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It's the lens, stupid!!!
- Thread starter Lee Jay
- Start date
Michael Barker
Senior Member
If Futureshop, Best Buy, or whatever store that is, wants to sell the compact cameras, they need to take them off those tethers so you can feel the weight difference.
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Taken with recent gear:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelbarkowski/sets/72157626671237011/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelbarkowski/sets/72157625018860596/
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Taken with recent gear:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelbarkowski/sets/72157626671237011/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelbarkowski/sets/72157625018860596/
Oh, I did huh?No, you compared a M4/3 do 2 compacts, not to a DSLR. Do your homework
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1018&message=38790542
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Lee Jay
(see profile for equipment)
That's nice. It was 97° here yesterday. Think I was wearing a jacket?
I don't notice the difference between a Rebel + kit lens and a 5D + 70-200/2.8 when over my shoulder. It's still something I have to carry versus something I have to wear.
Only a stop huh? You know how much people will pay for a stop (think full-frame versus crop or f/2.8 zooms versus f/4 zooms)?
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Lee Jay
(see profile for equipment)
I've felt the weight difference. It was minor. The difference between a full water bottle and a water bottle after I've taken a drink.
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Lee Jay
(see profile for equipment)
copejorg1
Senior Member
Compared to carrying my 30 pound 2-year-old when she's asleep (which I've done for as much as 2 hours), both are essentially zero.ROFL!
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Lee Jay
(see profile for equipment)
copejorg1
Senior Member
And a 30-pound toddler weigh essentially zero when compared to those 80-pound sacks of cement I was lugging around during my last remodeling project.Compared to carrying my 30 pound 2-year-old when she's asleep (which I've done for as much as 2 hours), both are essentially zero.ROFL!
There -- I one-upped your irrelevant one-upmanship with something even more irrelevant (but admittedly not by much). I'm sure you'll win out eventually if we keep this going back and forth, as you're obviously quite good at it (this whole thread is proof positive of that). But at least I took one round.
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Greg
But isn't it irrelevant? All these cameras weigh very little compared to other things we carry around without a second thought. My daughter's diaper bag weighs more than both of my SLRs with their biggest lenses together . My saxophone weighs 9 pounds in its case. My golf bag weighs about 25 pounds and I carry that around a course for 5 hours.And a 30-pound toddler weigh essentially zero when compared to those 80-pound sacks of cement I was lugging around during my last remodeling project.Compared to carrying my 30 pound 2-year-old when she's asleep (which I've done for as much as 2 hours), both are essentially zero.ROFL!
There -- I one-upped your irrelevant one-upmanship with something even more irrelevant (but admittedly not by much). I'm sure you'll win out eventually if we keep this going back and forth, as you're obviously quite good at it (this whole thread is proof positive of that). But at least I took one round.
That's why there's no difference to me if a camera weighs 700g, 900g or 1500g. They're all something I have to carry and none of them have significant weight. Now, if it fits in my pocket, then it's something I get to wear instead and that does make a difference because it's not taking up a hand, shoulder or other spot I might want to use to carry something else, and it's not swinging around all the time.
That's why there are only two sizes of cameras that matter to me - pocketable and NOT pocketable. Once I'm carrying it anyway, I want it to fit my hands well and be powerful (like my 5D). Saving a few grams or a few millimeters here and there is irrelevant.
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Lee Jay
(see profile for equipment)
Michael Barker
Senior Member
There is a big difference between "never pocketable" (K-7 + 31mm f1.8) and "usually somewhat pocketable" (NX100 + 30mm f2).
There's also a huge difference between 500g and 900g on your neck.
IMHO.
Compactness is not just for style. It's for living with.
--
Taken with recent gear:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelbarkowski/sets/72157626671237011/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelbarkowski/sets/72157625018860596/
I can understand that for people that are not able-bodied. For regular able-bodied adults, that should be nothing, at least with a decent strap. 400g? Sheesh - that's nothing! Wear a saxophone around your neck for a few hours with a crappy strap.
I couldn't care less about style, and as for living with, fitting the size and shape of my hands is much more important that a few hundred grams. I got extreme pain from using a Rebel for an hour, but I can use my 5D all day with no problems.
