Some shots with E-M1+40-150 & D810+70-200

jim stirling wrote:

alatchin wrote:

The downsizing was mainly to demonstrate the advantages of higher mp counts , my main hope for the next round of mFT . I am looking forward to seeing if the 40mp trick is practical. The higher mp count of the D810 works in two ways firstly it gives excellent detail and DR at low ISO , secondly by downsizing and taking advantage of the extra detail for more flexible RAW processing { NR etc} at high ISO.

No, you actually showed sensor sizes and you were speaking about image quality... But the comparisons you were making were due to pixel counts and you were showing it by cherry picking the bodies you chose to show.

I own the D810 and I had the E-M1 now I have the GH4 and GX7 and when I become a man of leisure , the Pentax 645z looks very tempting . The samples I linked to showed the differences in image quality as you moved up the sensor size , differences which are painfully obvious and come as no surprise. Compared to the Phase one my D810 looks like

Moving up in IQ depends on a lot of factors, and while resolution and sensor size is one, as I showed in my previous post it can be deceptive. The A7 vs the EM1 is a good example where sony hasn't got the handle on noise like Nikon... or Canons current crop of sensors which doesnt perform to the level of Sonys technology.

Sur I wouldn't mind a Pentax, in fact their pricing has me window shopping from time to time... Especially as much of mu product world really only needs 2 lenses for 90%, one of which doubles well as a portrait lens.

Reply to below.. I was on a tripod, why would I need ISO 3200?

I have zero experience of Canon DSLR'S but looking at a straight comparison between the Canon 6D and E-M5 both at 3200 there is a very significant difference.

Hmmm, tell me Jim, Why 3200? Why not base ISO, ISO 200, 400, 800 etc?

I was talking about downsizing and the advantages of a higher MP count and in response to your statement " I have shot the (EDIT) 6D with 24-70 (mk1) set on a tripod alongside my EM5 and the differences were marginal at best"

obvious ?

Here is base ISO:

Base ISO again:

At base ISO in non challenging lighting the same argument could be made for the cameras with the Sony 1" sensor which is a lot closer to mFT than mFT is to FF. As a predominately low ISO shooter I am quite surprised just how good my FZ1000 looks at base ISO . I have never owned a superzoom but the FZ1000 is a bag of fun the 4k video from it to my admittedly inexperienced video eye, looks neck and neck up to around 1600ISO

Many cameras look good at base ISO. But the closeness stretches beyond base ISO, and is very camera maker dependent.

And ISOs for equivalent light on the sensor, in other words we want the same DoF becau

otherwise they are different images, and the same shutterspeed or images may be blurry etc.

Presumably what we "want" is sufficient DOF and shutter speed for our subject in hand. Whether or not it is equivalent to another format we are not using is pretty irrelevant.

Marginal Jim, marginal at best. And where we want equivalent images in many working environments the EM5 looks a hair better... And has better DR, better Colour handling etc. when using equivalent ISOs.

Here is an example of a working environment. 2 doctors doing a surgery on a racehorse. Here I do not want to isolate in any extreme way as one doctor will be in focus and the other fuzzy... I have a limited space to move in and want to show the anesthesiologist in the background as well... Here is a perfect high ISO example where a bigger sensor size would have had relatively little benefit generally speaking.

That is a real cool photo, I hadn't initially noticed the horses head and my first thought was that the patient must be a real big guy :-). More importantly was the horse OK ?

Amazingly enough, the horse stood up right after the surgery (which was on both knees), with the help of the client who invited me to shoot the surgeries (who is a specialist in horse recovery).

F2, ISO 2500, 1/60SS on my EM5 would have been

F4 ISO 10000 (ish) 1/60 on a D6

I didnt want a slower shutterspeed as everyone was shifting around, The more I opened up the fuzzier the doctor in the background would become, as would the horses head.

Sure its possible to pick a scenario { low light, near static subject where you need deep DOF} the only scenario where worst case scenario the best FF will give the same DOF , AOV and total light as the best mFT. The 6D would have had some leeway in post due to the higher MP count, obviously not as much as the 36mp cameras.

Very little leeway, especially shooting landscape. 36mp does have more flexibility, but as the sensors are generally a bit noisier at 100% what you tend to pull back with the NR and scaling leaves you ahead... but not by as much as many seem to suggest.

