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Four Thirds 4/3 Olympus-Sony-Panasonic-Leica-Zeiss. News, opinion & Reviews

John_Nevill

New member
I noticed yesterday that Leica announced that they are developing two new lenses for the 4/3rds system, a 14-150mm and a 25 f1.4. The 14-150mm with OIS must be a milestone for them!

Couple this with the impending release of Olympus' E1 replacement together with the announced E-410 (10mp with live preview) and E-510 (sensor based IS system), plus a 4 new zoom lenses (ED 12-60mm, ED 50-200mm, ED 14-35mm, ED 70-300mm) and a 2x TC to their line up.

Does this mean 4/3rds is starting gain momentum?

Being an OM user since '85 and jumping over to Canon in '03, I have a bit of a nostagic soft spot for Oly, who else delivered the invaluable highlight / shadow functions of the OM4? I digress!
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
There's no doubt in my mind that the 4/3 system is gathering steam and it should. There''s need for cameras that can reach further at lower cost and not beak one's back. I see no reason why the "full frame" 35mm format should be hallowed. Even Leica, in it's M8 rangefinder flagship, does not do that and for a number of obvious reasons!

What is especially valuable is that photographers can get some of the very best lenses and choose which might best serve their purpose and pocket. To me these are going to be perfect for even the MF Pro shooter who wants a less heavy camera around and for scouting.

I know one top fashion Pro who carries a lowly digicam for that purpose.

The recent work shown here by Benjamin Kanarek with the K10D professional Pentax camera clearly demonstrates that professionals have options beyond the two large players in the non-MF DSLR market.

I'm impressed! With IS, fast, f1.4 lenses at wide angle, (and hopefully up to up to 85 mm) then this will be a marvelous coming of age for the 4/3 ystem!

Apart from noise at higher ISO at the moment, these cameras are going to go side by side with the established leaders. Anyway, that is my $0.02!

Asher
 
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Steve Saunders

New member
Hi there, this is my first post her so please don't eat me!

IMHO I don't think 4/3 has a great future. Common sense suggests that only so many pixels can be crammed onto a given sized sensor before noise becomes an issue. 4/3 has been around quite a while now and in spite of all the blurb telling us that this is the future of digital, only Olympus seem to be putting all their eggs in one basket. With general image quality from DSLR's generally at such a good level now, the emphasis is on low noise at high-ISO and I believe that is where the current battle is and that's why many Nikon shooters are deserting to Canon (Sony sensors are used in Nikon DSLR's). 4/3 can't hope to deliver as low a noise level when the battle hots up.
 
Hey Steve,

4/3 was good for quite some surprises and I think Olympus has proven to be capable of innovative and new concepts such as no dust problems being the first that comes to mind, then the smaller footprint of lenses, I cover 28mm-560mm with 2 lenses, and the ZUIKO lenses in generell are of very high quality, some even unsurpassed, the 7-14mm F4.0 is amongst the best I have ever seen across all brands, recently the life view was introduced as well.

As for sensor size, well, I would not bet astonished to see an E-1 successor with much imrpoved noise and in the 12MP region.

Olympus is a niche I think, and what they have on offer just suited me fine. The lensepark has nearly all you could ask for, I never heard of anyone complaining about backfocus problems and so on.

I would love to see a 4/3 with a foveon though, but I think this remains a personal dream. <grins>
 

marc wilson

pro member
I currently use my 5d (with logos covered in black electrical tape) with two leica elmairt lenses (35mm and 90mm) as my small city / travel camera.
Of course this means stop down metering and manual focus but I get great image quality and the feel of a good unit...

...I think a 4/3 rds camera could really take off when more lenses are available..certainly there are many around now but where are the 35mm and 90mm focal length equivalent primes...leicas announcement of the 25mm prime (50mm equivalemt) is a good start.

When lenses like these come out..unless I have missed some..then these cameras will start to become the digital answer to the old leica cl's etc..not everyone wants autofocus zoom lenses!

in terms of cameras there is the olympus 410 / leica d / panasonic equiv so we can assume more will come out in the next year or so...

then these systems can fill the gap that lies between say the epson rd1 and the leica m8..not in terms of being a rangefinder of course but in the simple terms of a small discreet camera with top quality good to use prime lenses.

