Help: I love M43 but on the edge

Eric Nepean wrote:

eBrain wrote:

First post; hopefully someone can help without getting into MFT vs FF war

I am long time MFT user and heavily invested in MFT gear......

We could make more useful comments with some photos with EXIF data.

But some of your kit is not useful for your stated purpose - The G5 sensor is outdated and lacks dynamic range for what you want, the Rokinin 7.5mm is too slow for indoor events, the 14-42 is too slow - all these I would sell for sure.

Absolutely right. My GX7 has much greater DR, which allows me to lift underexposed areas in low-light event shots by at least a full stop more than I could with my G3, G6 or GX1. GH4 should be as good in this regard.

As a side note, I'm a soon-to-be-former Aperture user checking out alternatives, and DXO Optics Pro 10's PRIME noise reduction is amazing. Some of the low-light noise challenges I've wrestled with at ISO 3200+ are about to go away. I mean, if I process my GX7 ISO 3200 images with DXO and downsample to the 8MP files I usually deliver (they're going straight to Web, after all), they look every bit as clean and detailed as RAWs from a Nikon D750 (a real low-light monster) processed in Aperture. This is really going to open some doors for me in using low ambient light when I don't need to print bigger than A2 (12"x18").

My Suggestions:

For BI, sports and good dynamic range and IQ consider the EM1 - with the latest firmware 3.0 has 10fps with phase detect autofocus and fast tracking this has good chance of getting your BIF images, and has really good dynamic range and sharpness, and good IBIS for your legacy lenses. The EM1 also gives you access to all the Oly 4/3 lenses with reasonably fast autofocus and some pretty fast glass.

Sell the GH4 to pay for the EM1. GH4 is great for video, costs 80% more than EM-1 and you aren't into video

With the exception of IBIS, the GH4 performs as well as the E-M1. Resolution and noise are comparable, and The Camera Store found it to (slightly) outperform the E-M1 at both single and continuous AF.

http://youtu.be/up8K_xd_iwU

As far as price goes, it's $1,399 (E-M1) vs. $1,498 (GH4) at B&H and $1000 vs $1200 on eBay. That's a price difference of 7%-20%, not 80%.

You will probably want the the Oly 75-300 or Panny 100-300 instead of the 45-200, and you will later have the option to move to the Oly 300mm F4.

The longer FL does seem more appropriate for birding. To be fair, none of these lenses are particularly good for this application, with small apertures and middling AF at the long end. Will we ever get an updated constant f4 long zoom?

Now for Bokeh and and indoor sports events , you may want more fast glass with autofocus. Panny 42.5mm F1.2 is blazing fast and excellent glass. Oly 75mm F1.8 is also stellar. Oly 45mm F1.8 is well thought of. But you may already have legacy lenses which will cover. The Oly 4/3 50mm F2 Macro is not expensive or large, and has been reviewed to give great IQ and focus performance on the EM1.

Voigtlander's f0.95 lenses look really intriguing as well. They're MF, but especially with wides the DoF and focus peaking should make manual focusing easy.

On the wide side, consider the 12-35/2.8 Panny or 12-40mm/F2.8 Oly as your zoom - considerably faster and better than the 14-42 kit zoom you have. A little short on background blur, but fast enough for event photograghy as long as its not sports AND dark

Yup. I shoot events with 12-35 f2.8, 35-100 f2.8, 20 f1.7 and 45 f1.8. And, I'm increasingly doing it with available light at ISO 1600 & 3200 rather than using flash.