So what about the physically impossible?

[cosmicnode]

Focusing to my slow brain feels as fast as I can imagine? Is there anywhere further to go?

To me AF accuracy and reliability is much more important than speed. I don't really care if an AF system is slightly faster if it often focuses on a busy background rather than the intended subject. I find that Panasonic's DFD is highly prone to doing that, even when using animal AF on the G9.

I think most people consider better AF as being a combination of both speed and accuracy. AF that is highly accurate but takes a long time to achieve focus ending in you losing the shot. is as bad as fast AF that does not quite achieve fine focus resulting in a slightly out of focus shot.

I can't think of any current cameras that are actually slow to focus in normal conditions. In fact, even pre-DFD Panasonics like the old GX7 and GM1 didn't take a long time to achieve focus; that wasn't usually the reason why they missed a shot.

By missing the shot I mean a change in expression or the turning of the head, due to a slow focus. Some Nikon primes such as the 58mm f1.4 are regarded as slow to focus but very accurate when focused.

Generally I find that the issue isn't a slightly out of focus shot due to fine focusing errors, it's the camera missing the subject completely and locking focus on the background, e.g. twigs or water ripples behind a bird's head.

I am finding with my E-M1.2 that a problem when shooting motorsport is that it often misses fine focus during continuous AF, one shot is sharp the next is not, then the following is, and at times it also as you say misses focus completely, I know that at times that is down to settings, but when using my D500 in the same situation , it just works, every time.

Better "AI" detection of the subject should help with that, but features like the G9's animal detection AF aren't there yet.

 

[brianric]

From another thread we know how you would like m4/3 to develop this year. But what about the next decade and what about all those things that just can't be done. I'll give some examples:

Back to Jan 1 2010, would you have said OK if I told you that before the end of the decade I would be shooting full size RAW at 60fps. How far can we go? Do we actually want to go any further?

How far can ISO ability improvement. Once again, we have come a long way in 10 years?

Where do EVFs go from here?

Focusing to my slow brain feels as fast as I can imagine? Is there anywhere further to go?

The big one for me is shooting BIF. In the UK I can very rarely reach my optimum settings of ISO400 (or better) 1/2500, F8. I need to squeeze a bit more light from somewhere. Faster lenses you will say but that means bigger and heavier and my 100-400 is as big as I'm prepared to go. Impossible because of the laws of physics I hear you say, but is it, or have we just not found the way around the rules of physics yet.

Why F8?

How will sensor development overcome current limitations.

How far can IS go? Handheld at 10 sec?

More questions and some answers gratefully received.

 

[Astrotripper]

How far can IS go? Handheld at 10 sec?

That's already possible with good technique.

HOW???

You mean technically? Don't know.

But if you mean practically in terms of shooting technique, it's the same rules as for any steady shooting technique. If you can find some articles describing how to shoot DSLRs to avoid camera shake, apply those techniques to Olympus camera, practice a bit and you will get 10 second handheld exposures. And from time to time people post photos like that in this forum.

You will not get 10 seconds every single time, though. It will usually take more than one try. And stabilization does have some negative impact on corner sharpness at such long exposures.

My record was I think 11 seconds at around 30mm. But it wasn't a good enough photo to post on my flickr (I did post it on DPR forums somewhere, though). I have a flickr album dedicated to stabilisation , if you're curious. Those are not the most extreme examples, only those that I think are good photos.

 

[hampshirejohn]

The biggest improvements to my photography would be to me - faster reaction times, how I see things, steadier grip and so on. I'm afraid that for at least some of those I am actually going to see the inevitable deterioration, not an improvement.

 

[Bassaidai]

How far can ISO ability improvement.

Not far. Theoretical limit is less than 1 stop ahead, so there's really not much room there.

The theoretical limit of transfer speeds on copper cable was calculated to be somewhere around 14.400 baud (bits/second) many many years ago. It was called an insuperable physical limit. We are now at VDSL speeds of up to 50.000.000 baud (50mbit/sec) on copper cable.

I see no reason why todays limits in ISO performance can't be overcome tomorrow. Costs might be one preventing market aspect though...

