M43 and crop sensors: noticeable differences?

Lounge
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I agree with the sentiment, but maybe not putting the blame on Photons to Photos. I think resources like this are very valuable and I appreciate those who put the time into creating them.

The problem are the users who obsess over numbers, and I don’t think photography is the exclusive domain of this. If it weren’t for PtoP, I’m sure users would still be arguing over 1 stop here and x amount of noise there.

I also think YouTubers and reviewers also need to take a share of the blame. Some of them mean well, but they can’t help obsessing over specs and talking about FF as if it’s the only real option for professionals. And a large section of the hobbyist world secretly wants to be a pro or at least shoot what the pros shoot.

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Agreed. I just wish they explored other form factors in their 4/3 line. They’re all big and ugly. For FF, they have the S9, so they definitely can explore different form factors.

I also wish OM System would explore other sensor sizes. I think they’re the only manufacturer that just sticks with one size.

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They are not that ugly. They feel well built. I have only ever handled Lumix cameras owned by my students, but I will agree they are big for a 4/3 camera. I have to actually pickup the camera and look at the lens to decide it is a 4/3 and not a FF camera. I thought the whole idea of 4/3 was a smaller lighter camera but Lumix don’t agree on that one.

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Aren’t the bigger Lumix 4/3 cameras almost all directed towards video? A bigger camera is much more stable when handholding, especially when coupled with smaller 4/3 lebses. In this case the benefits are all in the sensor speed, less rolling shutter etc, and not the form factor

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The best IBIS is on M4/3 bodies, so I don’t think they need to worry too much about stability. For me, the major benefit of going with a smaller sensor would be getting a smaller body/system. The computational features are also a selling point at the moment, but I think other manufacturers will catch up to that eventually.

I think a smaller body, like the size of the Fuji X-M5, but with a substantial grip, could provide all the stability you need for an ILC. A range of sizes would of course be ideal to cater to more people. Fuji does this best I think, along with Sony.

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86

Ugly may be unfair. “Uninspired” may be more accurate. They just tend to be cookie cutter Canon-like designs, and I’m really not a fan of the domed top of the GH series bodies.

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I do, however, like the GX9. I really hope they bring out a successor to that one.

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That statement is a bit strong in my opinion.

For the other 1% of photographers, the existence of an independent DR review site remains of interest.

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I am not an expert, but I suspect that the video-centric Lumix bodies are larger because of the cooling: a lot of the metal in the body acts as a heatsink, which is then cooled by fans. The design is clever because the air does not circulate directly in the camera interior, which is sealed (not to the extent of OM bodies though, AFAIK).

I think that the photographers and videographers who actually know what they are doing dismiss these sites almost completely, as they are perfectly capable of judging what they need themselves.

It is the ignorati who are providing the constant audience for these sites. They cannot judge a test image, because they have no clue what they should be looking at. So, they drool over MTF charts, DXOmark scores, noise and DR charts, you name it. This is just a more technically sophisticated, but equally meaningless activity as the “how many megapixels?” race in the good old days. The recent hullabaloo about the Nikon Z6 iii having less DR than the ii in some circumstances is a prefect example: a practically irrelevant difference that was widely discussed in headlines for a while.

Meta-activities displace the actual ones. I recently learned that many kids today do not play video games, but watch videos of others playing video games. I suspect that a lot of people who read and participate in camera forums haven’t actually touched their camera in the last 7 days.

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Maybe when AI upscaling and NR tools become good enough this DR/Noise/Resolution discussion will finally come to an end :smiley:

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… or we will be benchmarking the various AI tools. “NR supreme AI Turbo gives 22% less noise in our test image, at the cost of rendering a a cute chincilla in a tutu riding a unicycle in the lower left corner. We think this is an acceptable trade-off.” :wink:

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I find measurements important. Photonstophotos, Lenstip, Chris Frost, they all serve a purpose. I like to do my own, too.

