19
A great deal here depends on when you (generally) take pictures.
In particular, with bright light, a smaller sensor makes little or no difference in quality. As the light level drops, however, a large sensor (generally) gains a greater advantage.
So, if you're mostly taking pictures of the view from a mountain top in broad daylight, chances are that the ...
16
The basic answer is that Canon's 50mm f/1.8 is an exception even within Canon's lineup. It's an old, simple design with nothing fancy, and made to be mass-produced cheaply. Compare the Canon 85mm f/1.8, at AU$360.
Basically, almost no lenses are as cheap as the one you're using as your reference point, so your perception is skewed. The Olympus lenses aren't ...
14
In practice this is not a concern unless you have very demanding needs.
Now I would preface this by saying that my view of "image quality" is that many people, particularly beginners, tend to make the mistake of thinking of that in terms of pixel level quality or technical tests of particular parameters (like ISO performance).
In practice an "image of ...
13
Crop factor has nothing to do with T-stop. T-stop is strictly about light transmission which affects exposure. If a lens could be 100% transmissive the T-stop and f-number of the lens would be the same number, but they would still be measures of different things. T-stop measures how much light is passed through the lens, f-stop measures the size of the ...
12
It's not so much that manual is better, but that manual is more controlled.
Shooting all the time on full manual will teach you what to do & what not to do. It will take longer & you will probably have far fewer keepers to start with, but you will learn as you go.
If you are shooting full manual, you have to balance up the depth of field you need - ...
11
I'm not sure if you are asking about the micro four thirds standard or the 4:3 aspect ratio, so I'll answer both:
Why do mirrorless cameras use micro four thirds?
They don't, only Panasonic and Olympus build micro four thirds cameras, there are a lot of other companies making mirrorless cameras (for example: Sony, Fujifilm, Samsung, etc.) that have other ...
11
All other things being equal, yes.
There are two primary reasons why this is so.
To maintain the same amount of field intensity of light over a larger area, a lens used with a larger sensor has to be able to collect more total light than a lens used with a smaller sensor. This means a larger entrance pupil, which usually works out to require a larger front ...
10
Ignoring for the moment aspect ratio, from a theoretical viewpoint there is will be no visual difference, provided you maintain
the same subject & camera position / orientation
the same angle of view
the same resolution (number of megapixels)
the same size entrance pupil (focal length divided by f-number)
the same lens characteristics
The first two are ...
10
Since this question was originally asked, the Micro Four-Thirds system has advanced and some of the earlier answers have become outdated. The latest generation of cameras has fast auto-focus although they still lag behind DSLRs for low-light and continuous tracking (eg birds in flight and sports) due to lack of phase-contrast autofocus. The lens selection is ...
10
Camera and lens designs are full of compromises and certain decisions have knock on effect throughout the system.
Olympus decided on a particularly thick filter stack when specifying the micro four thirds system. This and the short backfocus distance of a mirrorless lens mount necessitate a telecentric or near telecentric lens design where rays exit the ...
9
Our very own Itai runs Neocamera, which has such a list.
9
You can mix & match lenses from different manufacturers, with just a few caveats.
Autofocus will work for all MFT lenses on all MFT bodies (that I am aware of).
Image stabilization: Olympus does in-body image stabilization (IBIS), whereas Panasonic bodies prior the GX7 and GX8 placed the image stabilization in the lens.† This means that Olympus lenses ...
9
I'm sure you've heard the old saying, "The best camera is the one you have with you."
Some of my favorite photos are shots I've taken with my three-year-old Samsung Galaxy Note 4, a phone with a decent camera but not a spectacular one. But it's in my pocket all the time, and when there is only a moment to grab a shot, there it is.
You can certainly get ...
8
Sorry, no; the magnification designation of a macro lens is the ratio of the physical size of the object to the size it appears on the sensor, meaning at 1:2 magnification, the image of the object would be half life size on the sensor (so e.g. a 2cm diameter coin would have an image 1cm wide on the sensor).
Of course being a smaller sensor, the image would ...
8
You will crop away the outer edge of the image and this will cause you to lose the highly distorted edges of the photo.
this is particularly obvious when you are dealing with a very very wide angle where normally a circular image would be seen but due to the crop you see a square image.
This review of the Canon 8-15mm fisheye contains a picture how the ...
7
The Four Thirds standard for digital SLRs was designed by Olympus and Kodak to be the first system specifically made for digital, with high standards for telecentric lenses and other design choices for a modern era, rather than adapting a film lens mount. At the time, full-frame sensors were really out of reach in terms of cost, and the smaller sensor ...
