Grainy photos (EM5 ii)

Joe Snow

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Hi all,

I was looking through websites to see the image quality I will get when I move to M43 system. But I found some pictures are grainy. even if the iso is 200 which is the lowest.

Any idea if this is what M43 results? or some settings on the camera needs to be changed?
 
Hi all,

I was looking through websites to see the image quality I will get when I move to M43 system. But I found some pictures are grainy. even if the iso is 200 which is the lowest.
Any idea if this is what M43 results? or some settings on the camera needs to be changed?
I hate to sound like a pedantic Luddite, but I'm making 24"x36" prints from my M43 cameras, exhibiting them, and have had NO objection to the image quality. Matter of fact, they are some of my most popular ever.

Many are stacked focus images, outside normal usage, but others are not. They aren't as grainless and finely detailed as the best I can get from my full frame Nikon, but in my personal universe, the final objective is the visual image, not what I use to get it.

I find that the OMD EM image stabilization allows long lens handheld photography under available light conditions I never would have even tried before.

BUT. Almost any camera is capable of far more than we ask it to do. The most critical bit of kit you have is your perception, your skill. That's why buying a Hasselblad or Leica never created in itself, a competent photographer.

These forums are mostly excellent resources, but it's the resource between your ears that you can develop and polish.

Apologies for pedagoguery, just trying to share over 50 years of thinking hard about all this.

Joe
Your reply is optimistic.

I didn't try any prints before with my photos. but I'm planning to. and I was afraid to have a bad image quality if I moved to MFT. Thanks for your reply :)
 
I used to do so with my 5N. but since I can't find RAW files on the internet for EM5 II Jpeg was the only option.
Appreciate your help and will have a look to websites.
No worries, happy that helps :-)

Here you can find RAW files :


Go near the bottom of the page and you'll find a "Sample RAW image section". You can download them and play with. Just make sure that you have a compatible RAW converter software.
 
Hi all,

I was looking through websites to see the image quality I will get when I move to M43 system. But I found some pictures are grainy. even if the iso is 200 which is the lowest.
Any idea if this is what M43 results? or some settings on the camera needs to be changed?
With EM5 II, which has the latest sensor in its second reiteration, you should be able to have about 1 stop of headroom in terms of highlight and shadow. Not as good as the top of the line APSC sensor, such as those in Nikon's D7200, which will give me 2 stops of head rooms. But the EM5 II should be more than enough for "most." However each person has different tolerance for noise and pp skills.
 
Those are JPEG. You can't recover much in JPEG, in any format (m4/3, APS-C and FF). RAW is the format to use if you want to recover shadows and highlights, and post-process your pictures.
I can't find RAW files on the internet for EM5 II Jpeg was the only option.
Those don't have to be from E-M5 II. Every recent Olympus has the same sensor (except E-M1) so IQ is nearly identical among them. And DPR has a lot of RAW files for download from E-PL7 in a sample gallery . There's even more for PEN-F , if you're interested what the newest 20mp sensor has to offer.

Plenty of RAWs from E-M5 II on IR as well .

Using JPEG images to judge things like noise or dynamic range is completely useless.
 
Your reply is optimistic.
I didn't try any prints before with my photos. but I'm planning to. and I was afraid to have a bad image quality if I moved to MFT. Thanks for your reply :)
If you plan to print at reasonable sizes and put them on your wall and have your friends and guests tell you what a great photographer you are, or share photos to social media and have people tell you what a great photographer you are you should be perfectly happy with m43. People love the quality of photos that come out of my little GM1. Prints big (e.g. 20"x30") and small look great. If, however, you're planning to blow them up really big on your monitor to peep closely at the pixels and worry how they stack up to "full frame" then you'll be better off looking elsewhere.
 
I'm not interested in full frame because of the size and price. I'm not a fan of legacy lenses and any sony FF lens would cost the price of 3 - 4 MFT lenses.
The only thing I will be missing with MFT is DoF. :(
Just get a couple of fast primes. The DOF achievable with an f/1.4 lens is the same as you get at f/1.8 with the 1.5 crop factor of the NEX 5N. The focus plane you get with something like the awesome 75mm f/1.8 is definitely shallow enough.

Have a look:





...and one that was shot with the 25mm f/1.8. Still some subject separation through DOF, though obviously not as much as in the above two images:



--
Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/glodjib/
Ello: https://ello.co/haslo
 

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