For those with two systems....

[Captive18]

For those with a FF and m4/3 system,

What do you use your m4/3 system for and what do you use your FF system for?

 

[lokatz]

Hi Ken, I don't want to make this into an endless 'wallpaper', so I'll omit parts where we (fully or mostly) agree anyway. A few thoughts strike me as relevant, though:

What puzzles me in many of the endless "MFT vs FF" discussions is that the aspect of noise reduction (NR) is often omitted, as it is in your post. In my view and experience having used both systems extensively, it is an important factor to take into account.

I hope my previous post made clear that where such a threshold would be is a huge "it depends" kind of thing. So for some folks the advent of better NR probably has a large impact on their decision of the benefits of moving to a larger sensor while for others it is irrelevant.

To me, that threshold is simply "where people see the difference". Admittedly without having enough statistical data to prove my point, my impression is that after using state-of-the-art NR, few people can actually see the difference between a FF and an MFT image unless they a) print very large, or b) pixel peep on a monitor. Whether that still makes the images different is an "it depends" thing.

...

(Examples at https://thisbeautifulplanet.de/denoising-software-comparison.)

Thanks for the excellent comparison images of the various AI NR engines!

Again this all comes down to enlargement sizes, viewing distance and threshold of acceptability. Looking at the NR results in your comparison it is abundantly clear that NR greatly improved all of them. Even after NR I'm quite a bit happier with the D850 image than the OM-1 image, but these are different subjects in different light and so forth and so that could be an idiosyncratic observation.

No contest. The OM-1 example (at ISO16000) presents the worst case, as I also said in my comments, so I agree that the D850 (at ISO10000) and especially R5 (at ISO25600) images will look better at the end. After all, ISO16000 on MFT is comparable to ISO64000 on FF, so no surprise here.

...

Where a true difference remains is in dynamic range (DR). The two-stop difference remains unchanged in spite of NR. A Z7 has about 11.6 stops of DR at base ISO, whereas an OM-1 has about 9.6. There is nothing any piece of software could do about that. When shooting MFT, I find every so often that I get to choose whether to blow my highlights or get pitch black dark areas, but I won't be able to avoid both within a single shot.

Here I'm going to disagree fairly strongly with the terminology and theoretical assertion. DR and noise are exactly the same thing. Dynamic Range is in fact defined by noise. It is the clipping level divided by the level at which the SNR drops to some arbitrarily chosen threshold. If NR software is improving noise in the shadows then it is increasing DR at the very same time - it is part of the definition of DR.

You puzzle me a bit with this. The definition of dynamic range you are apparently using is the one used for audio (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range). I am an MSEE and thus well familiar with that definition.

However, I googled "dynamic range of camera sensor" and found lots of definitions, very few of which seem to agree with you but are more in line with my take, which uses the definition found further down on the Wikipedia page, "In electronics, dynamic range ... specifies the ratio of a maximum level of a parameter, such as power, current, voltage or frequency, to the minimum detectable value of that parameter."

I don't think we'd add much value by having this rather theoretical discussion, though, so let's please not pursue it. Where I hope we CAN agree is in two points:

1. The maximum signal level a sensor allows is (almost) independent of noise. The analogy many sites describing DR in photography use boils down to "When the bucket is full, it is full."

2. Whether an image has significant noise or none, if it includes more than a few pixels the sensor reported as zero, no NR software will ever be able to bring out any detail in those areas. Black is black, regardless of how DR is defined.

Now that doesn't necessarily change your practical assertion at all - that with FF you can get acceptable pushed shadows at base ISO that you can't from m43. In my experience a lot of this has to do with RAW processing itself rather than just noise (or equivalently DR). I've run into bonkers color shifts with heavily pushed shadows using LR/ACR profiles. Creating a custom RAW profile with an external tool can fix this, but it is a fight.

This strikes me as a different subject, but I can easily agree anyway.

So in a practical sense this is limitation of "DR" because the shadows fall apart in the m43 image but not in the FF image.

Wait, now - that's not what you said so far, and it doesn't match my experience. Granted, my MFT body, the OM-1, produces more color noise than my R5 or Z7i do or used to do. After proper NR in DxO, though, I did not experience color shifts that were worse on one than on the other. As my denoising software comparison demonstrates, this is more of an issue with LR, and MUCH more with ON1, but that constitutes no argument against MFT - only against certain NR engines.

But in what the actual definition of DR is (i.e. shadow noise) this is absolutely something that NR software can improve if implemented correctly and if the RAW processor profile can deal with color in the shadows.

Agree.

When shooting landscapes, I can simply bracket my exposure and blend the shots later, which again (usually) makes DR a mere inconvenience. Shooting moving subjects, however, I have to live with the issue. Shooting an animal in thick underbrush, this is not much of a problem since such scenes usually do not have high DR anyway. Shooting a bird in flight against a bright sky can present a dilemma, however, that I may not be able to avoid. If all else were equal (which it isn't, but that's a different discussion), that would make FF the better choice.

Yep, as a landscape shooter I have many options that don't work for other kinds of photography!

Which is largely why I didn't address NR in my previous post. For me, if I suspect that noise is going to be an issue I just deal with it in the field either through exposure averaging or bracketing. If I'm worried primary about pushing the shadows in a high dynamic range scene then a two or three shot bracket is all that is needed. If on the other hand I'm worried primarily about mid-tone noise then I prefer averaging and will capture eight to ten exposures in the field.

Could NR do the job for me instead? Certainly - but usually for my landscape shots bracketing or averaging is the more certain result with less fussing with sliders and looking for artifacts. Once anything is moving though (e.g. blowing leaves or branches) now the advantage tilts back to the NR solution.

You are now confirming a point I find quite essential, namely that using FF for such shots is more convenient than using MFT. Agree with that 100%. But the vast majority of arguments in the FF-vs-MFT debates are different: they usually emerge around the claim that you can never get results that are as good if you shoot with MFT, which -at least for landscape shooting- is incorrect.

...

As a last thought on AI NR this was a good morning to quickly play with Adobe's new AI based denoise to see how it does with base ISO images. Here is a slightly different crop of the averaging example I posted previously (as usual view the original):

On the left is a single exposure with AI NR at default settings (55 for the only slider Adobe gives you) and on the right is the multiexposure average without NR. You can see the AI NR did a really good job and the results are quite close. You can, however, see that the AI guessed wrong in some spots and introduced green artifacts around the dark rocks near the middle of the crop. In other regions the AR removed some subtle details that the averaged image retained. Really, none of these things at all "breaks" the image. The AI NR clearly made about a two stop improvement with a single click and minimal artifacting. I think this will be most useful to me in mid-day telephoto landscapes where I may still be dealing with mid-tone noise even in FF because of contrast/clarity/dehaze post processing on distant horizons.

Well, I am not a big fan of LR's NR engine, even in its latest incarnation. (I like LR for many other reasons, though, so don't get me wrong here.) I'd be more interested in the same comparison when using DxO's best NR option.

Anyway, thanks for the insightful comments!

Thanks for yours!

 

[kenw]

To me, that threshold is simply "where people see the difference". Admittedly without having enough statistical data to prove my point, my impression is that after using state-of-the-art NR, few people can actually see the difference between a FF and an MFT image unless they a) print very large, or b) pixel peep on a monitor. Whether that still makes the images different is an "it depends" thing.