 

[Trevor Carpenter]

The big one for me is shooting BIF. In the UK I can very rarely reach my optimum settings of ISO400 (or better) 1/2500, F8. I need to squeeze a bit more light from somewhere. Faster lenses you will say but that means bigger and heavier and my 100-400 is as big as I'm prepared to go. Impossible because of the laws of physics I hear you say, but is it, or have we just not found the way around the rules of physics yet.

Why F8

because in the limited light conditions I often find myself in my 400mm shots are invariably at f6.3 and I lose some pics to DOF issues. I'd happily go as far as F11 if I could.

 

[Donald B]

When they said 8 meg was enough they were half right. 20 is perfect cropping to 16 as for me my next purchase will be a LG 4K 55 or 65 in OLED monitor. That’s it I don’t need anything more for magnificent electronic poster size images equal to a high quality print and you can slideshow your images.

Don

 

[Wu Jiaqiu]

When they said 8 meg was enough they were half right. 20 is perfect cropping to 16 as for me my next purchase will be a LG 4K 55 or 65 in OLED monitor. That’s it I don’t need anything more for magnificent electronic poster size images equal to a high quality print and you can slideshow your images.

Don

it all depends how you intend to display your shots, i think 16mp was pretty good when i had a 16mp camera, i'm still using a 10mp camera.....works for me

 

[AllFlawed]

From another thread we know how you would like m4/3 to develop this year. But what about the next decade and what about all those things that just can't be done. I'll give some examples:

Back to Jan 1 2010, would you have said OK if I told you that before the end of the decade I would be shooting full size RAW at 60fps. How far can we go? Do we actually want to go any further?

How far can ISO ability improvement. Once again, we have come a long way in 10 years?

Where do EVFs go from here?

Focusing to my slow brain feels as fast as I can imagine? Is there anywhere further to go?

I get the impression focusing issues are in video side now and stills are probably not a problem.

The big one for me is shooting BIF. In the UK I can very rarely reach my optimum settings of ISO400 (or better) 1/2500, F8. I need to squeeze a bit more light from somewhere. Faster lenses you will say but that means bigger and heavier and my 100-400 is as big as I'm prepared to go. Impossible because of the laws of physics I hear you say, but is it, or have we just not found the way around the rules of physics yet.

How will sensor development overcome current limitations.

The problem across all makes seems to be availability of naked stand alone sensors for the camera market and the probably small margins and returns developing making them because of the low volumes and having to compete with the rapid technology increase in the booming smartphone side. Before Sony came on scene the Olympus sensors were sub par and now they have to go cap in hand to Sony a competitor in the camera market to get them.

How far can IS go? Handheld at 10 sec?

More questions and some answers gratefully received.

 

[brianric]

The big one for me is shooting BIF. In the UK I can very rarely reach my optimum settings of ISO400 (or better) 1/2500, F8. I need to squeeze a bit more light from somewhere. Faster lenses you will say but that means bigger and heavier and my 100-400 is as big as I'm prepared to go. Impossible because of the laws of physics I hear you say, but is it, or have we just not found the way around the rules of physics yet.

Why F8

because in the limited light conditions I often find myself in my 400mm shots are invariably at f6.3 and I lose some pics to DOF issues. I'd happily go as far as F11 if I could.

Forgot 100-400. Brain fart. Sorry.

 

[GodSpeaks]

It is now 2020 and we are STILL stuck in the 1970s with 8.3 filenames on our cameras. WHY?

Does anyone still use FAT16 in their cameras anymore? So why are we still using FAT16 filenames?

All of my cameras now use either FAT32 or exFat, both of which support long filenames.

My smallest card is 64 GB, while my largest is 256GB. Yet despite the changing times, we remain in the 70s with DOS 8.3 filenames.

The maximum number of files per directory is 65K for FAT32 and considerably larger for NTFS or exFAT. So why are we limited to 999 files per directory in our cameras?

It is LONG past due to move beyond these (now) very old file limits on our cameras.

Update and correction: FAT16 actually arrived in the early 80s and FAT32 arrived in the mid 90's.

--
The greatest of mankind's criminals are those who delude themselves into thinking they have done 'the right thing.'
- Rayna Butler

 

[Peter Heckert2]

How far can ISO ability improvement.

