My experiences with micro four thirds

I like the shots but I'm curious, why did you need so much sharpening? They are 1/2500 or faster and at fairly low ISO, they should have been pretty sharp to begin with.

horsth wrote:

Get you a Olympus EM-1, a Panasonic GX-8 or GH4 and your "problem" is solved. Always the same nonsense. Before buying a new camera, one should study all available, necessary information, especially coming from a DSLR.

One tries a cam that seems reasonable, find out it is not to your liking after extensive (1 year) use and move on to something that suits you much better. There are no "shoulds", there are options.

You should also read my latest entry....

I have to admit that I didn't read his entry completely the first time. I see, at last he bought the camera(GX8) that fulfills his requirements. One of my options . Nevertheless it makes still sense what I wrote, at least in my opinion. With more knowledge(gathered information) he could have achieved this in the first place. It was obvious, that the E-M10 was not what he required. No PDAF, no DfD. CDAF-only meant fairly restricted subject-tracking possibility. The E-M1(PDAF) exists for 2 years. The GH4(DfD) since 2014. Nobody is stomped to the ground here. We all make mistakes of course. But one-year tests are expensive in the long run.

Brian Isaman wrote:

I like the shots but I'm curious, why did you need so much sharpening? They are 1/2500 or faster and at fairly low ISO, they should have been pretty sharp to begin with.

Guess I did not think they were sharpened too much. I usually apply +70 sharpening...

vett93 wrote:

Brian Isaman wrote:

I like the shots but I'm curious, why did you need so much sharpening? They are 1/2500 or faster and at fairly low ISO, they should have been pretty sharp to begin with.

Guess I did not think they were sharpened too much. I usually apply +70 sharpening...

Hmm I'm not sure 70 would be too much, I often use the full 150 slider in PS and have no such artifacts. Take a look below at the difference at 100%.

These are both at very low ISO so I don't know why there is such a difference in the image. The A7 is a large sensor camera as well so I would have thought the grain would have been less than a GX8. My original thought was that you didn't actually nail focus and used over-sharpening to fix it as the OOF areas usually don't hold up as well to over-sharpening. I'm not sure why else we would see a GX8 with better IQ than an A7.

Brian Isaman wrote:

vett93 wrote:

Brian Isaman wrote:

I like the shots but I'm curious, why did you need so much sharpening? They are 1/2500 or faster and at fairly low ISO, they should have been pretty sharp to begin with.

Guess I did not think they were sharpened too much. I usually apply +70 sharpening...

Hmm I'm not sure 70 would be too much, I often use the full 150 slider in PS and have no such artifacts. Take a look below at the difference at 100%.

These are both at very low ISO so I don't know why there is such a difference in the image. The A7 is a large sensor camera as well so I would have thought the grain would have been less than a GX8. My original thought was that you didn't actually nail focus and used over-sharpening to fix it as the OOF areas usually don't hold up as well to over-sharpening. I'm not sure why else we would see a GX8 with better IQ than an A7.

I see where you are coming from now. The birds' eyes were not in focus. I was aiming at the body.  There is a big difference between our shots. These birds were flying at a high speed and I was doing a panning shot. Yours is stationary.

For a fair comparison, check out the following image. F1.4 on a 35mm 42MP sensor.

I don't know, maybe it's something in your processing because I see it in that shot too. Look at the zipper on her coat, the more OOF it gets, the more you see the little worm like noise clumps. I just don't see why you are getting this kind of grain artifacts in your OOF areas at ISO 100.

Yep, I use 150 often. The trick is keeping the [DETAIL] and [RADIUS] sliders all the way down. Detail will really sharpen up the shot but when you zoom in a certain amount, you get the clumping like the other guy has here. Radius will control how small the sharpening is allowed to go in pixel groups, so all the way to a .5 means it affects smaller pixel clusters making sharpening less prone to worm artifacts. Of course the less noisy the shot, the more you can sharpen before issues show up.

One can go even further as well. When I want the most absolute sharpness (which isn't all the time, it often doesn't matter all that much for portraits), I go into actual Photoshop. Using smart sharpen I crank up low ISO shots to a +500. The trick, again, is keeping the radius down low. Here I have it at +500 but the radius is only at 3, so it keeps the clumping very fine and doesn't bring out the noise too much.

100%

Actual shot of my little brother with same sharpening.

Brian Isaman wrote:

I don't know, maybe it's something in your processing because I see it in that shot too. Look at the zipper on her coat, the more OOF it gets, the more you see the little worm like noise clumps. I just don't see why you are getting this kind of grain artifacts in your OOF areas at ISO 100.

I don't see any noise clumps. Do you even know what a noise "clump" look like?

I am actually considering a GX8. Do you have any comparable images to show? The following is from a Sony lens with a full retail price less than $300.

Brian Isaman wrote:

One can go even further as well. When I want the most absolute sharpness (which isn't all the time, it often doesn't matter all that much for portraits), I go into actual Photoshop. Using smart sharpen I crank up low ISO shots to a +500. The trick, again, is keeping the radius down low. Here I have it at +500 but the radius is only at 3, so it keeps the clumping very fine and doesn't bring out the noise too much.

100%

Actual shot of my little brother with same sharpening.

The image is quite soft. I think you may want to revisit PP lessons...

vett93 wrote:

Sorry, I don't have any comparable shots with the highlights blown that bad Seriously though, it must be your processing because that shot also looks to have the clumpy noise. Let me give you an example of what I consider clumpy vs smooth.

Notice the similar clumpy sharpening artifacts? Just keep practicing, you will get the hang of PP.

DrPJ wrote:

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to share my experiences with the micro four thirds system.

I sold all my Nikon gear a couple of years ago - based around the excellent camera the D300. It was getting old, no replacement had come out, it was too heavy to carry, many times I didn´t bring it on vacations because of the weight. But what a great camera it was, in many ways I still miss it - the autofocus system was just excellent, it somehow knew what I wanted in focus.

So I decided to switch to micro four thirds and went for the OMD EM10 with a Panasonic 14-140 and Olympus 25 mm F1.8. I´ve now used the camera for well over a year, but I´ve never liked it. It´s too small, and I find the controls counterintuitive. Autofocus is really terrible, and it takes too long to adjust the point of focus, I´ve missed so many shots. And it can´t be used for moving subjects at all. So finally this last week I sold it. Instead I got a Panasonic GX8 - and my passion for photography is back. What a camera! Love the size of it, well thought out controls, just so easy to use!

I'm almost on the same boat.

i still can carry my D810 and all its heavy lenses...but many many times I need and like smaller and lighter devices.

I included aerial photography (phantom) and I need something smaller and lighter to get fall in love with. I hope GX8 plus some good glasses could do the trick.

Im not saying I gonna sell my Nikon team but who knows...

Karld70 wrote:

Teera wrote:

jeffharris wrote:

larsbc wrote:

Teera wrote:

The GX8 is nice and quite responsive. But it's choice of flip screen will not work well with street photography. The gx7 type flip screen is much better for this purpose. Very peculiar decision to have selfie flip screen for a camera of this caliber . Am I missing anything here?

I understand why some people prefer a single axis screen. I quite like the one on my GX7 and prefer it for some situations. But there are also good reasons for having a dual axis screen as well.

It's a shame we're forced to make a choice between the tilty and full-articulation. Both have definite strengths and weaknesses and work better in some situations than others.

You're right and it is not beyond Pana or other camera companies to come up with a LCD screen that have both, tilty and full-articulation.

I'm sure it's an easy design, and could easily be implemented with no negatives. My opinion all of the camera makers just don't want to do it.

Doesn't Sony have one on their DSLRs?