Yes agree! One of the points of my earlier post was that even for a constant observer with a constant threshold for "see the difference" the differences in post processing (contrast, clarity, saturation, etc.) for different images can change whether there is a noticeable difference to said observer. So it can be a very much is a "it depends" kind of thing even for a single observer.

You puzzle me a bit with this. The definition of dynamic range you are apparently using is the one used for audio (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range). I am an MSEE and thus well familiar with that definition.

Excellent, I'm an MSEE as well so this should be straightforward to get sorted!

However, I googled "dynamic range of camera sensor" and found lots of definitions, very few of which seem to agree with you but are more in line with my take, which uses the definition found further down on the Wikipedia page, "In electronics, dynamic range ... specifies the ratio of a maximum level of a parameter, such as power, current, voltage or frequency, to the minimum detectable value of that parameter."

Pay attention to that last phrase, "minimum detectable value of that parameter". We need to define what that its in order to specify DR. The spoiler alert is that there is no broadly accepted definition for that in camera sensors, hence different sites and different manufacturers make their own arbitrary decisions about it. No big deal if you look at measurements from a single site. But the key point I think you have missed is that whatever definition you choose it is in the end referenced to a noise level for image sensors just as it is in audio equipment.

I don't think we'd add much value by having this rather theoretical discussion, though, so let's please not pursue it. Where I hope we CAN agree is in two points:

1. The maximum signal level a sensor allows is (almost) independent of noise. The analogy many sites describing DR in photography use boils down to "When the bucket is full, it is full."

2. Whether an image has significant noise or none, if it includes more than a few pixels the sensor reported as zero, no NR software will ever be able to bring out any detail in those areas. Black is black, regardless of how DR is defined.

I see the source of the misunderstanding in your point 2. There is no such thing as "pixels the sensor reported as zero" on any modern sensor in any camera in production that I am aware of. All camera sensors report non-zero values for every pixel and even a dark frame will show noise signal (read noise) across the entire image at base ISO with the shortest exposure possible.

There has long been an unfortunate series of articles written by lay photographers that mistakenly tie DR to things like the LSB of the ADC or the RAW files. That's not the case at all and it sounds like you are falling into that trap here which is leading to your misunderstanding about how DR works in camera sensors.

Now, your RAW converter may set a black point that truncates the data so it appears that there are pixels "reported as zero", but that is not at all what happened in the sensor nor what is in the RAW file. And in some very old cameras (some early Nikon DSLRs specifically) the RAW files coming out of the camera actually partially truncated the noise data (which is a horrible thing to do as it actually makes it harder to ever remove the noise and makes exposure averaging less effective).

So the RAW file is *never* all zeros, nor even all one value. Furthermore, because the sensor always has read noise that means for larger spatial frequencies we can actually detect features below the minimum quantization level (i.e. LSB) of the sensor ADC (this is closely related to Dither).

Thus the "minimum detectable value of that parameter" in an image has nothing to do with ADC levels. It has to do with read noise, read noise which the imager captures for us with non-zero values that typically span multiple LSBs.

So once again, DR is all about noise. You simply can't talk about DR without establishing a noise level to define the "minimum detectable value of that parameter". DxOMark arbitrarily has chosen an SNR of 0 dB in a single pixel when the image is resized to 8MP. As you can see, their DR number doesn't even refer to the original pixels from the imager or its RAW file - they base their DR on sensors normalized to an 8MP imager.

The key point is that DR in sensors is exactly the same as it is in the audio definition you are already familiar with. We've got to pick a noise level for "minimum detectable", that choice will largely be arbitrary to a degree. Also, just like in audio we've got to define a bandwidth over which we will measure that noise or DR. Audio signals are temporal so that bandwidth is in Hz. We do exactly the same thing in imagers, such as DxOMark normalizing everything to an 8MP imager. Images are spatial and so rather than Hz we need to specify a spatial frequency bandwidth over which noise and DR are compared. DxO choosing 8MP is equivalent to choosing a spatial cutoff frequency (i.e. in resampling a larger image down to 8MP the resampling is filtering out the higher spatial frequency noise).

I apologize for belaboring the point, especially when you said you didn't want to labor it any more! But this is absolutely critical to any understanding of DR in photographic images. We honestly can't have any useful discussion about DR or its affects across various types of processing without understanding the critical point that DR is entirely about noise and has nothing to do with ADC levels or "zero values".

Now that doesn't necessarily change your practical assertion at all - that with FF you can get acceptable pushed shadows at base ISO that you can't from m43. In my experience a lot of this has to do with RAW processing itself rather than just noise (or equivalently DR). I've run into bonkers color shifts with heavily pushed shadows using LR/ACR profiles. Creating a custom RAW profile with an external tool can fix this, but it is a fight.

This strikes me as a different subject, but I can easily agree anyway.

So in a practical sense this is limitation of "DR" because the shadows fall apart in the m43 image but not in the FF image.

Wait, now - that's not what you said so far, and it doesn't match my experience. Granted, my MFT body, the OM-1, produces more color noise than my R5 or Z7i do or used to do. After proper NR in DxO, though, I did not experience color shifts that were worse on one than on the other. As my denoising software comparison demonstrates, this is more of an issue with LR, and MUCH more with ON1, but that constitutes no argument against MFT - only against certain NR engines.

It is quite possible my experience is entirely idiosyncratic to pushing base ISO images heavily at long exposures on a few particular m43 sensors. I've never seen it as an issue in high ISO images as you did in your comparison. And to be honest I've not even tried it for short base ISO images because in cases where I would have needed to do it I would have bracketed instead anyway. So with that in mind I suspect what I was talking about here wasn't at all what you were referring to and so I was inadvertently derailing the discussion! We should probably ignore it going forward.

You are now confirming a point I find quite essential, namely that using FF for such shots is more convenient than using MFT. Agree with that 100%. But the vast majority of arguments in the FF-vs-MFT debates are different: they usually emerge around the claim that you can never get results that are as good if you shoot with MFT, which -at least for landscape shooting- is incorrect.

Absolutely. While I don't bother posting often in the endless "large vs. smaller" sensor debates, when I do I always try to make the point that really for a very large cross section of landscape photography MFT can match FF if you just do some extra work in the field and post processing. Now there are of course edge cases that don't fit that, some landscapes do have moving things and multi-exposure techniques don't always work so well at that. But by in large, exposure averaging, brackets/HDR, or pixel shift techniques mean a MFT landscaper can get "FF results" or even "MF results" with some extra effort.

That's the point I was making with the image in my post of the B&W sand dunes - an image from a GM1 that is easily mistaken for FF.

Well, I am not a big fan of LR's NR engine, even in its latest incarnation. (I like LR for many other reasons, though, so don't get me wrong here.) I'd be more interested in the same comparison when using DxO's best NR option.

That will have to be someone else! But I agree from multiple reviews it appears that while the new LR "Denoise" is well ahead of older tools, and is at least in the same league with other "AI NR" algorithms, that it is not at all an industry leader. No doubt DxO run by someone with experience would improve the results to some degree.