Not far. Theoretical limit is less than 1 stop ahead, so there's really not much room there.

I do not think so.
If the sensor would absorb 100% of light, it would look black.
Actually it looks more like a mirror and reflects most of the light unused. ;-)

 

[magnesus3]

And the resolution of the LCDs on current cameras is simply abysmal. Even cheap phones have better screens.

 

[Tony Rogers]

The big one for me is shooting BIF. In the UK I can very rarely reach my optimum settings of ISO400 (or better) 1/2500, F8. I need to squeeze a bit more light from somewhere. Faster lenses you will say but that means bigger and heavier and my 100-400 is as big as I'm prepared to go. Impossible because of the laws of physics I hear you say, but is it, or have we just not found the way around the rules of physics yet.

Why F8

because in the limited light conditions I often find myself in my 400mm shots are invariably at f6.3 and I lose some pics to DOF issues. I'd happily go as far as F11 if I could.

I don't think I've ever had a depth of field issue shooting bird in flight. I always shoot the 300mm wide open so 300mm f/4, 420mm f5.6, and 600mm f/8 with teleconverters. It would have to be a very large bird at very close range to start getting issues with the wrong part of the bird in focus and I can't usually track them when they're that close! I suspect depth of field issues might actually be focus accuracy issues.

I actually made a very useful change to my control setup when I realised the other day that I never change the aperture in these situations. I previously had the rear dial set for shutter speed and the front for aperture. Then I switched the lever (E-M1 II) to position 2 to get Iso on the front dial. I am in full manual. I changed this to shutter and Iso for lever position 1 which means I can crank both to change the shutter speed and Iso for different situations whilst keeping the "exposure" the same. (Inverted commas for pedants). Not having to switch the lever makes it much easier to operate with gloves on. I have shutter speed and aperture on lever position 2 for the odd occasion where I do need to change aperture.

One other point on sensors. The colour filter array on sensors means, I assume, that about 2/3 of the light falling on the sensor is thrown away. One day, some one will come up with a sensor that can record the number of photons and their wavelength which would record all the light falling on the sensels. That would give a stop and a half improvement in performance. Maybe!

 

[Donald B]

And the resolution of the LCDs on current cameras is simply abysmal. Even cheap phones have better screens.

Thats why evf was invented. your a bit late to the party.

Don

 

[Trevor Carpenter]

The big one for me is shooting BIF. In the UK I can very rarely reach my optimum settings of ISO400 (or better) 1/2500, F8. I need to squeeze a bit more light from somewhere. Faster lenses you will say but that means bigger and heavier and my 100-400 is as big as I'm prepared to go. Impossible because of the laws of physics I hear you say, but is it, or have we just not found the way around the rules of physics yet.

Why F8

because in the limited light conditions I often find myself in my 400mm shots are invariably at f6.3 and I lose some pics to DOF issues. I'd happily go as far as F11 if I could.

I don't think I've ever had a depth of field issue shooting bird in flight. I always shoot the 300mm wide open so 300mm f/4, 420mm f5.6, and 600mm f/8 with teleconverters. It would have to be a very large bird at very close range to start getting issues with the wrong part of the bird in focus and I can't usually track them when they're that close! I suspect depth of field issues might actually be focus accuracy issues.

I actually made a very useful change to my control setup when I realised the other day that I never change the aperture in these situations. I previously had the rear dial set for shutter speed and the front for aperture. Then I switched the lever (E-M1 II) to position 2 to get Iso on the front dial. I am in full manual. I changed this to shutter and Iso for lever position 1 which means I can crank both to change the shutter speed and Iso for different situations whilst keeping the "exposure" the same. (Inverted commas for pedants). Not having to switch the lever makes it much easier to operate with gloves on. I have shutter speed and aperture on lever position 2 for the odd occasion where I do need to change aperture.

One other point on sensors. The colour filter array on sensors means, I assume, that about 2/3 of the light falling on the sensor is thrown away. One day, some one will come up with a sensor that can record the number of photons and their wavelength which would record all the light falling on the sensels. That would give a stop and a half improvement in performance. Maybe!

