TrojMacReady

And again, IQ is more than noise in low light or for example edge sharpness or CA. You have a preference, others (such as myself and I don't see myself any less of a photographer because of that) might prefer getting shots that are practically impossible with short range lenses.

The quality of the lens remains to be seen, but my compact superzoom is sharp from edge to edge at the wider angles, distortion is corrected for and CA relatively low. The issues come into play at the longer end, but that's still better than not having that range.

It's a misconception that more zoom means less targeted at enthusiasts. For example, to get good background separation with any sensor smaller than an inch in anything but macro like closeups, you need lots of magnification. This is where these superzooms can help. Same goes for wildlife and sports photography in good light etc. or basically any type of spotting of subjects at medium to larger distances during everyday walkabouts/life.
Yes it usually means tradeoffs in lens speed and thus low light, but low light isn't the only factor of interest, see above.

Everything is relative. The resolution of the OLED panel is still higher than that from the LCD of the top of the line Canon 1D-X for example ( the camera LCD resolution is usually represented in amount of dots and every RGB pixel is built from multiple dots).

Decent up to about a factor 2.2x, according to the GSMArena battle between the 808 and older Galaxy Camera. Which is the equivalent of roughly 60mm (35mm format) vs 240mm in the case of the S4 Zoom. Apples and oranges when it comes to "reach".

@ Armandino:
No real progress in read noise and QE since the 20D that was announced 9 years ago. They sure like to take their time. ;)
In the meantime it's not just Sony that has shown improvements here (low ISO read noise improvements introduced in 2007..), but for example also Aptina and Toshiba.

To-it.

Electronic first curtain and microlenses can make a difference too. Just look at the 5DMKII and MKIII. Tiny difference in sensor resolution, quite a big difference in measured resolution.

They normally measure RAW data which isn't possible here. Curves, NR, colour profiles and sharpening.... a whole different beast to deal with.

The iPhone 5 is just over half a year old and is current generation. Maybe you're referring to future generation with regards to Apple.

What are "APS-C" photosites? That's a measure of sensor size and has zero to do with the size of photosites. Photosites come in all kinds of sizes, rather irrespective of format. And to underline that point, the photosites from the HTC One are no larger than those found in my 12 year old P&S.

Noise and DR for a given output size are in practise mostly related to sensor size, metering and processing, not the size of photosites.

Again, that is false. Of course it can be labeled a con because technology that has been on the market and technology that is currently on the market, proves there are alternatives, even when using an OVF.

Plus, it's not up to the reviewer to keep in mind what the possible solutions or limitations are. That's the responsibility of the camera maker when he's marketing the camera to be very useful with LV, highlighting it in adds and with the addition of a flip out screen. It's the responsibility of the reviewer to highlight practical flaws of technology and implementations used. And that's what Dpreview did.

" it's hardly used, particularly handheld, because DSLRs are too large to hold out of front of your face like a P&S. And switching from PDAF to less robust contrast detect AF makes little sense when you have an OVF."

I do it very often to utilize the benefits of good LV and a flexible screen. Think shooting from the hip, chest, above your head in crowds, up from ground level without getting dirty etc. Even one handed at times. It's too simplistic to dismiss LV for static MF work only when you haven't experienced fast and flexible LV enough. When entering dimly lit environments, LV and a fast lens gives a bright preview for easy shooting when your eyes need up to 20 minutes to see the same. Helped me a lot too.
I already mentioned the existence of on sensor PDAF too.

"LV is mostly thing to manual focus, hardly way to really shoot photos with dSLR, unless absolutely needed."

That's a chicken/egg case. It's hardly used because most implementations are severely lacking. For example in speed but also functionality (having to leave LV to change aperture for example). If you're not going to criticize it, it;s not going to get better.
At one point in time, AF existed in some cameras but was hardly used by most photographers. That didn't make it less useful when everyone was able to experience the expanded opportunities once the feature was introduced and more polished by all manufacturers. But let's not forget, that it was mostly dismissed as well when introduced.

As for how to improve, on sensor PDAF for one. There are already FF sensors with on sensor PDAF pixels.

Don't fully agree. My aging A500 is very fast in LV (just as fast as when using the OVF) and still qualifies as a DSLR. The same goes for the whole A3xx and A5xx series. None of which have PDAF pixels on the main sensor.

Nice shoot out and I appreciate the change of crops for the first comparison (left side with the trees seems overly soft on some of these, possibly a lens issue).

Interesting to see the auto ISO behavior too.

I wonder how much difference the scene settings make for the S4 in terms of contrast ans possibly even NR as I think the image would benefit if both were lowered a bit. Is there going to be a full review for the S4 soon?

Keywords: depth of field.
The OM-D like all ILC's, was tested with a much longer FL with a much larger distance to the subject. Add a smaller sensor and you have all the ingredients for DOF differences, which is why you shouldn't compare corners to conclude anything about lenses or cameras.

There's possibly a slight variance in focus point and field curvature at play too. The soon to be used test setup should eliminate most of the above factors.

An easy to understand analogy from Lars, yet so many seem to miss the point. The point being in general, that what we found perfect in the past, had a context. The context being the norm and stage of technology as a reference. Both are ever changing, as does what we feel fits our needs best. Experiencing change is the only way to know what you could be missing.

A shame, knowing that their own sensor can do so much better in terms of detail and even in low light. See the S4 (compare the Z and S4 at GSMArena). The S4 shows that with better processing, the 13 MP sensor can take much cleaner and still much more detailed pictures than the 8 MP sensor found in the S3. Which means that more MP isn't the real problem. Processing is.

One problem: buffering.
The 10MP sensor could do 60fps for... half a second. 14MP at 80fps is nearly twice the amount of data per second yet...

You're ripping my words out of context again. I said Exmor sensor allow you to shift a few stops extra to the highlights because they have low read noise. The reduction of bit depth you mentioned isn't a problem, relative to those Canon cameras because the noise (at equal levels) dithers the missing levels, which means the loss is invisible in practise. As the Fuji (Exmor) example shows.

Of course you don't do that with your Canon, because it will not work or work as well. That's exactly the point here. Not being able to "pul"l highlights more than 2 stops is part of the point too. You said you can pull highlights when exposing to the right, I say that's a severely limited option in high DR scenes that span well over 11 stops of DR (which they often do) and not wanting a dark exposure. You say exposing for the brighter parts in that case makes a mess in shadows, I say that's not true for Exmor sensors.

The examples posted sofar (including 7D vs D7000 comparison), back up my claims.