Regardless, to me the really quick experiment showed that it is perfectly reasonable to assume a base ISO MFT image passed through modern NR will probably look as good noise wise as a base FF image with no NR at all. That's definitely a different result than say five years ago.

And to your point, in the same way people have said "you can't get MFT to look like FF for landscape" when in the past one could do it with exposure averaging, now you can get MFT with AI NR to look like FF without NR. If FF without NR was the bees knees in the past then it would seem the same folks should be pretty happy with MFT with AI NR now. But of course in general they'll probably find an excuse why not

 

[Interceptor121]

Noise reduction applies equally to all formats and therefore is irrelevant to a comparison

in addition in most cases on full frame you don’t need it saving time in post processing

Modern NR (DxO, Topaz and LR) are really changing the playing field. But I think your two points actually demonstrate that its benefits are not equally distributed. If FF in most cases doesn't need NR, then there must be other formats that do need it. The quality of today's NR now gives those other formats the ability to (almost?) match FF.
For FF, in terms of "most cases", I seem to live in the world of "other cases" where NR is a critical tool.

Am not sure how to make it more clear

noise reduction improves the SNR of a certain factor irrespective of format it does not close any gap

This gap depends on light gathering that ultimately at identical exposure settings is linked to sensor area

I go out and I take pictures with two systems one gives me acceptable results off the camera and one doesn’t so I apply noise reduction assuming that the noise reduction has the same benefit of the initial gap i now have two images with a similar snr however although snr has improved some details of the image it hasn’t necessarily restored colors and tones that were not captured in the first place

now I apply noise reduction also to the larger format image and am back at the start

Different case I shoot at base iso a landscape noise reduction has little to no effect on any format the larger format simply provides better dynamic range and image quality the gap is still there

Another case I take a shot at night where the image is really noisy even on the larger format i apply noise reduction and I recover a usable image on the smaller format this was a hopeless case and the file was simply thrashed

In summary noise reduction is improves the usability of a format but doesn’t close gaps

only equivalence does however you reach either base iso and this no longer applies or you cannot match lens physical aperture and the gap remains

from a practical point of view I can go out in the evening with a constant f2.8 zoom and cover many shooting situations where I would need to bring at least 3 primes that are not light and do lens swaps

there are many uses cases where a smaller format helps for example when you do need depth of field or the weight of the rig means you can take shots you couldn’t otherwise but performance doesn’t get matched by software

 

[avyor]

I am able to shoot street with my Nikon Z5, but with GX80 I feel more blended into scene.

I like full frame files for specific look and Nikon colors. But GX80 with 14 mm and 20 mm pancake lenses is nicely pocketable. With Z5 I feel too much unmissable, but I love that files. So I am changing it according to my mood.

 

[ChristianC1975]

For those with a FF and m4/3 system,

What do you use your m4/3 system for and what do you use your FF system for?

FF for wide angle, portrait, video (6k open gate)

MFT for telephoto (50-200 F2.8-4 is unbeaten in IQ vs. size, equivalence included).

I have found that the 200 F2.8 (I found very reduced in price and I pounced, totally innecessary purchase) makes very very nice candid family fotos in gatherings, sitting a bit off the group. Bokeh is creammmmm.

Most FF telephotos are just too big for me to justify unless I would book a safari; which is lets say not a common occurrence.

 

[ChristianC1975]

hat I read about so often on DPR. Recent examples of that below. ;-)

I am sure I am not the first one to say- this shot is very very very nice.

 

[lokatz]

Appreciate your response and detailed explanations. To the most part, it seems we're in 'violent agreement', so I'm not going to belabor this much further.

I feel you're getting carried away a bit when saying that "the RAW file is *never* all zeros". In practical photography, there will always be pixels that are not, but who said anything different anyway? In the lab, on the other hand, it will be all zeros if the sensor is read out in a pitch dark environment at low temperatures. But I fear I'm getting into semantics here, so again, thanks for your thoughts.

 

[lokatz]

Thanks!

 

[TransientEye]

We mainly use two systems: u43 (OM1 and E-M1.2) and Fujifilm GFX (100s medium format). I also use Leica film cameras and a Q2Mfor personal work.

The Olympus works best for situations where I need fast shooting, telephoto, macro, or where light weight and weather sealing are critical. It gets used for shooting in rough environments like deserts or poor weather.

The medium format system works best for slower shooting and where weight is not a major consideration. With a sensor 6x the size of u43, the image quality is unbelievable and lenses like the 80mm f1.7 give rendering (sharpness and focus falloff) and DOF that is impossible with u43. A major plus with the Fuji system is that all my lenses have an aperture ring, which makes it possible to shoot in manual mode with all three parameters (aperture, ISO and shutter-speed) mapped to direct physical controls. I really wish that Olympus lenses had aperture rings, or that the bodies would recognise Panasonic's implementation.

Importantly, both systems have a native 4/3 aspect ratio. It is surprisingly easy to mix images from the two systems, although the GFX images obviously allow larger print sizes. Personally, I am happy to print u43 up to A3, and A2 if the shots are taken carefully (optimum aperture and exposure). GFX prints can be roughly 4x the size with similar shooting conditions and print quality.

Probably my biggest issue with the OM-1 is the noise at base ISO. The hires modes help solve this, but obviously this does not work if there is any subject motion. Also, some of the lenses are less than sharp - for example, my 12-40mm is amazing, but my copy of the 25mm f1.2 is very poor, even stopped down (and also with some mild decentering). In contrast, the GFX lenses have been uniformly impressive - probably because they are engineered with more modest apertures. Where possible, I use DXO Photolab for Olympus images as this really helps mitigate some of these problems.

A final issue that I have with the OM-1 is the lack of a fully automatic mode. Sometimes the camera needs to be used by someone who is not an expert in photography, and it is easier to give them an E-M1.2 with its iAuto mode than the OM-1.

 

[NikonBiologist]

We mainly use two systems: u43 (OM1 and E-M1.2) and Fujifilm GFX (100s medium format). I also use Leica film cameras and a Q2Mfor personal work.

The Olympus works best for situations where I need fast shooting, telephoto, macro, or where light weight and weather sealing are critical. It gets used for shooting in rough environments like deserts or poor weather.

The medium format system works best for slower shooting and where weight is not a major consideration. With a sensor 6x the size of u43, the image quality is unbelievable and lenses like the 80mm f1.7 give rendering (sharpness and focus falloff) and DOF that is impossible with u43. A major plus with the Fuji system is that all my lenses have an aperture ring, which makes it possible to shoot in manual mode with all three parameters (aperture, ISO and shutter-speed) mapped to direct physical controls. I really wish that Olympus lenses had aperture rings, or that the bodies would recognise Panasonic's implementation.

Importantly, both systems have a native 4/3 aspect ratio. It is surprisingly easy to mix images from the two systems, although the GFX images obviously allow larger print sizes. Personally, I am happy to print u43 up to A3, and A2 if the shots are taken carefully (optimum aperture and exposure). GFX prints can be roughly 4x the size with similar shooting conditions and print quality.

Probably my biggest issue with the OM-1 is the noise at base ISO. The hires modes help solve this, but obviously this does not work if there is any subject motion. Also, some of the lenses are less than sharp - for example, my 12-40mm is amazing, but my copy of the 25mm f1.2 is very poor, even stopped down (and also with some mild decentering). In contrast, the GFX lenses have been uniformly impressive - probably because they are engineered with more modest apertures. Where possible, I use DXO Photolab for Olympus images as this really helps mitigate some of these problems.

