No doubt this has been brought up before but ..i was wondering do you get to a point when you look at your pics knowing that its not perfect, you can see its a bit soft here or there, maybe a smaller aperture would have been better or maybe that other lens should have been used and you say to yourself , ""what the hell its good enough.
Yes. That was the case on the FF era... Photos some soft there and here but no matter.
It only matters when you shoot test charts or you buy new gear (fear of buying bad gear).
On this site we constantly pic photos apart saying its a bit soft here, or you should have used this aperture, or your lens might be a bad copy, but really the only person who needs to like it is the guy who took it. Can there ever be a perfect photo?
The perfect photograph is about timing and composition. It literally is nothing else.
It can be highest ISO value your camera can do, it can be clipping both ends same time half the frame but when you have the timing and framing nothing else matters.
In my experience any of my prints hanging on the walls of family and friend homes have never been criticized for being slightly out of focus or soft, all i get is hey thats a great shot can i have a copy. Seriously maybe it is a bit soft in some corner or maybe the focus point was slightly off, but when its viewed in print and by non photographers and public in general who like it does it matter
Im sure i have opened a hornets nest here lol.
I did open small hornet's nest by presenting the real world test made with the prints and then talking about the real world feedback and blind test results. The result was that no one could separate FF from APS-C and from m4/3 when all photos were taken with identical settings (not equal, but identical) with high ISO (3200 and 6400) in good (1/1250) and bad light (1") and printed larger than typical ones (20x15", 25" diagonal).
Prints were made on premium material and put a bet review through as random people casting their votes about best quality.
Regardless of the "inequal" settings, there is nothing to worry in m4/3 gear to produce top notch quality.
The only problem really is the mentality here at DPR about quality. Pixel peepers, and FF advocates spreading around the myths about 2 stops difference and shallow DOF requirements being the ultimate "end of all" and "clear difference" and causing bad things to new users or less experienced users that their gear "ain't good enough" like there would be something "inferior" in m4/3 mount system and all 4/3" sensor cameras without acknowledging or even understanding the real world limitations and requirements.
Behind a me is currently a 75" print, it occupies the wall such manner by its size that you can't even put a 65" television on the same wall as it is so dominative. You can not put even medium 4 person couch under it as it dominates the space.
In this room where I sit I could hang 5 of such prints by physical space, but they do not fit to the decoration and space as there are 9 doors and 7 windows and the whole decoration just doesn't accept multiple large prints. Instead I can have one huge print and then 31 prints in size of 20" to fit to decoration in this room.
And yet no one would look the 75" print closer than 2m, even when they sit straight under it. They always stand up and walk further to look such size print.
The 20" prints are looked from closer range, but not closer than about 40-50cm.
And at those distances and sizes the IQ difference is just so non-existing that you can not point prints and say by definition "That is taken with FF, that is with MF, that is 1"" and no one would do that at all unless they are interested to know the technique and method and see the difference by themselves.
The 99% of the time all discussion is always about the theme, the composition and timing and especially the story behind the photograph.
The same thing is not just modern photographs or ones taken in digital era. The same thing applies all the time of the photography. I can go and pick a any family photo album and point any photo and people would not care about clearly soft lens or grain or so. Even many flash first/second curtain exposures are accepted, but usually are just found to be "odd".
And then comes the pixel peepers, FF advocates (are they same?) that think that if there is a one pixel or twice more noise in a 75" print, it is simply bad or inferior!
This is reason why for most people Olympus 75-300mm Mk2 is more than good enough. Why Panasonic 100-400mm is as great as Olympus 300mm f/4.
Why it is useless to compare test charts for sharpness.
If you use test charts to find a dealigned lens or a sun to find the flaring problems (pana 7-14mm on oly body) that is a valid point to learn what you can do. But I have never read from here that someone would be doing test prints and hanging them on the wall for testing purpose how the camera really performs in real situations and then come back to say that the print looks bad on the wall because sharpness is below specific line of MTF chart.
