I'm interested in the D800, simply as a benchmark of excellence - the size, weight and cost of FF makes it an irrelevant dinosaur in all other respects... to a photography enthusiast, not a working pro of course.
Can't say I agree with that.Not as a sweeping generalisation about 'photography enthusiasts' as a whole as you seem to have done. If you had chosen 'mostly uncaring, casual snapper', then it probably would have been correct, however the term 'enthusiast' implies someone who's enthusiastic about cameras and the performance, handling and results that a conventional FF camera gives you is still leagues ahead of MFT in many, many areas.
...except the essential areas of portability (even 'wearability') and being unobtrusive. As a photography enthusiast, being able to live with a camera nearby without freaking out your subjects (friends, family etc) is a major feature.
This kind of comment always interests and puzzles me, because I have a bit of a photo gear fetish, and I can't say my friends or family have ever been freaked out by any of my cameras, from a 35mm film P&S to a film SLR to a digital P&S to a bridge cam to four thirds consumer DSLRs to four thirds pro cameras with battery grips to a Nikon D2H and D700 ... and now a G2 and NEX3. If anything, the bigger the camera, the more interested they are in being photographed by it or in having me shoot their kids or pets with it! This has been true in both Japan and the U.S.
In my experience, the only time DSLRs have sort of failed as social cameras is when I've handed them over to someone to take a picture of
me. Most people these days don't seem to understand that you have to look through the little hole instead of framing with the back LCD! It's also a bit of a pain explaining how to focus, as I usually have the AF assigned to another button. Some people are put off by the size and weight of an SLR, but these are usually people who are not interested in cameras to begin with. Probably just as many others are excited to try their hand at shooting with a big "pro" camera.
Sure, MFT is fantastic as a lightweight option, but everyone is kidding themselves if you don't accept that you're making (sometimes large) compromises in other areas.
Where do you see the compromise being made? current m4/3rds IQ is not a limitation, neither is AF speed.
Oh, I think there are definitely limitations, particularly if you shoot moving subjects. Improvements have been made in the AF, and MFT is usable and even fast in more and more situations, but you can't look at just the camera body. You have to take the system as a whole, and the current MFT lens choices for action shooters are paltry at best. Where's the MFT body that can track moving subjects with the 150/2, 35-100/2, 90-250/2.8, 300/2.8, or even 50-200? Will we
ever see similar fast telephoto lenses made for the MFT format?
Action shooters also need good noise performance, and again, four thirds has been making strides in this area as well, but it's still not even close to being on par with something like the D800, if that's the benchmark you want to use. In fact, I've seen a lot of E-M5 images that make me wince compared even to the output from my ancient D700. I'm not talking ISO 25600 but as low as ISO 400 and sometimes even lower. The fault may be with the user's exposure and processing, as many or most MFT low-ISO images look fine, but I'm struggling to think of an everyday scenario where I could screw up badly enough to make a low- to mid-ISO D700 image look noisy at web size.
That's not a slam against the four thirds format, it's just a fact of life that there are always going to be situations in which a smaller sensor is going to struggle compared to a larger one. For most people, it's worth the tradeoff in size/weight, which is the "compromise" Ga was talking about, but the fact that most people rarely run up against the relative limitations doesn't mean they don't exist. That's why FF is still very far from being "an irrelevant dinosaur," even for a lot of enthusiasts.
Julie
