/3 has IBIS!)

Olympus has never been at the bleeding edge of that sort of technology -- ultimately they are a optics company first, a camera company second, and a computer company a distant third.

The price will come down -- I really don't see why you'd want one of these over an E-M5.

In-body image stabilization.

For many years Olympus has done image stabilization by wiggling the sensor around instead of glass elements in the lens. By all accounts it works quite well: I have an older E-510, and have some quite lovely pictures of an ibis taken with the aid of IBIS.

That help?

What exactly about the Four Thirds sensor format makes it unsuitable for serious photography?

I've shot sunspots with a 400mm, actually :)

Lensrentals did an interesting test comparing digiscoping to dedicated supertele lenses; the verdict was that digiscoping did remarkably well for the cost but that when it comes to clarity and contrast, it's not in the same league as real lenses. Digiscoping will get you a picture from far away when nothing else for the price will, though.

With bird photography, the real trick is figuring out how to get close. Some of the best bird shots (of herons and the like) I've seen were done with a 50-200mm zoom.

The camera I've got in my backpack has peeling rubber and the writing is wearing off. It's an ugly lump with an an ugly lens on the front (at the moment, the ZD 35/3.5 macro). Yet it takes lovely images, and *those* are what I am enthusiastic about and whose appearance matters to me, not the camera itself.

While you're saying that Olympus cameras "try and fail", there are people running around taking fantastic images with them despite their quirks. People also shot great stuff on (gasp) ISO 25 Kodachrome.

Micro Four Thirds lenses are a *lot* smaller.

The 45 f/1.8 is a superb portrait lens, and you can lose it in the sofa. The 14/2.5 is a good wideangle prime, and the 20/1.7 is very good; both are *tiny*.

The failure of the Oly mini-DSLR's was mostly due to Olympus' marketing fail rather than anything wrong with the product. The E-410 and 420 didn't sell that well because the 510 and 520, with a little bigger body and with (very good) IBIS, came out alongside them. The E-620 (the next version), with an only slightly larger body but IBIS, a bigger viewfinder, and a 12MP sensor, had a fair bit of success, at least compared to the under-marketed Four Thirds line as a whole.

I've still got an E-510 in my pack -- it takes lovely images.

I have shots from my E-510 (same sensor as the 410) at ISO 800 (and even pushed 2/3 stop in post) printed 16x20 that look great. Yeah, the sensor is ancient and not so good, but it's not that bad, either.

So Canon just invented the E-410. Cool!

I wonder -- the file sizes should be smaller in 1.3x crop mode. How much will this increase the buffer length?

What I'd love from Olympus, honestly: pretty much any new DSLR with the E-M5 sensor and a quality AF system, along with a 300 f/4 SWD lens.

sdyue: Sensors don't see in binocular vision, why should viewfinders?

I don't need a viewfinder to tell me what the world looks like to me; I have eyeballs for that. I want a viewfinder to tell me what it looks like to my camera.

Roger Cicala also understands the optics and mathematics well enough to write very competently about the technical things.

Not being lazy and actually reading a real review, assuming someone will write one :)

There are a lot more things to a lens's performance than a one-dimensional measurement. What does this scheme make of a lens like the Panasonic 14/2.5, which is extremely sharp but has high chromatic aberration? What about the Canon 70-200/2.8 mk1 at 200/2.8, which has poor microcontrast but resolves a good amount of detail? The high sharpness and resolution, but bizarre bokeh, of the Zuiko 50-200?

What about a classic lens like my Olympus OM 50/1.8, which is surprisingly highly-resolving wide open in the middle of the frame (great for portraits) but without the high acutance of modern asphericals, and with a strong dropoff in sharpness toward the edge?

There's a whole lot more to a lens's performance than one number. That's why the old DPReview lens reviews were great, with the little checkerboards: you can see for yourself what the point spread function at different places in the frame is.

How many AF points is less important than how accurate and surefooted they are...