Though in this close tight space scenario I would simply have used a wider angle lens on the FF thus increasing the DOF at any given aperture enabling the use of a lower aperture and thus lower ISO

For this framing you couldn't, unless you want the doctors smaller. There was 2 things in front of me in this shot, a sterilized tray of tools I could not touch, and some hanging ventilation tubes/pipes.

Even I could have stopped down to f1.4 if I wanted to save the noise... The issue was I couldn't get in too close for contamination issues as well as just being a pest

No real advantage to a larger sensor.

That depends but as I have posted several times the , deep DOF ,low light, static or near static situation is the one major area where mFT can compete with most FF .Change any of the variables and FF wins . In the end they are just tools with their own pros and cons.

Again this is explained wrong. Really where FF wins is when you can exchange DoF for Noise performance, OR if you are using one of only 2 36mp FF bodies on the market... One of which has a limted lens suite, the other is large, heavy and expensive (comparatively speaking).

I agree, they are just tools, and as I have mentioned, I have been very interested in Sony's efforts, but the zeiss 35mm f2.8 lens is only 2/3rds of a stop faster than the 17mm f1.8 and I dont feel like spending thousands of dollars for 2/3rds of a stop Then I have owned a FF and m43rds setup, and ended up ploughing tousands of dollars into each system because I wanted a 50 in each system, and a 35, and a macro etc etc.

For me mFT wins when traveling or when I want an inconspicuous set up { parties , socializing etc } and while the D810 is capable of very decent video it has to be bolted to a tripod and has many limitations compared to my GH4. Video has to my surprise became a major interest , I was a long time meber of the who the heck needs video in a still camera club, oh well times change

I haven't spent as much time on video as I would have liked, aside form a few things for a friend who was running for office... but I really should pay more attention, the money in video trumps most photography budgets... But the real advantage of m43rds for me lies int he workflow advantages. Little things like a touch screen live view with easy magnify and a tilting screen make careful focus very very easy... The short flange means I have been using a Kippon T&S with a 50mm OM 3.5 macro with superb results, and I am now using it with a 100mm OM macro (a 200mm FoV tilt and shift) and getting some very decent results... Just that flexibility, portability and potential (video etc). This sensor shift will take care of any resolution issues if implemented right.

I could just as easily place the A7s bank note vs a jpeg from the Nokia 41mp Camera Phone... A pointless strawman post. There is a lot more to image quality than sensor size on system cameras, resolution is only one metric... But cherry picking...

Resolution is a vital factor both for low ISO detail shooters { my interest } and for the high ISO guys the more data you have to play with the more flexible the end results. We have a great selection of lenses at our disposal for mFT , I cannot see why anyone would not want more mp, storage is dirt cheap. The 40mp trick is the single most interesting update of the EM511

Well it has guaranteed my purchase as for my product work it would be perfect. And in fact having a 16mp general camera and a 40mp product/landscape/still life/ interiors etc. camera would be pretty darned cool.

I love landscape photography and for the more out of the way locations ,those mountains I love to wander about seem get higher each year :-). It would be nice to have a truly lightweight option that was able to deliver good high res images. I bought the A7r as a lightweight alternative to my D810 for these situations but by the time I mounted my Nikon glass on it spread over a typical camera bag { couple of lenses , spare batteries etc] the weight savings were not exactly huge.

I also never quite took to the A7R as a serious tool I was shooting the E-M1 at the time and every time I went back to the A7r , other than the image quality which is very good,a lot of little things annoyed me about it. I drifted back to my D810 for nearly all my FF shooting reserving the A7r for shooting with its native primes with the 35mm F/2.8 it is a pretty compact outfit and the 55mm is a superb performer.

It was the D800 that kept putting me off getting the 40mp pentax, they were just too close in IQ at the time... and now we have a 50mp Pentax, alongside a 40mp potential sensorshift...

After hopping systems a bit, I decided to keep to one, I have tossed away a lot of money for the touted IQ advantages of the larger sensor and discovered (with Sony's A900) how useful live view was when I didnt have it... Or how often limited using shallow DoF can be in day to day practice, and therefore hos small the larger sensor advantage is.

But hey, everyone has different needs, the legion of wedding photographers would disagree with me.