Marc

www.marcwilson.co.uk
 
Finally I made the switch to digital, bought one of the last new E-1's. Currently use my older manual Zuiko's and a standard zoom kit but the announced 12-60mm SWD was certainly a part in the decision.

When you are on a budget and Canon L quality glass is out of range then to me the olympus offering makes more sense. Try to make the 14-54 and 50-200 set (28-400mm equi.) with reasonably fast lenses in Canon glass. With the 12-60 SWD and 50-200SWD (24-400mm equi.) it will be even more attractive, if they live up the the Zuiko reputation (and not worrying about the prices as they are not published.. ).

Current draw back to me is that the higher quality 3rd party lenses are either not available or - on the short end - have a very odd range because of the cropfactor of 2. But maybe this will change..
 
Hi Martin,

Congrats on your purchase, I use the same camera in conjunction with the 14-54 and 50-200, really excellent optiks in my experience.

The E1 is a serious camera, extremly well built, and within it's limitations the best price value on the market in my view. Not long ago someone in the local pub managed to knock over a pint of guiness and my E1 was swimming in it, another chap with a canon 20D sat beside me and his camera was around his neck and got a few splashes of guiness foam on his 20D, he was nearly freaking out, while mine was drowned in the brown sauce. When he saw me walking behind the counter and holding the E1 with lense attached for a minute under the running water tap, well.... I really wish I had a photo of his face staring at me in disbelief. <grins> Naturally he wanted to have a closer look afterwards and was seriously impressed about the viewfinder and overall built quality.
 

Steve Saunders

New member
Hi George,
Yes I agree that the pro Olympus lenses are superb. Long reach, while being fast and compact is the stuff of dreams. Nikon and Canon could learn from this for their small sensor DSLR's. It seems though that the current battleground is noise at high (and sometimes not so high) ISO and that's what is dictating development right now.

BTW, apparently the supply of D2Xs cameras are drying up and rumours of a D3 are doing the rounds.



Hey Steve,

4/3 was good for quite some surprises and I think Olympus has proven to be capable of innovative and new concepts such as no dust problems being the first that comes to mind, then the smaller footprint of lenses, I cover 28mm-560mm with 2 lenses, and the ZUIKO lenses in generell are of very high quality, some even unsurpassed, the 7-14mm F4.0 is amongst the best I have ever seen across all brands, recently the life view was introduced as well.

As for sensor size, well, I would not bet astonished to see an E-1 successor with much imrpoved noise and in the 12MP region.

Olympus is a niche I think, and what they have on offer just suited me fine. The lensepark has nearly all you could ask for, I never heard of anyone complaining about backfocus problems and so on.

I would love to see a 4/3 with a foveon though, but I think this remains a personal dream. <grins>
 
Hi Steve,

a friend of mine just saw inofficial and unprocessed pictures from the 510, he is quite knowledgable and he was very astonished on the advancement in the noise department, remains to be seen, but his infos were usually spot on.

I admit I am getting somewhat excited on the E1 successor and hopefully we will hear more about it this summer.
 

Steve Saunders

New member
Interesting stuff. I know a guy who has an E1 and some of the pro lenses and he doesn't suffer from a sore back hauling the kit around!
 
D

Doug Kerr

Guest
The Four Thirds System

Hi, John,

OTE=John_Nevill;21171]I noticed yesterday that Leica announced that they are developing two new lenses for the 4/3rds system, a 14-150mm and a 25 f1.4. The 14-150mm with OIS must be a milestone for them! [/QUOTE]

Yes, this is a very important development. Thanks for calling it to our attention.

Note as an editorial matter that the name of the system discussed is "Four Thirds System". "4/3" is a fraction which, among other things:

- Describes the image aspect ratio standardized in the Four Thirds System

- With the unit "inch", describes the general size of the image sensor standardized in the Four Thirds system in that perverse notation that descended from the description of target (sensor) sizes in Vidicon image tubes in terms of the diameter of the glass envelope of the common early types. (The so called "2/3 inch" tube had a sensor 8.8 mm x 6.6 mm in nominal size.)

The name "Four Thirds System" is of course a clever joke based on both of those.

