Entropius
Veteran Member
That part of the article on Four-Thirds is, actually, mine.
Wikipedia doesn't like articles that portray things, especially products, in either unambiguously positive or negative terms; it's not quite kosher to say "4/3 has more DOF, but if you know what you're doing you can still get the shot you want."
So here's my actual experience.
4/3 has more dof at any given f/number and focal length than your friend's Nikon. That's just a fact. But it still has a LOT less than any compact camera. Depth of field is determined by the crop factor -- very roughly, the lower the crop factor, the less DOF.
So here are the crop factors:
Film/full-frame: 1
Canon/Nikon/Sony DSLR: 1.6
Four-Thirds: 2
High-end compact (Panasonic FZ50 or LX3, for instance): 5
Most compacts: 7
As you see, there's not much difference between 4/3 and Canon/Nikon. In practice, I have never had problems wanting less dof, and often want more, on 4/3. Those "portrait-style shots" you want have more to do with lens focal length, aperture, subject distance, background distance, etc., and not that much to do with the camera system.
If you're wanting to absolutely demolish the background when doing a full-body portrait at any distance, then you're going to need a very expensive lens on whatever system you use. You'll also have a nearly impossible time getting the focus right.
But if you want to be able to get a pleasantly out-of-focus background in reasonable shooting conditions, 4/3 can certainly do it. You do NOT need a super-wide-aperture lens on fullframe to get pleasantly out-of-focus backgrounds. You do need that sort of stuff to get one eyeball in focus and one eyeball out at 50 feet, but how often do you really want that?
You'll have a harder time using the kit lens, which like all kit lenses has a narrow aperture and short-(ish) focal length. It's too short to shoot soccer in any case. You want a longer lens for that. If you want to blur backgrounds from closer distances, you'll need a fast portrait lens.
Fortunately, you can get those for 4/3.
The Olympus 50/2 is widely seen as the portrait lens on 4/3. It's not cheap ($400-$500 I think), but it is amazingly sharp and has a narrow enough DOF to do what you want. For even more aperture, there's the Sigma 30/1.4 and 50/1.4.
If you want something more practical but slightly less sharp and with a little less aperture, get the Sigma 18-50/2.8 ($350?)
The 40-150 that you get in a two-lens kit will actually do a respectable job, and it's cheap. If you want something even longer, get the Olympus 70-300/4-5.6 ($270). You can use these long lenses to do "portrait-style" shots too -- here's one of mine with the 70-300.
Wikipedia doesn't like articles that portray things, especially products, in either unambiguously positive or negative terms; it's not quite kosher to say "4/3 has more DOF, but if you know what you're doing you can still get the shot you want."
So here's my actual experience.
4/3 has more dof at any given f/number and focal length than your friend's Nikon. That's just a fact. But it still has a LOT less than any compact camera. Depth of field is determined by the crop factor -- very roughly, the lower the crop factor, the less DOF.
So here are the crop factors:
Film/full-frame: 1
Canon/Nikon/Sony DSLR: 1.6
Four-Thirds: 2
High-end compact (Panasonic FZ50 or LX3, for instance): 5
Most compacts: 7
As you see, there's not much difference between 4/3 and Canon/Nikon. In practice, I have never had problems wanting less dof, and often want more, on 4/3. Those "portrait-style shots" you want have more to do with lens focal length, aperture, subject distance, background distance, etc., and not that much to do with the camera system.
If you're wanting to absolutely demolish the background when doing a full-body portrait at any distance, then you're going to need a very expensive lens on whatever system you use. You'll also have a nearly impossible time getting the focus right.
But if you want to be able to get a pleasantly out-of-focus background in reasonable shooting conditions, 4/3 can certainly do it. You do NOT need a super-wide-aperture lens on fullframe to get pleasantly out-of-focus backgrounds. You do need that sort of stuff to get one eyeball in focus and one eyeball out at 50 feet, but how often do you really want that?
You'll have a harder time using the kit lens, which like all kit lenses has a narrow aperture and short-(ish) focal length. It's too short to shoot soccer in any case. You want a longer lens for that. If you want to blur backgrounds from closer distances, you'll need a fast portrait lens.
Fortunately, you can get those for 4/3.
The Olympus 50/2 is widely seen as the portrait lens on 4/3. It's not cheap ($400-$500 I think), but it is amazingly sharp and has a narrow enough DOF to do what you want. For even more aperture, there's the Sigma 30/1.4 and 50/1.4.
If you want something more practical but slightly less sharp and with a little less aperture, get the Sigma 18-50/2.8 ($350?)
The 40-150 that you get in a two-lens kit will actually do a respectable job, and it's cheap. If you want something even longer, get the Olympus 70-300/4-5.6 ($270). You can use these long lenses to do "portrait-style" shots too -- here's one of mine with the 70-300.
- NEVER going to happen!