But I think the impact of these measurements are too often misrepresented in mainstream photography discourse. Too many articles show 200% images of fine detail to discuss lens differences, which is largely irrelevant for printed/shared photos. I would love to see more reportage on the visibility of various lens characteristics. For instance, I find bokeh rendering highly relevant to full photos, but sharpness pretty unimportant. Noise, too, matters very little in full-photo prints/posts. Up to a point, of course, and that threshold would be a good topic for a few articles.

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92

Pretty crazy how much resolution the new 23mm lens has. I have the very famous 16mm and I think it must share a lot of characteristics with the older 23mm. It’s not very sharp wide open but the rendering is sublime, especially at 1.4. Are you selling your old 23?

IIRC it was the first 16mm lens with such a wide aperture as this was only feasible with mirrorless cameras and Fuji being one of the first taking mirrorless seriously ended up being the first creating such a lens.

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Yes, already sold. I noticed that I hadn’t taken it out after receiving the new one, so I sold it. It’s a fairly subtle difference between them, but I clearly prefer the new one.

It’s truly an apex lens. Crazy good. Not that I need the resolution, but the rendering is flawless, too.

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Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I am skeptical that an A3 test chart, which will probably be well within a meter or so of the lens, tells us much about anything that you want to use this lens for. Distance matters and lenses are optimized for a specific range.

These tests charts and similar objects are of course very prevalent now, and “serious” reviewers include them when looking at a new body (which always puzzled me, because I think the lens is the limiting factor for most setups) and lens.

The 23mm you are testing is, BTW, probably optically superb, and perfectly capable of delivering enough resolution, like most prime lenses these days.

To understand a lens, I first understand its field curvature, then how it renders various textures I care about within and out of focus.

For example, in a portrait lens I find it important how it renders hair, but I cannot quantify it. It does not correlate with sharpness per se, I am guessing it it the combination of out-of-focus rendering and sharpness.

Another example is specular highlights in landscape shots. I get these when I travel to warmer countries which have plants with waxy leaves, they really sparkle no matter what, and sometimes that can render the greenery busy. Polarizing filters help a bit, but I have to figure out a sweet spot for each lens I use for this purpose.

I would love lens reviews which compare lenses using this technique: here is a scene, this is what I want to show, and this is how these lenses compare at the same focal length and aperture. The effect can be quite subtle, but should not require pixel-peeping, at most a 3x magnification compared to normal viewing. If it does not manifest in a way that influences the outcome, it is irrelevant.

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95

I agree. I could only measure things that are easily measurable. The real world is not a measurement and has many variables that are very hard to quantify.

As noted in the post, I did this to verify that my lens works as advertised, and to see how it compares to the old one.

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Thanks everyone for all your thoughtful replies!

Another thing that occurred to me was weather sealing. The only, admittedly minor, equipment ‘failure’ I’ve had with my Nikon Z50 (with the 50-250 zoom attached) was serious fogging. Serious here meaning I was left shooting with my phone for at least 2 hours while I waited for the lens to clear. This was not unexpected, as it was in the transition from an air-conditioned hotel room to a steamy jungle in Indonesia.

Does this still happen with weather -sealed gear? Are the lenses actually air-tight to the point that water vapour can’t condense on the internal lenses?

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Nope, there is water vapour inside the lens and it can condense when you go to a colder environment. Weather sealing does not protect you from this effect, you can observe it with fully waterproof watches, etc.

Just let the camera change temperature gradually.

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Yeah, yeah. But if only he’d had a higher resolution camera. The texture of that sack of rocks the guy is heaving up an open quarry on a rickety ladder is very fuzzy at 100%.

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:wink: obv

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I have become less and less interested in sharpness over the years, to the extent that I actually often introduce softness in processing afterwards. This was particularly evident in my recent tree photography (which you can find in the Showcase category). Some of those photos were already soft, and others I introduced softness to take out the crunchy chaos.

I think the debate is pretty much settled that the awesomeness of the world’s greatest photos is nothing to do with how sharp or noisy they are.

If I could be bothered and had the equipment, I’d love to take a large series of photos with all types of bodies, sensor sizes and lenses, then display them at the same size and get people to say which photo was taken with which camera and lens. I’m guessing that most people wouldn’t have a clue.

It would all be a big fun waste of time to prove that a great photo is nothing to do with the equipment.

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