I consider the Four Thirds System to be an extremely important movement in the world of digital phtography. I think history may eventually record it as being somewhat parallel to the role of the "full-frame 35-mm" format for film work (bringing into prominence what was called at the time "miniature camera photography").

Of course, larger format sizes will continue to be of substantial (in some ways growing) importance in the digital field (including sizes larger than the 24 mm x 36 mm format some seem to consider the Holy Grail of digital phtography), just as film formats larger than 24 mm x 36 mm remain(ed) in importance.
 
Olympus vs 1DMkIIN ISO noise

Hi,

Though many Canon and Nikon shooters with "large" (both physically and otherwise) systems are quick to dismiss the 4/3rds system, I do believe there is a solid place in the market for them, and since my colleague got himself an Olympus E-510 and a few nice lenses (including the amazing 7-14mm f/4) I definitely respect the system, including the quality and compactness of the lenses. And, I must say, when you compare apples to apples (e.g. Olympus E-510 to Canon EOS-400D) the olympus has far superior build quality, and much more impressive software features and user interface.

We did a test (a bit of a "torture test") in daylight, taking equivalent photographs of a house (with dark, underexposed areas) both at an 35mm equivalent focal length of 35mm, at ISO1600, with full automatic exposure by the camera. Looking at a 100% crop, it is evident that Olympus still has quite some way to go to match the noise of Canon's CMOS, but, on the other hand, when you don't pixel-peep, it produces great images, even at high ISO.

oe510vscanon1dm2n-noise-1600.jpg


Interestingly enough, however, is that in all our tests, the 8.2MP canon + lens combination does seem to out-resolve the 10MP Olympus + lens, across a whole range of different lenses, at optimum apertures (e.g. f/8) even at ISO100.

For example, we compared Canon 28-300L, Canon 100 Macro to Zuiko 35 Macro, Zuiko 14-45.

All tests were done shooting in RAW, and the Canon was converted with Apple Aperture, the Olympus' with Bibble Pro. We were very careful with our tests (tripod, mirror lockup, etc) - is this the expected result? I know this is not a "fair" test (the 1DMkIIN costs 5 times the Olympus) but any insight as to whether the Oly should out-resolve the 1DMkIIN would be appreciated...
 

Jack_Flesher

New member
Agreed... I just saw a B&W landscape portfolio done entirely from the fixed-lens Sony R1. Granted that it has a slightly larger APS-C size sensor, but I think it's close enough to 4/3 to be lumped in the same group. Anyway, the images were stunning, all B&W and printed out to about 12x18. Obviously post-processed to create the B&W, but done with so much skill and so well printed, the results were excellent. It seriously made me wonder why I was carrying two full-frame DLSR's and a half dozen lenses when I went out in the field...

Cheers,
 
I cover 28-560mm including a heavy duty batterie that lasts easily 2000 shots with a total weight of 3040 grams, body, 2 lenses and 1.4 TC, this was one advantage why I bought into the Olympus system a few years ago, apart from the sealed body and lenses of course.

I have great hopes for the E1 successor, hopefully this year.

Olympus will never be the top dog, but they have their advantages. I quite liked the system from the beginning, including the haptic, fits like a glove for my hand.

P.S. Apparently there is a problem with the 510 RAW data, magenta error and so on.... not sure whether they fixed that. But as a camera for let's say an event photographer, excellent!
 
Although this thread is aging and the prefix of Leica is starting to become less obvious the four thirds system added a big jolt to the momentum with the introduction of the mid-tier Olympus E-30.

You can read more about the Oly E-30 at the global Oly site : http://www.olympus-global.com/en/news/2008b/nr081105e30e.cfm

Or for instance at dpreview who are bringing the news with a hand on preview here : http://www.dpreview.com/news/0811/08110503olympus_e30_hands_on.asp

With some real nice innovations, like multiple exposed frames in camera, and some gimmicky ones, like the non adjustable new in camera art filters, this camera already is received with lots of anticipation in the four third user groups (just as the naysayers are out to claim the camera does not work for them, specs are lower then canon/nikon/sony etc and ofcourse it is to expensive..)

I am curious for the first user experiences as it has, at least on paper, everything to be a very well balanced and capable camera.

Martin
 
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