A final issue that I have with the OM-1 is the lack of a fully automatic mode. Sometimes the camera needs to be used by someone who is not an expert in photography, and it is easier to give them an E-M1.2 with its iAuto mode than the OM-1.

 

[David]

For those with a FF and m4/3 system,

What do you use your m4/3 system for and what do you use your FF system for?

While I mainly use my m4/3 system for most types of photography as I do nature, wildlife and macro nowadays. If I am called for to do portraits and event photography, I will use the FF and the Fuji MF system when the needs arises.

Let me explain.

The strengths of the m4/3 is in the deeper depth of field as the lens focal length used is shorter than larger formats. So you don't need to stop down the lens as much as larger formats do and that is helpful in macro photography, where you need more DOF to get all the things sharp. It's easier for me to get it with m4/3 and I love what Olympus and Panasonic have to offer in terms of macro lenses. The 30mm, 60mm and the 90mm are absolutely sharp and great. For low light photography, there is wide angle lenses where you can stay at f/1.4 or f/2.8 and still get amazing photos with more DOF than larger formats. What it gives up though, with smaller formats, are dynamic range and noise performance. Despite the advancement on AI noise reduction, the larger formats can still pull ahead. And larger formats have lower noise to begin with, so at times, your workflow will become less time consuming compared to using a smaller format. Also, AI noise reduction replaces information at the pixel level to give you the cleaner look and thus can unexpectedly do unpredictable things at the detail and texture level of the image. It may ruin the intended vision of your image. This had happened to me a few times, times now I can prevent by using a larger format sensor and avoid using AI NR or Deep Prime. But this is more for artistic photography.

The strengths of the larger format is obvious. The larger the sensor format, the longer the focal length of the lens needs to be to maintain equivalent Field Of View or Angle Of View. And this advantage allows the lens to give shallower depth of field with simpler designs. The analogy would be that you can slap on snow tires on a Honda Civic and that gives you traction in the winter up to a certain point. That point is when the snow is deeper and a Subaru Outback with All Wheel Drive and a higher clearance can traverse over deeper snow that the Honda Civic can not. You can do expensive modification to the Honda Civic by jacking up the Civic with higher clearance and adding the 4 wheel drive system if it is at all possible, but the costs will go up and yet may not guarantee to perform the system as a Subaru Outback or a Hummer either. The full frame system is like a Subaru Outback or Hummer. It's advantage is really in shallower depth of field and shooting in more challenging light, where it is easier to achieve this at much reasonable cost.

Most people I know who used to shoot M43 and defended its platform in the past had either moved to full frame or added full frame to the kit. A camera is ultimately a tool to create photographs. You use the tools that you feel best to achieve the photographs you want to create at a cost you can afford.

I see in many meetup groups that people buy cameras based on specs alone. They have no to little clue in what they like to photograph the most, but fixated on the idea that they need a camera that has the most dynamic range, best noise and tonality and yet they are doing things that a smaller sensor can help them benefit the most. And yet, they are willing to drag a big bag full of heavy lenses and bodies and not really enjoy the benefits of photography. It's a health therapy for anyone's creative outlet, but sometimes we are so fixated in the competition aspects of photography where if I have this $20,000 worth of gear, I am the better photographer, I am the authority in photography. But what is creativity? Creativity is about creating something new and unique and uniqueness has no competition. It only has competition if your photographs aren't unique. It's a copy of someone else's work and then you feel obligated to create it with a more expensive camera, because after all it's not your work to begin with, so you need to impress others with higher resolution, better dynamic range and better noise performance.

If you look at Steve Jobs with his introduction of the iPhone. The initial phone itself was rough on the edges compared to the Black Berry phone of its time, but given time, many people realized the iPhone wasn't an evolutionary of the Black Berry. It was revolutionary. And look at today, Black Berry is no more and the iPhone and Android dominate the market today. That's being creative. You create images that you can only create based on your unique style and you are always one to two steps ahead among everyone else.

Use whichever format you like to revolutionize your photographs and make them stand out and be unique and if M43 helps you do it, use M43 and if full frame or medium format helps you achieve it, then use those larger format.

Hope this helps.

 

[GutiWong]

For those with a FF and m4/3 system,

What do you use your m4/3 system for and what do you use your FF system for?

While I mainly use my m4/3 system for most types of photography as I do nature, wildlife and macro nowadays. If I am called for to do portraits and event photography, I will use the FF and the Fuji MF system when the needs arises.

Let me explain.

The strengths of the m4/3 is in the deeper depth of field as the lens focal length used is shorter than larger formats. So you don't need to stop down the lens as much as larger formats do and that is helpful in macro photography, where you need more DOF to get all the things sharp. It's easier for me to get it with m4/3 and I love what Olympus and Panasonic have to offer in terms of macro lenses. The 30mm, 60mm and the 90mm are absolutely sharp and great. For low light photography, there is wide angle lenses where you can stay at f/1.4 or f/2.8 and still get amazing photos with more DOF than larger formats. What it gives up though, with smaller formats, are dynamic range and noise performance. Despite the advancement on AI noise reduction, the larger formats can still pull ahead. And larger formats have lower noise to begin with, so at times, your workflow will become less time consuming compared to using a smaller format. Also, AI noise reduction replaces information at the pixel level to give you the cleaner look and thus can unexpectedly do unpredictable things at the detail and texture level of the image. It may ruin the intended vision of your image. This had happened to me a few times, times now I can prevent by using a larger format sensor and avoid using AI NR or Deep Prime. But this is more for artistic photography.

The strengths of the larger format is obvious. The larger the sensor format, the longer the focal length of the lens needs to be to maintain equivalent Field Of View or Angle Of View. And this advantage allows the lens to give shallower depth of field with simpler designs. The analogy would be that you can slap on snow tires on a Honda Civic and that gives you traction in the winter up to a certain point. That point is when the snow is deeper and a Subaru Outback with All Wheel Drive and a higher clearance can traverse over deeper snow that the Honda Civic can not. You can do expensive modification to the Honda Civic by jacking up the Civic with higher clearance and adding the 4 wheel drive system if it is at all possible, but the costs will go up and yet may not guarantee to perform the system as a Subaru Outback or a Hummer either. The full frame system is like a Subaru Outback or Hummer. It's advantage is really in shallower depth of field and shooting in more challenging light, where it is easier to achieve this at much reasonable cost.

Most people I know who used to shoot M43 and defended its platform in the past had either moved to full frame or added full frame to the kit. A camera is ultimately a tool to create photographs. You use the tools that you feel best to achieve the photographs you want to create at a cost you can afford.

