100-300 vs. 50-200+1.4TC: surprised!

luisflorit wrote:

Anders W wrote:

luisflorit wrote:

AV Janus wrote:

Because it is a bit grainy. You can see it in all the fine color trasitions and darker single color frame parts.
I see it on my EM5 as well.
If you want perfect studio quality smoothness you must brushit with a de-noise brush
Its irritating for some spetial shots. Urrelevant for most. But it there. M43 curse.

It's not just a sensor size thing. It is noisier at base ISO than my E5, that also has a 2x crop factor. Of course, it has more resolution, so you could blame that. Still, much better high ISO than my E5, what is strange due to the lower IQ at base ISO. I confess I don't understand why, I just know it is noisy.

If it is noisier than your E-5 at base ISO, even if comparing on a per-pixel basis rather than at equal resolution, there is something wrong. Although I don't know the E-5, I know both sensors. I have a G1 (E-5 sensor), an E-M5, and an E-M1, and the last two are miles ahead at any ISO. Don't have anything but uninteresting test pictures to offer from the E-M1 yet. But do you see much in the way of noise here?

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/53777038

I observed it mostly in landscapes shots, in large even areas (not necessarily deep shadows, but also not so dark areas). Skies are noisier, too.

This is with the E-M5 rather than the E-M1. But do you see much in the way of sky noise here? And I couldn't go all that far with exposure in this case since the scene is counterlit (sun lurking behind a tree) and I didn't want to clip any highlights.

To be fair, I would rather say that the noise is "different". There is more absolute grain in the EM1, but it is finer, and doesn't bother me. But sharpening brings it up.

You should sharpen less as the pixel count goes up. Sharpening brings out noise badly with LR if you go beyond default. I am now using Focus Magic to deal with that. It does a better job than LR with sharpening. Normally, LR default is enough for me. But sometimes I want more.

You are a much better bird photographer than I am (I am just dabbling in this department) and these are nothing to write home about. But I think they demonstrate pretty well what the E-M5 (and I am sure the E-M1) with the 100-300 can do, technically speaking (both available at 100 percent).

Next sunny day I will take a shot for you to see what I mean (cannot take a shot with my E5 since my 12-60 is dead).

Good. Looking forward to that.

OTOH, my E5 was nailed at ISO500, since anything above that was too noisy for my taste. And yesterday I took several ok ISO2500 shots with my EM1 (like the toucan I posted), and even one usable ISO4000.

Yes, it's a big difference in how far you can go.