m43 lens and FE lens on APS-C body

I've been shooting with m43 gear in the past year also. Got an A6500 recently.

I am so used to shoot wide open with m43 lenses. On the Oly 25mm f1.8, sharpness doesn't seem to change much when stopping down. On the FE28 f2.0 lens, it seems that sharpness is not great wide open and it improves when stopping down.

Is this something that's normal?

If your camera was sitting on the table with image stabilization 'on'... you will end up with soft images.

On the first one, I think your focus is ever so slightly past the text. APS-C is a larger sensor than M43, so the focus plane will be slightly shallower. You may not be used to it yet. I haven't done the calculations, but I suspect that F/2 on APS-C will be a shallower focus plane than even F/1.8 on M43.

Also, were these both shot in RAW? Cameras' JPEG conversion may add different amounts of sharpening.

Shooting at f1.8 on a m4/3 sensor gives roughly the same depth of field (assuming distance to subject and focal length is the same) as f2.8 on APS-C which is what we see here in your examples. Check the backgrounds for similarities/differences.

As far as sharpness goes... in your examples, I find the Sony to be best... the EM1 to be worst. That doesn't mean this will always be the case in all scenarios but I am finding that in the examples you provided.

The Sony FE 28 f2 does have some lousy corners wide open especially when shot on a full-frame body (hey, it's a full-frame lens)... but the corners aren't too bad on APS-C. The center, however, is pretty good even wide open as we can see in these examples.

Also, as others have stated, not knowing what sort of sharpening or how much sharpening was applied to each is also a factor to the overall sharpness.

In short, the bigger the sensor, the better a lens must be and the closer the image gets to passing through the edges/corners of the glass. There are many advantages to shooting with larger sensors though and Sony has some of the best full-frame glass available. That being said, the 28f20, although quite good, is closer to the bottom end of the available Sony lenses. Considering its low price and available converters, it is a great value.

Patrick

All in raw. Just opened and exported in Lightroom. No sharpening.

Can a6500 miss focus? I am sure the focus point was on the text and it beeped. I left the camera on the table.

Had similar observation in another test. Wide open, center is sharper on m43 lenses.

For less than 500, it's hard to beat fe28.

I thought about e35, e24 and sigma e30. Since I got into Sony with the intent to get full frame later, I figured fe28 is the way to go. Sharper than e35, focus faster than sigma. Can use on full frame bodies and a lot cheaper than e24

It might not be the best, but I don't feel it's limiting me yet.