I see in many meetup groups that people buy cameras based on specs alone. They have no to little clue in what they like to photograph the most, but fixated on the idea that they need a camera that has the most dynamic range, best noise and tonality and yet they are doing things that a smaller sensor can help them benefit the most. And yet, they are willing to drag a big bag full of heavy lenses and bodies and not really enjoy the benefits of photography. It's a health therapy for anyone's creative outlet, but sometimes we are so fixated in the competition aspects of photography where if I have this $20,000 worth of gear, I am the better photographer, I am the authority in photography. But what is creativity? Creativity is about creating something new and unique and uniqueness has no competition. It only has competition if your photographs aren't unique. It's a copy of someone else's work and then you feel obligated to create it with a more expensive camera, because after all it's not your work to begin with, so you need to impress others with higher resolution, better dynamic range and better noise performance.

If you look at Steve Jobs with his introduction of the iPhone. The initial phone itself was rough on the edges compared to the Black Berry phone of its time, but given time, many people realized the iPhone wasn't an evolutionary of the Black Berry. It was revolutionary. And look at today, Black Berry is no more and the iPhone and Android dominate the market today. That's being creative. You create images that you can only create based on your unique style and you are always one to two steps ahead among everyone else.

Use whichever format you like to revolutionize your photographs and make them stand out and be unique and if M43 helps you do it, use M43 and if full frame or medium format helps you achieve it, then use those larger format.

Hope this helps.

I can’t agree more with you about the photography.

But for your ‘iphone‘, ’Steve jobs” examples, actually there were android smartphones before iPhone released. Those android phones were much better than iPhone at that time.
Steve is not a creator of its own. He just copied everything from others and make it better. But he never mentioned it.

 

[nunyab]

For those with a FF and m4/3 system,

What do you use your m4/3 system for and what do you use your FF system for?

While I mainly use my m4/3 system for most types of photography as I do nature, wildlife and macro nowadays. If I am called for to do portraits and event photography, I will use the FF and the Fuji MF system when the needs arises.

Let me explain.

The strengths of the m4/3 is in the deeper depth of field as the lens focal length used is shorter than larger formats. So you don't need to stop down the lens as much as larger formats do and that is helpful in macro photography, where you need more DOF to get all the things sharp. It's easier for me to get it with m4/3 and I love what Olympus and Panasonic have to offer in terms of macro lenses. The 30mm, 60mm and the 90mm are absolutely sharp and great. For low light photography, there is wide angle lenses where you can stay at f/1.4 or f/2.8 and still get amazing photos with more DOF than larger formats. What it gives up though, with smaller formats, are dynamic range and noise performance. Despite the advancement on AI noise reduction, the larger formats can still pull ahead. And larger formats have lower noise to begin with, so at times, your workflow will become less time consuming compared to using a smaller format. Also, AI noise reduction replaces information at the pixel level to give you the cleaner look and thus can unexpectedly do unpredictable things at the detail and texture level of the image. It may ruin the intended vision of your image. This had happened to me a few times, times now I can prevent by using a larger format sensor and avoid using AI NR or Deep Prime. But this is more for artistic photography.

The strengths of the larger format is obvious. The larger the sensor format, the longer the focal length of the lens needs to be to maintain equivalent Field Of View or Angle Of View. And this advantage allows the lens to give shallower depth of field with simpler designs. The analogy would be that you can slap on snow tires on a Honda Civic and that gives you traction in the winter up to a certain point. That point is when the snow is deeper and a Subaru Outback with All Wheel Drive and a higher clearance can traverse over deeper snow that the Honda Civic can not. You can do expensive modification to the Honda Civic by jacking up the Civic with higher clearance and adding the 4 wheel drive system if it is at all possible, but the costs will go up and yet may not guarantee to perform the system as a Subaru Outback or a Hummer either. The full frame system is like a Subaru Outback or Hummer. It's advantage is really in shallower depth of field and shooting in more challenging light, where it is easier to achieve this at much reasonable cost.

Most people I know who used to shoot M43 and defended its platform in the past had either moved to full frame or added full frame to the kit. A camera is ultimately a tool to create photographs. You use the tools that you feel best to achieve the photographs you want to create at a cost you can afford.

I see in many meetup groups that people buy cameras based on specs alone. They have no to little clue in what they like to photograph the most, but fixated on the idea that they need a camera that has the most dynamic range, best noise and tonality and yet they are doing things that a smaller sensor can help them benefit the most. And yet, they are willing to drag a big bag full of heavy lenses and bodies and not really enjoy the benefits of photography. It's a health therapy for anyone's creative outlet, but sometimes we are so fixated in the competition aspects of photography where if I have this $20,000 worth of gear, I am the better photographer, I am the authority in photography. But what is creativity? Creativity is about creating something new and unique and uniqueness has no competition. It only has competition if your photographs aren't unique. It's a copy of someone else's work and then you feel obligated to create it with a more expensive camera, because after all it's not your work to begin with, so you need to impress others with higher resolution, better dynamic range and better noise performance.

If you look at Steve Jobs with his introduction of the iPhone. The initial phone itself was rough on the edges compared to the Black Berry phone of its time, but given time, many people realized the iPhone wasn't an evolutionary of the Black Berry. It was revolutionary. And look at today, Black Berry is no more and the iPhone and Android dominate the market today. That's being creative. You create images that you can only create based on your unique style and you are always one to two steps ahead among everyone else.

Use whichever format you like to revolutionize your photographs and make them stand out and be unique and if M43 helps you do it, use M43 and if full frame or medium format helps you achieve it, then use those larger format.

Hope this helps.

I can’t agree more with you about the photography.

But for your ‘iphone‘, ’Steve jobs” examples, actually there were android smartphones before iPhone released. Those android phones were much better than iPhone at that time.
Steve is not a creator of its own. He just copied everything from others and make it better. But he never mentioned it.

That’s incorrect, your timeline is off and inversed.

Android came after iPhone. The first Android phone was late 2008. iPhone was early 2007. The first Android phone came after the 2nd generation iPhone, he iPhone 3G.

Before iPhone there were PDAs and some “smart” phones of the day that combined PDAs with cellphonres.

it was definitely not Android.

All technology revolves around imitation and copying. The modern phone interface is entirely Apple’s, with a touchscreen and no keyboard . Companies such as Samsung, HTC, Google, all copied the iPhone interface. Samsung did it to an extreme degree of likeness, to establish themselves.

 

[Impulses]

At this point I use my FF system for everything and M4/3 for a couple niche use cases. I mostly shoot primes or UWA zooms and my FF kit is literally the same size my M4/3 kit was/is in that regard, so the latter stopped making much sense for general purposes. I sold the PL8-18 & 17/1.2 pretty quickly after I started shooting FF, might sell a few more small primes like the 12/2 (I'm emotionally attached to that one tho, heh), but besides it the rest aren't worth a lot. Could sell both it and the 7.5/2 for a 10/2 I guess...

Anyway, I did end up with some larger FF teles (50-400 & 135/1.8) but they're not my most used lenses, the 20/1.8 G, 24/2.8 G, 35/1.4 GM, SY 45/1.8 & 75/1.8, and 17-28/2.8 are. Those are about the size of the CV 10.5/0.95 (wanted it forever but never got one), 12/2, 17/1.2, and PL25. My 42.5/1.7 is smaller than my Samyang 75/1.8, which is about the size of my Oly 75/1.8, but with the cropping leeway the SY can kinda (not fully) fulfill the role of both so I'm even saving space there to an extent.

