GH1 m4/3 vs 4/3 --- Good Portrait Lens

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I am getting interested in the GH1 because of its small size and HD video capability.

The major compromise appear to be in low light and capability to produce nice portrait with narrow DOF.

I just recently realized that the GH1 is a micro 4/3 vs 4/3...
Can someone explain the difference.

Does this mean that the following lens will not fully work or might work with an adaptor and possibly feature loss?

Panasonic Standard 25mm f/1.4 Leica D Summilux Aspherical Lens for Four Thirds System

Any other recommendation for a portrait/bright lens?

Will the GH1be available "Body Only"?

Thanks

BRIEFLY

Any NON-m4/3 lens must be adapted to work on the G1/GH1. This includes regular 4/3 lenses such as the Pan/Leica 25mm f1.4.

Compatibility of 4/3 lenses on m4/3 is listed here:
http://panasonic.jp/support/global/cs/dsc/connect/g1.html

In addition to Panasonic's 4/3 to m4/3 adapter (DMW-MA1) there are adapters (or combinations of adapters) to put MANY different legacy lenses on the G1. These lenses will be manual focus only. A list of adapters follows:
http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dx428wg_10fdvsmtd7

Considering the 2x crop factor of the 4/3 and m4/3 formats, a 'conventional' focal length for portraits would be a bit longer than 25mm -- say, between 35mm and 55mm (70-110mm in full frame 35mm). There are a great many options for a good, adapted lens in this range, but none that autofocus.

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John.
http://www.pbase.com/burnettjn

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Thanks for the info on adaptors.

I do not currently own any legacy lens.
For special applications, I can also see many reasons to use those adaptors.

Since the two main reasons for my recent great interest for the m4/3 are size and video, I would like to see a native m4/3 bright standard lens.
Somewhere between 25-30mm and at least f1.8.

A super wide would get me also interested in investing in optics.

It is my understanding that it would be easy to design a super-wide zoom on such a format.

I just cannot wait to see the full review on the GH1 considering the good review the G1 had and what appears to be a major improvement on the low light performance of the GH-1.

There is also a pancake 20mm f1.7 in the roadmap

Anything you place below the two dashes in your post will not be searchable. What Jonas B. meant is that if you look around pana forum here, a good 20% (don't quote that) of threads are exactly about your discussion. So by investing an hour you would get answers, i understand your excitement about the system though...

As you might know already: except the 14-45 lens, 45-200, and the new 'kit' on GH1, the pana and oly lenses for 4/3, will work through pana's adapter that sells for 175(about), with auto focus, and optical in lens stabilization, g1/gh1 don't stabilze in body. (dmw-ma1 - is the adapter, your leica is listed here, to work with this adapter:

http://www.panasonic.net/avc/lumix/systemcamera/gms/g1/optional_accessories.html )

the older lenses that are adaptable will not have auto focus/ or stabilization. at least for now.

I do mostly portraits so decided to purchase a 50mm (which is 100mm on g1/gh1) f1.4, canon fd mount lens through keh.com. very affordable around 50-100$. Requires canon fd to g1 adapter, found at 75 - 175$ on ebay, or cameraquest.com.

List of all g1/gh1 adapters to lense:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dx428wg_1ca0fdvsmtd7

Possibility of great wide??? do not forget crop factor of 2, This means any lens that has a focal length of say 50mm, will perform on g1/gh1 as a 100mm. so if you pay 1000$ for a great 14mm wide, it will give you a focal length of 28mm. So i decided for now to stick around with the kit (14mm). There is a 7-14mm f4 coming very soon:

http://www.panasonic.net/avc/lumix/systemcamera/gms/lens/index.html (again this will give you 14 - 28).

the 'kit' gh1 lens is optimized for video, on a few threads here, i'll try not to be your search engine as jonas stated, many find it 'softer' than the g1 kit, however smoother and 'quieter' for video.

my thread on which lens system better on a very tight budget, has a great explanation by more experienced people:
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1033&message=31729444

bbrault said:

I would like to see a native m4/3 bright standard
lens.
Somewhere between 25-30mm and at least f1.8.

Click to expand...

Micro 4/3 is a BRAND NEW FORMAT; a consideration for purchasers is the current lack of 'native' lenses. Panasonic have announced a 20mm f1.7 and 45mm f2.8 macro (probably late fall of this year). Olympus will likely have some lens announcements whenever they debut their own take on m4/3.

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John.
http://www.pbase.com/burnettjn

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Thanks

This is very interesting 20mm will be great for general use and 1.7 very respectable.

This could possibly give me the nice bokeh I have been looking for provided it stays sharp wide open.

