Not a flame war. A legitimate lens comparison

golfhov wrote:

Seriously I had a legitimate question. It was poorly worded instead of "equivelant" I should use "equivalent perspective". I actually did learn that if you want a variety of lenses and are willing to use lenses with a deeper "depth of field equivalent perspective" there are some good options in samsung, M4/3 , and fuji. Less so in sony. These are lighter and often cheaper. They are not equivalent in perspective. That is not an insult just a fact. They do have size and price going for them.

I never wanted to get into a full on format war. Everyone knows that 110 wins hand down

Thanks to those that tried to help.

To all the people that took offense.......

I salute you for taking all the flak and taking them in great stride.  A lesser poster would have lost it by now ::thumbs-up::

Kudos too to those posters who kept this thread calm and informative.

The m43 is indeed an interesting platform.  Come over to the light side and addlightness to your gear

golfhov wrote:

Eric Nepean wrote:

golfhov wrote:

Glen Barrington wrote:

I think you got what you wanted.

Yes and no. I wanted to be sure I was right about one simple thing. Lenses and lenses only. Equivelant lenses. I did get the nice point that m43 and apsc both open up smaller less expensive lenses as long as someone is willong to forgo equivelant depth of feild. Instead opened up an ever persistent flame war.

Sigh

In my mind, your comparison misses the essential reasons for choosing an M43 system.

Was I comparing the entire system?

No, it seemed to me that the cost comparison you made was about even for three systems at least.

The reasons I chose, and stay, with M43 are

1) Smaller and larger camera bodies available that share the same lens system. Smaller camera does not necessarily imply lower quality sensor.

This is a great point. However it is not universal that sensor size correlates with a smaller camera. This would be a model by model comparison along with the various features

2) Camera bodies from different vendors with different feature set/evolution available that share the same lens system

M 4/3 definitely seems to win the variety discussion. The variety obviously does not matter if a system has the lenses you want. Samsung only has like 10 lenses. If those lenses are what you want it would be irrelevant

True, if you go in knowing exactly which lenses you need for a period of some years, it becomes a straightforward decision. My view was that my needs would change in unexpected ways as my life changed (but that I hated big and heavy), and as my skills and focus changed, and I wanted a system that was small and light and offered a variety of choices and enabled re-use as an alternative to replacement.

3) High quality lenses available for smaller sensor size

There are some great m4/3 lenses

4) High degree of compatibility with lenses from other systems, including 4/3 and Canon EF with full AF and AE

Are the canon ef lenses not compatible with practically every single mirorrless. ALong with a myriad of other non native lenses.

Yes this is partially a mirrorless vs DSLR value. (at the time I chose M43 it was the only mirrorless system, no longer the case). A myriad of lenses are mechanically compatible with any mirrorless system. This is nice (recently bought more FD glass) but more valuable and challenging is to find high functioning electronic compatibility. There have recently become available "electronic" EF to M43 adapters and speedboosters, and 4/3 lenses are electronically compatible with M43 cameras - the Panasonic ones, less well, with the Oly EM1 better than the 4/3 cameras.

5) Really good stabilization on most lenses

On every model? There are stabilized apsc and full frame also

For Panasonic lenses, any lens capable of >25mm focal length comes with good optical stabilization. e.g. 25mm F1.4 does not have OIS, 14-42, 12-32, do have OIS. (This OIS works well on any M43 camera) All Olympus cameras, and Panasonic GX7 and GX8, have in body stabilization for any lens, including 3rd party and out of system.

6) Possible to put together a reasonably high quality reasonably small system for affordable cost

Yes and no. The m4/3 seems to be the least expensive for the total package with native lenses depending on how you assemble your kit. These inexpensive lenses will not have the same look as the same aperture lenses from a larger sensor kit

M43 has some good inexpensive components, referring to IQ, function and durability. e.g. my kit for river tripping is my old G5, panny 14-45 and 45-150. Pretty good IQ, lightweight, compact, if the boat tips with my drybox open, I can replace the whole lot for <$1000. OTOH, I can share this with my EM1 and expensive lenses.

-- hide signature --

Eric
When the light is gone, the picture is gone ....

At the end of the day I am not saying there is anything wrong with m4/3. I was just looking at the stereotype that you can get smaller cheaper lenses as the sensor size decreases.

I think the stereotype that the lenses are cheaper is incorrect and misleading - I have never considered it so. Smaller - yes - partially because of shorter focal length. The high quality lenses are not cheap, but cost competitive with fullframe and lighter

Consider the Oly 12-40F2.8 at on sale today at $800 vs the the Canon 24-70 F4L $800 on sale. 600g vs 380g.