So what do I still use M4/3 for? Well I'd grab my Oly body for Live Comp and/or video because the former just makes shooting fireworks and long exposures stupid easy and said body still has better IBIS than my Sony body (tho this is changing). More importantly, my GX850 + that Oly 75/1.8 or a 35-100/2.8 is something I just can't match on any other format, the 42.5/1.7's MFD is pretty nice too. What do I use that GX850 + teles combo for? Well, anything! It's a very inconspicuous combo for concerts for one, or as a companion to a phone.

I even use the GX850 as a second body next to my FF kit, 61MP + 16MP heh... I was doing that even when I was solely shooting M4/3 tho (E-M5 with a wide, GM1/GX850 with a tele), so it came natural. It's pretty nice to have that second body clipped and ready on a PD Capture on the side of my bag, makes for less lens swapping. Unfortunately the last GX came out in 2018, and I don't even know when the last PEN released in the US came out (it's a shame they didn't bring the E-P7 here). It's making me worried this use case is a dead end...

If all I end up seeing for the next 2-3 years is more large G/GH and OM-1/E-M1 type bodies, I'll probably be further tempted to minimize my current M4/3 kit (although I'd hate to give up those teles, so at best I'd sell a couple wide primes & the E-M5 III) or to side grade to APS-C and sell all of my M4/3 kit. The 56/1.4 and 90/2.8 DN aren't quite as attractive a combo as the 42.5/1.7 & 75/1.8 but they'd do, what I'd lose would be the 35-100/2.8. I'd gain much much better tracking on an a6400/a6700 tho.

Honestly if someone came out with a FF 70-200 f4-5.6 <5" & <500g (or a 50-150/4 even) that would make that decision even easier, but I'm not holding my breath for that even tho it's entirely doable. An APS-C 50-135/4 would do too...

TL;DR: I use FF for everything now, M4/3 for the small teles and the smallest of bodies. Shot M4/3 only from 2013-2020, the bevy of small primes on E mount that have come out since 2019 made me do a double take and decide to try FF for those + the tracking and processing leeway, very happy I did. M4/3 is hanging on by a thread for me... But I'm still very attached to that GX850 + 75/1.8 combo, heh, will probably be the last thing I ever sell. For concerts and/or as a small tele companion combo to a phone it's hard to beat.

 

[Impulses]

I've shot with three "systems" simultaneously actually, though the third is a P&S.

My main use and motivation for adding a FF system (Nikon Z) was for landscape photography. The main advantage is lower base ISO noise in a single exposure for a similar weight and size to the higher quality m43 lenses (e.g. Oly 12-100/4 PRO, Panasonic 8-18) and an E-M1 sized body. Since lenses dominate bulk even an E-M5 body (what I always used) doesn't save much compared to my Z system landscape setup. Telephoto landscapes though are where m43 still has a noticeable size advantage. The 45-175 is tiny and none too shabby!

I can achieve very similar results to FF using my m43 gear by exposure averaging, but that is just a fair bit more hassle in the field and in post processing. These days with the 12-45/4 PRO around I think there is still a very good case to be made for a compact m43 landscape setup when paired with an OM-5 sized body. That ship has sailed for me though!

I used m43 exclusively since 2009 until I added Nikon Z in 2020. m43 really does everything I need quite competently and adding Z was a luxury and by no means necessity. For m43 I mainly held on to my GM1 and some tiny primes (15/1.7 and 42.5/1.7 especially) for family outings. COVID put a damper on that and so it didn't get much use for awhile. I also used it for long hikes paired with the 12-32 and 35-100/4-5.6 but that got supplanted by the ZS100 below. I also carried an IR converted m43 body (G1 first then an E-M5mkII) but it was hard to find lenses that were optimal for both visible and IR, which meant despite also being m43 it was like having another "m43 IR system" separate from my regular m43 landscape setup.

I also eventually added a full spectrum converted Panasonic ZS100 after getting my Nikon Z7. This was intended primarily for shooting when on long hikes - especially mid-day when IR is sometimes desirable. In a perfect world I would have preferred to IR convert a GM1 and use it with a 12-32 and 35-100/4.5-5.6 (both of which do IR quite well). Unfortunately the GM1 does not IR convert well because there is an IR shutter monitor LED. Thus if converted you are forced to use full electronic shutter which is only a 10-bit readout. m43 already has a base ISO noise issue for landscape and so not desirable to make it worse with 10-bit limitation. The ZS100 is pretty darn good (like a Sony RX100) but like all these super compacts the lens has less desirable focal lengths - hence I wish I was using the GM1 instead.

Honestly, these days I'm getting very little m43 use just because my lifestyle has changed. Most of my photography is landscape and so that's the Nikon Z system. As my kid has gotten older there aren't endless trips to zoos and museums where I loved bringing the GM1 and primes. These days an iPhone tends to suffice for the occasional grab shots when I'd never have any camera anyway and for the now rarer outing I probably just bring my Z7 with some primes. It is of course a whole different size proposition being in pack or shoulder strap so really not comparable with the GM1 at all (which fits in pockets). But the output isn't comparable at all either, with a Voigtlander 40/1.2 on the Z7 one gets medium format looking portraits. So just not comparable either way. The GM1 was absolutely the right solution when my daughter was younger and every weekend we went somewhere.

Again, even though I use it less and less now I really think for a huge swath of photography m43 is really the sweet spot in sensor size. It gives you so many options. In some sense that flexibility almost became a curse for me as I ended up with essentially three different m43 systems! I had my landscape setup (E-M5II, 8-18, 12-40/2.8, 35-100/2.8) then my hiking setup (GM1, 12-32, 35-100) and then my IR setup (converted E-M5II, 14-45/3.5-5.6, 45-175). Of course I didn't need to optimize each thing that way, but once I did switching parts of it to different systems wasn't that big a leap.

I'm kind of sad I don't use m43 so much any more. It really served me amazingly well for more than a decade! And if I was economical and realistic at all it would still be serving me just fine

I went thru a very very similar shift tho for different and unrelated reasons... The small teles are the part of M4/3 that I haven't been able to let go. I'm curious how the ZS100 compares to the 35-100 f4-5.6? I'm starting to realize that when I don't wanna carry my FF tele zoom or crop into a prime too heavily I might just be better off with a P&S on the side than with my GM1/GX850.

I recently rented an RX100 VII for a concert and was super impressed, can't quite justify it's price for occasional use tho...

Even an old 135/3.5 delivers pretty impressive results on my high res body vs the GX850 + 35-100 (at a similar weight for that lens + adapter vs the M4/3 combo). I'm just trying to figure out how to downsize, or what my M4/3 exit strategy would be if my GX850 dies and there's literally no more small bodies to be had, tho I'm likely keeping it and the Oly 75/1.8 until the wheels fall off.

It's the 35-100/2.8 I'm not as clear on, it's great for some purposes (landscapes, events), and I can't match that form factor with anything else on any other ILC, but I've been using it less and less after getting the Oly 75/1.8 and now 75 & 135mm FF options. I keep avoiding the xx-200 superzoom on FF but I guess that's one option...

 

[ahaslett]

I've shot with three "systems" simultaneously actually, though the third is a P&S.