I do not know anything about pancake lens other than they are very thin and have been around for a long time. I will research them

Do you have any interesting links on this?
Any ideas on a release date?

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Thanks for the feedback.

I only started posting on dpreview a few days ago and I did not know anything about the two dashes. I was actually wondering what they were doing there.
I do all my search on google. I will start searching the forum directly.

As Jonas stated on a different post, it would be much simpler and easier if there a dedicated 4/3 forum.

• olympus lenses as long as you don't mind manual focus, such as OM 50 mm 1.8 , which apparently is quite good, I have 50mm 1.4 which I haven't yet tried for portraits , you will still need an OM to 4/3 adapter, but they are cheap & easy to get on-line....good luck. RonS

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bbrault said:

As Jonas stated on a different post, it would be much simpler and
easier if there a dedicated 4/3 forum.

Click to expand...

I second that, although IMO, it would be easier for me at least to have a m4/3 forum, this way everyone is happy, I understand it's only the g1/gh1 so far, but the amount of threads....

bbrault said:

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Thanks
This is very interesting 20mm will be great for general use and 1.7
very respectable.
This could possibly give me the nice bokeh I have been looking for
provided it stays sharp wide open.

Click to expand...

If you are looking for a portrait lens, I don't think the 20/1.7 will be right for you. It's too wide for most portraits. You should look for something longer.

There is a plethora of of 50mm fast legacy lens out there.
With the 2X crop factor, that becomes 100mm. Perfect zone.
Get one and an adapter.

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Indeed 20(40) is short for portrait but its the only m4/3 native bright lens on the horizon.

I wonder is the Olympus / Panasonic m4/3 will be interchangeable, autofocus and alll.

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Thanks
I looks like my best option indeed.

I understand that I will loose autofocus and I wonder if focusing on an electronic viewfinder will be difficult? What about exposure, will that be manual as well?
Since I do not have any legacy lens, any advice on what would work best.

The 45mm f2.8 OIS macro in the roadmap is not bright enough ?

Of course. It wouldn't be much of a system if they weren't compatible.

The only thing is that Olympus will most likely prefer in-body image stabilization, while Panasonic will stick to their in-lens solution. Which means Panny owners demanding this feature will have to steer clear of Olympus lenses.

bbrault said:

I wonder is the Olympus / Panasonic m4/3 will be interchangeable,
autofocus and alll.

Click to expand...

The EVF on the G1 is so good, as well as the LCD for manual focus that I almost never even use the zooming function (which is also very nice BTW). I currently have an old Minolta 50mm (100 eq) F1.4 lens + adapters and I am having more fun with that than the auto-focus lenses.

You can easily see your focus on the EVF. Even better you compose with DOF on these lenses, something they never did on their old bodies!

I would venture a guess that with a very narrow DOF on fast glass, auto-focus is counter-productive for the most part. It will focus on your active point, but doesn't really let you compose, guessing for you.

See my Picasa link below for some examples
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My pictures...
http://picasaweb.google.com/wymanfamily3
http://www.markwyman.com/photos/default.asp

It would be difficult to beat the Canon FD 50mm f1.4. A top quality lens at a bargain basement price (under $100), that works well with the G1.

http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/companies/canon/fdresources/fdlenses/50mm.htm#f1.4

Focusing is straightforward. What you see is what you get.

As for the white balance and everything else, I sometimes get cold colors, but saving RAW, the end result becomes just fine.

I personally got good results with the Jupiter-3 f1.5/50. With the m39 adapter and both item's SH fees, I paid about $160. Perfectly fine lens.

I got a couple other soviet lens, the one that let me down is the Tair-11 which focus way beyond infinity Until I manage to do something with it, divine intervention maybe, I can only get focus to the infinity

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Excellent question!

Call me greedy, I want it all (no quite) and I am willing to pay for it (not quite either)

I want HD autofocus video and I want exceptional pictures and I have $2.5K to spend.

I have no doubt that m4/3 can deliver both except possibly for nice portrait bokeh.

The left side of my brain has been using Autocad and I actually traced light rays from virtual objects standing at 30-15-7-3-1 meters away from "perfect" virtual lens 50 and 100 mm long... Zooming around the virtual sensor plane it is easy to see that irrelevant of sensor size, the out-of-focus light cones exponentially diminish in relative size as you go from 100mm down to a 25mm lens. There does not seem to be any way to compensate for this other than with aperture.

It just boils down to plain physics.

I am almost convinced that to get a nice portrait bokeh on a m4/3, with a 40-50 mm lens (unless I am willing to take the shot from next door) I need at least f1.4

The right side of brain simply cannot comment without seeing actual pictures with nice background artistic blurs... and please do not show it macro shots or my left side will start laughing at my right side again for considering a 4/3.