The big problem I see is new camera users do not understand this issue and they buy a system and cannot figure out why they cannot get any background separation on their 2.8 lens.

In the telephoto focal lengths you will get some background separation at F2.8, but not at wide. The 45 F1.8 is not expensive and will give good background separation.

ChuckTa wrote:

I believe you can also put together a Samsung NX lens set cheaper.

The price in Amazon for the trio Samsung NX 12-24mm, 30mm f2, 45mm f1.8 is pretty good. It is also the smallest size among the apsc cameras, its my default travelling lens.

I tried to throw samsung and M4/3 in the mix for fun. They are a lot harder to match up exact apples to apples. In almost every case these two lag behind the first three. In samsung case you do get smaller less expnsive lenses. M4/3 You are paying the same money and getting large lenses without the benefits. Anyone that reads this can feel free to edit it but now that there are five columns this can get messed up quickly.

Team Samsung reporting!

I own a cheap but effective NX1000 which came with an NX20-50 kit lens. In my opinion, having used it a fair bit and having studied all the lens reviews, this may be the best (and cheapest) kit lens in the mirrorless world.

Most of their other lenses are delightful too, including the 3 pancakes and the Samsung 85mm f/1.4 ED SSA NX. Ephotozine says:

"The sharpness this lens delivers is excellent, and although the price may be high when compared to other Samsung NX lenses, it isn't when compared to 85mm f/1.4 lenses from the likes of Nikon or Sony."

Roger and out.

addlightness wrote:

golfhov wrote:

Seriously I had a legitimate question. It was poorly worded instead of "equivelant" I should use "equivalent perspective". I actually did learn that if you want a variety of lenses and are willing to use lenses with a deeper "depth of field equivalent perspective" there are some good options in samsung, M4/3 , and fuji. Less so in sony. These are lighter and often cheaper. They are not equivalent in perspective. That is not an insult just a fact. They do have size and price going for them.

I never wanted to get into a full on format war. Everyone knows that 110 wins hand down

Thanks to those that tried to help.

To all the people that took offense.......

I salute you for taking all the flak and taking them in great stride. A lesser poster would have lost it by now ::thumbs-up::

Kudos too to those posters who kept this thread calm and informative.

The m43 is indeed an interesting platform. Come over to the light side and addlightness to your gear

thanks for the love. Inever said anything was wrong with mft. just trying to compare apples to apples

MatLD wrote:

As many have stated, this comparison is only useful for those which have the exact same needs, at that exact moment and with the availability of the gear and money.

I was just looking for the full understanding of a subject

Everyone has different needs and the compromise will be different each time. People come here and try to defend their gear choices, why they spent what money on what gear with rational reasons and thus flame wars start.

yes but if you look at everything I typed I am one of the few in this discussion that never mentioned what I own or think of others purchasing decisions. In fact when I do mention others decisions I always encourage them to buy what is best for them. They have to live with it not me.

Waste of time mostly: the comparison points will switch from user to user, with available discounts etc. Choice of gear is a lot more than just specifications.

I pointed that out from the very beginning that just because a lens has and another one has x that does not make them equal. Obviously different users will want different lenses and features. However when dof are similar that is where sizes and weights start to become very similar.

If you don't know what you want, m43 has lots of choices but if people spent as much time discussing photography instead of discussing gear, the flame wars on artistic points of views would be a lot more interesting for me to read.

Just wanted to make sure I understood everything I could. /my apologies for trying to increase my knowledge. I should have used slightly different terminology from the beginning. I also did actually learn something in the end. I learned something about the actual technology and that you should not ask anyone in the MFT to compare their equipment to other formats

MatLD wrote:

golfhov wrote:

MatLD wrote:

Everyone has different needs and the compromise will be different each time. People come here and try to defend their gear choices, why they spent what money on what gear with rational reasons and thus flame wars start.

yes but if you look at everything I typed I am one of the few in this discussion that never mentioned what I own or think of others purchasing decisions. In fact when I do mention others decisions I always encourage them to buy what is best for them. They have to live with it not me.

Well I'm not criticizing your posts, I'm just explaining why such debates do tend to start flame wars (maybe m43 is more prone to that kind of reaction, maybe not).

at this point I think I am just getting tired of defending myself

If you goal was to get information on the physics of lens design, you'd better start with a physics forum. If you want to explain prices, a business school book might be more appropriate.

Do they have a physics forum?

If the goal was to make a complete comparison with all the options possible for your requirements, well you maybe got the answers you wanted but not whithout some "collateral damage".

I said from the start it was a bad idea! In hindsight I should have been very careful with my wording