I shoot a lot of multiple birds which is where most of my problems occur

 

[ChristianC1975]

From another thread we know how you would like m4/3 to develop this year. But what about the next decade and what about all those things that just can't be done. I'll give some examples:

Back to Jan 1 2010, would you have said OK if I told you that before the end of the decade I would be shooting full size RAW at 60fps. How far can we go? Do we actually want to go any further?

How far can ISO ability improvement. Once again, we have come a long way in 10 years?

Where do EVFs go from here?

Focusing to my slow brain feels as fast as I can imagine? Is there anywhere further to go?

The big one for me is shooting BIF. In the UK I can very rarely reach my optimum settings of ISO400 (or better) 1/2500, F8. I need to squeeze a bit more light from somewhere. Faster lenses you will say but that means bigger and heavier and my 100-400 is as big as I'm prepared to go. Impossible because of the laws of physics I hear you say, but is it, or have we just not found the way around the rules of physics yet.

How will sensor development overcome current limitations.

How far can IS go? Handheld at 10 sec?

More questions and some answers gratefully received.

ISO performance: we are with BSI close to what Silicon can do. Organic has much worse efficiency as photons-to-electrons, so forget it (for that purpose).

Computational photography is great- but the same as IBIS or IS, it is for static subjects. I expect HHRR to extend to more cameras than the EM1X eventually. Paired with panasonic mode 2 for post-processing, it can be great!

IQ itself, if not aided with CP, will be a formula of sensor size and glass size, with us paying more in money and size for higher IQ.

The Mpix war is in my opinion good! more MP make Jpeg closer to raw (as individual pixels can be well coded in 8 bit colour if they are small).

The outsider bet will come, I think, if global shutter gets its way, and electronic pixel-by pixel or similar ND filtering arrives. That will boost dynamic range, the only real limitation for me of current MFT.

AF will get better and better I guess. G9 is already damn good for my uses, if configured properly.

I am in the same corner as you. I am not willing to carry more than what MFT makes me carry. That means that for me it is just wait and see, not wait and switch

 

[SteveY80]

And the resolution of the LCDs on current cameras is simply abysmal. Even cheap phones have better screens.

Thats why evf was invented. your a bit late to the party.

That's fine if you like using EVFs, personally I consider them a necessary evil in some circumstances but prefer using the screen 95% of the time.

That said, I don't find the resolution of current LCD screens to be an issue. Brighter, less reflective screens would be nice though, especially when using a side-swinging FAS that isn't shaded by the camera body.

 

[ChristianC1975]

How far can ISO ability improvement.

Not far. Theoretical limit is less than 1 stop ahead, so there's really not much room there.

The theoretical limit of transfer speeds on copper cable was calculated to be somewhere around 14.400 baud (bits/second) many many years ago. It was called an insuperable physical limit. We are now at VDSL speeds of up to 50.000.000 baud (50mbit/sec) on copper cable.

I see no reason why todays limits in ISO performance can't be overcome tomorrow. Costs might be one preventing market aspect though...

I work in the photovoltaic industry. We make the cells.

Current efficiencies are around 25%.

Limit is around 30% in conditions that we will never reach. 26-27% and beyond are based on using the non-visible light better (=not interesting)

Colour filters will eat some of the light. As someone said, if a clever mind finds out how to remove that, we can win... maybe 1 stop.

Other materials are very expensive and difficult/impossible to integrate in circuits as silicon, to read out the sensor.

Organic may arrive, but its strength is NOT efficiency photons-to-electrons, it is 1-2 stops worse than current silicon

 

[Donald B]

And the resolution of the LCDs on current cameras is simply abysmal. Even cheap phones have better screens.

Thats why evf was invented. your a bit late to the party.

That's fine if you like using EVFs, personally I consider them a necessary evil in some circumstances but prefer using the screen 95% of the time.

That said, I don't find the resolution of current LCD screens to be an issue. Brighter, less reflective screens would be nice though, especially when using a side-swinging FAS that isn't shaded by the camera body.

your kidding right ? yesterday my daughter wanted me to take some images of her with her new iphone xr. it was a total pain compared to my em12 i had with me. my images taken with the em12 far exceeded the compositional quality of her phone that i could hardly see even with my glasses on which i dont need using the em12 evf . reviewing the images was a no brainer which one far exceeded the other.

Don