My main use and motivation for adding a FF system (Nikon Z) was for landscape photography. The main advantage is lower base ISO noise in a single exposure for a similar weight and size to the higher quality m43 lenses (e.g. Oly 12-100/4 PRO, Panasonic 8-18) and an E-M1 sized body. Since lenses dominate bulk even an E-M5 body (what I always used) doesn't save much compared to my Z system landscape setup. Telephoto landscapes though are where m43 still has a noticeable size advantage. The 45-175 is tiny and none too shabby!

I can achieve very similar results to FF using my m43 gear by exposure averaging, but that is just a fair bit more hassle in the field and in post processing. These days with the 12-45/4 PRO around I think there is still a very good case to be made for a compact m43 landscape setup when paired with an OM-5 sized body. That ship has sailed for me though!

I used m43 exclusively since 2009 until I added Nikon Z in 2020. m43 really does everything I need quite competently and adding Z was a luxury and by no means necessity. For m43 I mainly held on to my GM1 and some tiny primes (15/1.7 and 42.5/1.7 especially) for family outings. COVID put a damper on that and so it didn't get much use for awhile. I also used it for long hikes paired with the 12-32 and 35-100/4-5.6 but that got supplanted by the ZS100 below. I also carried an IR converted m43 body (G1 first then an E-M5mkII) but it was hard to find lenses that were optimal for both visible and IR, which meant despite also being m43 it was like having another "m43 IR system" separate from my regular m43 landscape setup.

I also eventually added a full spectrum converted Panasonic ZS100 after getting my Nikon Z7. This was intended primarily for shooting when on long hikes - especially mid-day when IR is sometimes desirable. In a perfect world I would have preferred to IR convert a GM1 and use it with a 12-32 and 35-100/4.5-5.6 (both of which do IR quite well). Unfortunately the GM1 does not IR convert well because there is an IR shutter monitor LED. Thus if converted you are forced to use full electronic shutter which is only a 10-bit readout. m43 already has a base ISO noise issue for landscape and so not desirable to make it worse with 10-bit limitation. The ZS100 is pretty darn good (like a Sony RX100) but like all these super compacts the lens has less desirable focal lengths - hence I wish I was using the GM1 instead.

Honestly, these days I'm getting very little m43 use just because my lifestyle has changed. Most of my photography is landscape and so that's the Nikon Z system. As my kid has gotten older there aren't endless trips to zoos and museums where I loved bringing the GM1 and primes. These days an iPhone tends to suffice for the occasional grab shots when I'd never have any camera anyway and for the now rarer outing I probably just bring my Z7 with some primes. It is of course a whole different size proposition being in pack or shoulder strap so really not comparable with the GM1 at all (which fits in pockets). But the output isn't comparable at all either, with a Voigtlander 40/1.2 on the Z7 one gets medium format looking portraits. So just not comparable either way. The GM1 was absolutely the right solution when my daughter was younger and every weekend we went somewhere.

Again, even though I use it less and less now I really think for a huge swath of photography m43 is really the sweet spot in sensor size. It gives you so many options. In some sense that flexibility almost became a curse for me as I ended up with essentially three different m43 systems! I had my landscape setup (E-M5II, 8-18, 12-40/2.8, 35-100/2.8) then my hiking setup (GM1, 12-32, 35-100) and then my IR setup (converted E-M5II, 14-45/3.5-5.6, 45-175). Of course I didn't need to optimize each thing that way, but once I did switching parts of it to different systems wasn't that big a leap.

I'm kind of sad I don't use m43 so much any more. It really served me amazingly well for more than a decade! And if I was economical and realistic at all it would still be serving me just fine

I went thru a very very similar shift tho for different and unrelated reasons... The small teles are the part of M4/3 that I haven't been able to let go. I'm curious how the ZS100 compares to the 35-100 f4-5.6? I'm starting to realize that when I don't wanna carry my FF tele zoom or crop into a prime too heavily I might just be better off with a P&S on the side than with my GM1/GX850.

I recently rented an RX100 VII for a concert and was super impressed, can't quite justify it's price for occasional use tho...

Even an old 135/3.5 delivers pretty impressive results on my high res body vs the GX850 + 35-100 (at a similar weight for that lens + adapter vs the M4/3 combo). I'm just trying to figure out how to downsize, or what my M4/3 exit strategy would be if my GX850 dies and there's literally no more small bodies to be had, tho I'm likely keeping it and the Oly 75/1.8 until the wheels fall off.

It's the 35-100/2.8 I'm not as clear on, it's great for some purposes (landscapes, events), and I can't match that form factor with anything else on any other ILC, but I've been using it less and less after getting the Oly 75/1.8 and now 75 & 135mm FF options. I keep avoiding the xx-200 superzoom on FF but I guess that's one option...

I've always liked my MFT kit for its versatility. Once the OM1 was announced, I bought more lenses, and more still when I upgraded to one.

I guess it depends on what each of us thinks of as "light" and how you feel about corner or centre EVF.

Sony is certainly disrupting the market by putting high-end functions in smaller bodies.

I see the OM1 as a Sony disruption too, since the sensor is a variant of a commercial off-the-shelf one. It would not be surprising if Sony helped Olympus with the integration and were using the OM1 as a test bed for later generations of Quad Bayer FF or APSC sensors.

Only a while longer before we find out where Panasonic see their market point in MFT.

Andrew

 

[JosephScha]

I used to have two systems. But I am retired and not willing to carry FF lenses around anymore. So I sold off what I had for FF and now only shoot with the Panasonic G9. And I am happier.

The G9 with the 14-140mm for daylight, or with one of the small fast primes in dim light. 9mm f/1.7, 15mm f/1.7, 25mm f/1.4, 42.5mm f/1.7 (a real gem and inexpensive) and Sigma 60mm f/2.8.

Let me point out that the 14-140 is roughly equivalent to 28-280mm for FF. The difference is, I couldn't fit a FF camera with a 10x zoom lens in the camera bag that fits the G9 with the 14-140mm.

 

[Impulses]

I've shot with three "systems" simultaneously actually, though the third is a P&S.

My main use and motivation for adding a FF system (Nikon Z) was for landscape photography. The main advantage is lower base ISO noise in a single exposure for a similar weight and size to the higher quality m43 lenses (e.g. Oly 12-100/4 PRO, Panasonic 8-18) and an E-M1 sized body. Since lenses dominate bulk even an E-M5 body (what I always used) doesn't save much compared to my Z system landscape setup. Telephoto landscapes though are where m43 still has a noticeable size advantage. The 45-175 is tiny and none too shabby!

I can achieve very similar results to FF using my m43 gear by exposure averaging, but that is just a fair bit more hassle in the field and in post processing. These days with the 12-45/4 PRO around I think there is still a very good case to be made for a compact m43 landscape setup when paired with an OM-5 sized body. That ship has sailed for me though!

I used m43 exclusively since 2009 until I added Nikon Z in 2020. m43 really does everything I need quite competently and adding Z was a luxury and by no means necessity. For m43 I mainly held on to my GM1 and some tiny primes (15/1.7 and 42.5/1.7 especially) for family outings. COVID put a damper on that and so it didn't get much use for awhile. I also used it for long hikes paired with the 12-32 and 35-100/4-5.6 but that got supplanted by the ZS100 below. I also carried an IR converted m43 body (G1 first then an E-M5mkII) but it was hard to find lenses that were optimal for both visible and IR, which meant despite also being m43 it was like having another "m43 IR system" separate from my regular m43 landscape setup.