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Lee Jay
(see profile for equipment)
Michael Barker
Senior Member
On the subject of 400g ... 400g is nothing. 400g is compact. At a certain weight between 400g and 50 kg, the weight on the neck strap becomes cumbersome.
baby bobcat: LX5: 270g
baby wolf: NX100 + 30mm f2: 450g
baby tiger: K-7 + 31mm f1.8: 1.1 kg
baby hippo: alto sax: 5 kg
(weights include battery, memory card, reed & mouthpiece)
--
Taken with recent gear:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelbarkowski/sets/72157626671237011/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelbarkowski/sets/72157625018860596/
With Optech straps, it's not uncommon at all for me to carry 5D+24-105L+580EX and 20D+70-200/2.8L IS+580EX for up to 12 hours at a time without any pain at all. I start to feel it when I get up to around 8 hours with 30 pounds on good straps.
Of course, with bad (narrow, hard) straps, you can feel a lot of pain much earlier with lighter weights, but that's solvable - get better straps.
Before you assume, I'm a little guy that's out-of-shape since I haven't worked out since my kids were born.
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Lee Jay
(see profile for equipment)
Gary Leland
Well-known member
With all respect to the OP. This could have been called "its the stupid thread". This was pretty much a waste of my time to follow. What were we supposed to have gained out of reading this? I see an awful lot of pointless argument in these forums now. It has not always been so, has it? I'm not trying to be smart, or nasty, but many of the responses here seemed to have way too much ego above the signature line. Yes I have an ego too, but I try to keep it somewhat low key. If this is too blunt, I ask your forgiveness.
We are all entitled to an opinion. Opinions are based on our experiences. Our opinions always seem more valid because they are formed from our experience and not someone else's. But almost every opinion has some validity somewhere. Hence I can learn from other opinions, whose experience has been different then mine. But the hairs being split here are way to fine and meaningless for my taste. Just my 2 cents.
Kind regards to all my fellow posters.
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Gary Leland
We are all entitled to an opinion. Opinions are based on our experiences. Our opinions always seem more valid because they are formed from our experience and not someone else's. But almost every opinion has some validity somewhere. Hence I can learn from other opinions, whose experience has been different then mine. But the hairs being split here are way to fine and meaningless for my taste. Just my 2 cents.
Kind regards to all my fellow posters.
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Gary Leland
PaulRivers
Veteran Member
lol, what are we supposed to gain out of your response? You're complaining that not everyone is agreeing? Well - yes.
Actually yes, it's always been this way. And frankly, this is actually very civil and reserved compared to the old school flamewars like "film vs digital".
Good luck.
No, I'm serious - sure, I'd like to everyone agree on actual facts to, but it just doesn't seem to happen. If you've been on the forum for a while then you'll have seen the m43rds crowd over and over again make outrageous claims about how much smaller their cameras supposedly are than a dslr, despite evidence to the contrary. After a while it's just really irritating and blatantly false which is I'm sure what motivated the OP to create the thread.
I can't tell you how many times I've seen a pic posted with a dslr body compared to a m43rds body and no lens and that this is "proof" that m43rds is way smaller, when obviously if they're ever used a camera they know it needs a lens and that adds substantial size.
My one gripe with the OP is that he posted a pic vs a m43rds camera with the lens extended, as that's completely irrelevant. The only relevant size we care about it how big the cameras are when the camera is off (but with a lens on it).
lol what is you're saying is "Gosh guys, stop arguing, can't we all be happy and get along?"
The problem is that people do come here for information, and some things like camera size are not a matter of "experience". The cameras are a certain size. Whether the size difference matters to you is a matter of opinion and experience, but the amount of size difference is not.
Some opinions are actually more valid than others. But others aren't...trying to figure out which is which is, indeed and unfortunately, contentious.
You know, I'm 100% sure I would agree with you in some ways. The question would be, which opinions are we splitting hairs over? lol And that's where things start to get contentious...
Martin Datzinger
Senior Member
That is new to me. I can't imagine what is more to destroy in a senor camrea with shutter than in a film camera with shutter, but if you say that is the way it is, it's certainly true.I thought you weren't supposed to retract the collapsing lenses on an M8/9 because they damage the shutter and sensor?Why? Leica says, you can, even with a sensor area 4 times bigger than m4/3 and lenses mostly a fair bit brighter and generally better (and of course 10x more expensive
Anyway, the point that I failed to bring across is that to my understanding M-lenses tend to have their rear element inside the body, which they can, because there is no mirror.
