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Olympus E-PM2: Small Camera, Big Surprise

Started Jul 23, 2014 | Discussions thread
veroman Veteran Member • Posts: 4,904
Re: Olympus E-PM2: Small Camera, Big Surprise

Klarno wrote:

... The truth about ISO is, it's almost meaningless for digital image capture, a muddled standard trying to adapt the chemistry of film to the physics of sensors, and it's more concerned about JPEG brightness level and it doesn't actually have anything to do with the sensitivity of digital sensors or the way images are captured.

Exactly right.  It took me awhile to realize that each of my cameras' ISO performance had to be learned from body-to-body and that there's really no such thing as a "true" ISO setting in the digital age.

While the DXO measurements are somewhat helpful, they do need to be taken with a grain of salt.  Someday this will all get straightened out.  ISO 400 will be ISO 400 on all cameras, regardless of sensor size and other factors.  In the meantime, it's pretty much a mess.  Best to simply learn and accept how your particular cameras perform at their various ISO settings.

As far as the E-PM2 goes ... as well as the other Olympus cameras with the newer 16MP sensor ... I never thought I'd see the day when a small sensor like 4:3 would render so cleanly at ISO 3200 (even if it is really "only" ISO 1600).

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