I also eventually added a full spectrum converted Panasonic ZS100 after getting my Nikon Z7. This was intended primarily for shooting when on long hikes - especially mid-day when IR is sometimes desirable. In a perfect world I would have preferred to IR convert a GM1 and use it with a 12-32 and 35-100/4.5-5.6 (both of which do IR quite well). Unfortunately the GM1 does not IR convert well because there is an IR shutter monitor LED. Thus if converted you are forced to use full electronic shutter which is only a 10-bit readout. m43 already has a base ISO noise issue for landscape and so not desirable to make it worse with 10-bit limitation. The ZS100 is pretty darn good (like a Sony RX100) but like all these super compacts the lens has less desirable focal lengths - hence I wish I was using the GM1 instead.

Honestly, these days I'm getting very little m43 use just because my lifestyle has changed. Most of my photography is landscape and so that's the Nikon Z system. As my kid has gotten older there aren't endless trips to zoos and museums where I loved bringing the GM1 and primes. These days an iPhone tends to suffice for the occasional grab shots when I'd never have any camera anyway and for the now rarer outing I probably just bring my Z7 with some primes. It is of course a whole different size proposition being in pack or shoulder strap so really not comparable with the GM1 at all (which fits in pockets). But the output isn't comparable at all either, with a Voigtlander 40/1.2 on the Z7 one gets medium format looking portraits. So just not comparable either way. The GM1 was absolutely the right solution when my daughter was younger and every weekend we went somewhere.

Again, even though I use it less and less now I really think for a huge swath of photography m43 is really the sweet spot in sensor size. It gives you so many options. In some sense that flexibility almost became a curse for me as I ended up with essentially three different m43 systems! I had my landscape setup (E-M5II, 8-18, 12-40/2.8, 35-100/2.8) then my hiking setup (GM1, 12-32, 35-100) and then my IR setup (converted E-M5II, 14-45/3.5-5.6, 45-175). Of course I didn't need to optimize each thing that way, but once I did switching parts of it to different systems wasn't that big a leap.

I'm kind of sad I don't use m43 so much any more. It really served me amazingly well for more than a decade! And if I was economical and realistic at all it would still be serving me just fine

I went thru a very very similar shift tho for different and unrelated reasons... The small teles are the part of M4/3 that I haven't been able to let go. I'm curious how the ZS100 compares to the 35-100 f4-5.6? I'm starting to realize that when I don't wanna carry my FF tele zoom or crop into a prime too heavily I might just be better off with a P&S on the side than with my GM1/GX850.

I recently rented an RX100 VII for a concert and was super impressed, can't quite justify it's price for occasional use tho...

Even an old 135/3.5 delivers pretty impressive results on my high res body vs the GX850 + 35-100 (at a similar weight for that lens + adapter vs the M4/3 combo). I'm just trying to figure out how to downsize, or what my M4/3 exit strategy would be if my GX850 dies and there's literally no more small bodies to be had, tho I'm likely keeping it and the Oly 75/1.8 until the wheels fall off.

It's the 35-100/2.8 I'm not as clear on, it's great for some purposes (landscapes, events), and I can't match that form factor with anything else on any other ILC, but I've been using it less and less after getting the Oly 75/1.8 and now 75 & 135mm FF options. I keep avoiding the xx-200 superzoom on FF but I guess that's one option...

I've always liked my MFT kit for its versatility. Once the OM1 was announced, I bought more lenses, and more still when I upgraded to one.

I guess it depends on what each of us thinks of as "light" and how you feel about corner or centre EVF.

Sony is certainly disrupting the market by putting high-end functions in smaller bodies.

I see the OM1 as a Sony disruption too, since the sensor is a variant of a commercial off-the-shelf one. It would not be surprising if Sony helped Olympus with the integration and were using the OM1 as a test bed for later generations of Quad Bayer FF or APSC sensors.

Only a while longer before we find out where Panasonic see their market point in MFT.

Andrew

The ability of M4/3 to scale up/down was one of the things I valued most, but it feels like that's getting lost to an extent. The GX9 came out in 2018, the E-M5 III came out in 2019, it just seems like lighter/smaller bodies are getting left way way behind. I don't like being an alarmist or doomsayer, even a year ago I would've guessed there'd be proper replacements for those even if not for my GM1/GX850 (yeah I'm not counting the OM-5), but the outlook is getting grimmer...

If a P&S or an old 135mm can replace some of my M4/3 tele use as a second body (35-100 f4-5.6), and/or small FF primes or an APS-C body can replace the M4/3 tele primes & GX850, the 35-100/2.8 would be the only thing I'd really value M4/3 for. It's not a knock on the system at all, like ken said FF was a splurge for me and I could be nearly as happy with my original M4/3 kit, tho the tracking always let me down.

If it wasn't for that I might've not tried out a FF system at all, got tired of waiting for it to improve and/or filter down from the flagship body tho. The cropping leeway is a bonus, the extra DoF control with wides is nice, but it's the tracking (face/eye AF) that really pushed me. I think Pana could catch up quickly there, their subject tracking seems pretty decent but held back by CDAF/DFD, if OSPDAF can boost that... But are they ever making a GX again? :/

 

[Impulses]

Have to admit I'm a little biased still toward m43.

But the other day I took out my recently purchased g85 and combined it with my first generation 35-100f2.8, and in my informal testing I could shoot that and get a tack sharp shot at 100 mm at 1/40th of a second, and occasionallyat 1/30.. Now I know with my em1.2 or1.3, 40-150 F 2.8, I can do the same shot, but at 150mm at 1/10th all day, and 1/5 at 100mm ( 200mm ff eq).

I broke out the R6 with the 70-200f4L, and found I could get 1/10 at 200mm, and occasionally 1/5 tack sharp. Now on the unstabilized RP I tend to lose at least a stop with a stabilized lens, and too many stops to count with an unstabilized lens, To the point where I have to shoot at 2x focal length minimum, to get a good shot.

Unscientific and informal, but those have been my findings. Nice thing about the RP and rf, as other people have posted regarding full frame, is I can shoot isos into the 30k range and still have a decent looking jpeg. And since my limited forays into post-processing have not been terribly successful, I tend to only do it in camera now, so I try to get the shot right when I take it.

Just curious, what are you shooting at 200mm at 1/10? Night time landscapes or... Genuine question btw!

 

[Wingsfan]

A perfectly fair question. I was shooting a test subject initially at low light in my house at night time. I tend not to pixel peep with my gear once I'm using it, but I do like to have an understanding of its limits both on the slow end with the shutter speed, and the high end with the ISO rating, so that I know where my upper and lower limits are going to be. So I always run through these types of tests whenever I get a new body or lens to compare it to the equipment I'm more familiar with.

I do sometimes shoot late into the evening when I would be pushing the limits of my m43 gear, and I found the RF system can handle that, especially with the is that performs nearly as well as the Olympus system does. And if I throw on a 35 F 1.8 on an r6, it's almost a revelation. We had traveled out to Newport not that long ago and I got some beautiful shots of the harbor and back into the town from the end of a pier at 9:00 p.m. well after the sun had fully set.