Of course someone will now come up with this ray incidence angle theory.
But if you know you can use such a design to your advantage in terms of compactness why not design a new system to it. There are already cameras with microlenses precisely arranged for that purpose.
Well the EPL-3 is 37mm deep, as is the M9. It is 120mm wide, so I give you those 20mm. And it is 65mm high, but at that state it doesn't have a device to show you what you're actually taking pictures of. The M9 on the other hand has such a thin, a viewfinder, which even zooms, at 80mm height. Put a viewfinder on the EPL-3 and you're at, don't know, 90mm height? A hundred maybe? And then it is still electronic, which I hate, but at least it is a really good electronic one. Expensive, too.
Factor in sizes of equivalent FLs and apertures (not that lenses that bright even exist in m4/3 land) and I wouldn't be surised if you end up with the M9 being by far more compact in the end.
M lenses on m4/3. Yeah. First you pay between 1k an 8k for lenses on the wide to normal end of the spectrum, known for fantastic corner performance and then you throw exactly that away. Thank you, I'll pass.
Now by no means I'm a Leica fan. Far from it. After reading the above resentment, guess what I think about the M8. And living a couple of tram stations away from the place where they regularly set world records for used camera prices, 99% of which are Leicas, guess what I think about the cult in general.
But if there is a new camera system that mainly claims compactness, I'd like to see ideas that allow that point to be delivered. Making a body so small you can't operate it and slap a whopping big lens on it isn't that kind of idea. But that is exactly the idiocy that is happening in hybrid land, just look at Sony. So I salute the OP for the title he has given to his thread.
Man, at least they could make the primes collapsible. At one point in my life I had a medium format rangefinder that I remember to be more compact with it's lens folded than any M4/3 with any lens on it. I think it was a Kodak 66 Model III, but forgive me, I was 7 or 8 back then. The thing had a sensor 16 times the area of a 4/3 one!
Kind regards,
Martin
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http://www.datzinger.net
Andy Crowe
Senior Member
I've read warnings not to retract old lenses into the newer M bodies. I think it's because the metal focal plane shutter is rigid and sits further forward compared to the cloth shutter in old film models.
Rear elements can be recessed in m4/3, the C-Mount adapter and the pinwide pinhole lens recess a few mm into the body, but there needs to be enough clearance from the shutter. Recessed rear elements only really benefit retrofocal wide angle lenses anyway.
I was thinking of the GF2, which is a fair bit smaller in every dimension.
The M9 viewfinder certainly doesn't zoom and can't be used for reviewing images on. A better comparison would be the Fuji X100 hybrid viewfinder, but again the Fuji is bigger than the GF2, and with a smaller LCD screen.
Panasonic are rumoured to be working on an L1 style m4/3 body, so that may have a built in viewfinder a bit more like the X100.
I'm certain my GF2 + 40mm f1.4 is a fair bit smaller than an M9 with a ~ 80m f2.8
I got the rather good Voigtlander 40mm f1.4 for just £300. m4/3 isn't much good if you want a wide lens, but because of the pixel density central sharpness is very important, so a fast normal lens that's sharp wide open becomes a very useful bright short tele / portrait lens.
I agree that zoom lenses don't make much sense on these systems for day to day use. The Olympus collapsible zooms make the best of it, but I still think primes make for much better general carry-round lenses.
Where would it go? There's no space in a modern camera to collapse a whole lens into the body. If you look at the m4/3 mount there isn't much space before you hit the data pins and shutter, it's no-where near deep enough to collapse a lens into.
Old cameras were collapsible because they were relatively simple, your Kodak could fold up because it only had a small f4.5 lens with a leaf shutter, the camera body was pretty much just empty space. Looking at photos of it I reckon my GF2+14mm lens would be around the same depth, and a lot shorter and narrower.
Martin Datzinger
Senior Member
Michael Barker
Senior Member
I sincerely appreciate the intention of this post, however, I don't think this discussion is meaningless. Rather than splitting hairs, I think we are circling around some difficult ideas about what we really want as digital camera consumers, which is after all a primary theme of this forum.
These things deserve discussion amongst consumers who are discerning and can think for themselves, especially in this day and age where products are so often categorized, labelled and fed to us with a spoon.
--
Taken with recent gear:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelbarkowski/sets/72157626671237011/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelbarkowski/sets/72157625018860596/
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