7
There is without a doubt a noticeable difference. The smaller sensor size, as you mentioned, gives a Micro Four-Thirds camera a disadvantage when it comes to low-light performance. The real question is: How much is this difference?
Let me preface this by saying that I have seen and reviewed nearly every Micro-Four Thirds cameras on the market, as well as ...
7
No. Micro Four Thirds is not an open standard. The specification is available to member companies, which are listed here. It's not a tiny list, but it's not large, either.
Your best bet is found on the contact page, which says (sic):
To Manufacturers considering developing or selling the Four Thirds compliance product.
For inquiries on Four Thirds ...
6
I think fundamentally you are looking at it a bit wrong. In theory, the aperture equivalence is exactly canceled out by the decrease in sensor area. When viewed at the same final size, the perception of noise should be about equal between your full-frame F/5.6 @ ISO 1600 and micro-four-thirds F/2.8 @ ISO 400.
But you note
I have rented the EM5 and ...
6
The size of a lens is governed by the complexity of the design and the amount of light that needs to pass through it. For a given focal length with a cropped sensor, the amount of information that has to be brought in to the lens to produce the image circle can be much smaller because the entire full frame image circle doesn't have to be filled. If you are ...
6
Edit - One More Try (original below the rule)
The noise level for a given photograph is specifically a consequence of one or more of:
the ISO, with higher ISOs having more noise
the size of the sensor wells, bigger wells tend to be less noisy for the same generation of sensors because they get more light for the same pixel
the heat level in the camera, as ...
6
No, larger sensor cameras are not more likely to mis-focus - if you take the Canon 1DX (with a modern lens) for example, it's a full-frame camera that's about as far away from "likely to mis-focus" as possible.
But when a large sensor camera mis-focuses it's more noticeable, especially when most tiny sensor cameras (cellphones) have wide angle lenses.
The ...
6
As someone who occasionally indulges in bird photography, shoots micro four-thirds, and has adapted manual lenses to her Canon dSLRs, I'd say don't do it. The lens will be disproportionately big and heavy compared to your G5, and the lack of autofocus (and EXIF, and aperture control from the body unless the lens has an aperture ring) will probably be more ...
6
No. As far as exposure value goes, an f-stop is an f-stop. It's only where depth of field is concerned (and noise calculations derived from "total light captured", if you're the type who has to go there) that you need to think about equivalent f-stops.
So if you are reading 1/250 at f/4, set your camera to 1/250 at f/4. That will give you a correctly-...
6
The f-stop is a simple ratio. It is the focal length divided by the working diameter. We use this value to compare the image brightness of one lens vs. another. The f-stop is often in error because it does not take into account light loss due to reflections from the polished surfaces and the lack of perfect transparency of the glass. The "T" -top is ...
6
I would suggest looking into a shift or tilt-shift adapter, to mount say a wide-angle Canon EF or Nikon AF-S lens. This way, you have a much wider selection of regular lenses to choose from than just looking at tilt-shift only lenses. And you will likely be able to achieve what you want much cheaper as well.
Edit: I specifically recommended full frame ...
6
I don't think it's a great idea to be shooting in full manual. The same kind of people will tell you that auto focus is cheating...
The semi auto modes allow you to control what you're interested in at that point. Aperture priority mode is a fantastic middle ground that gives you control of the depth of field, and the camera makes sure you get well exposed ...
5
The most comprehensive listing of Micro Four-thirds lens I am aware of is at this posting on the Micro 4/3rds Photography blog: http://m43photo.blogspot.com/2010/01/micro-four-thirds-lens-lineup.html. Despite the misleading dateline from when this blog post was originally published, the post is regularly updated as new lenses become available.
5
As it happens Stack Exchange gave me a chance to try it out, with the (no longer active) Gear Grant Program. I rented an OM-D EM-5 body and the lens for a couple of weeks, and took it with me everywhere.
My first impression was slight disappointment — although it's a mix of metal and plastic construction, it feels much more plasticky than Pentax's "Limited" ...
5
I've been a professional long-lens bird/nature shooter since the 80's. I used to use very big and pricey dedicated video cameras/lenses, but now have found the wonderful micro-4/3 world and love it. I've gotten some amazing shots, both video and stills, by adapting older long telephoto lenses to my Panasonic G6 and GH3, as well as my Olympus E-PL5 and E-M5 ...
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