New Olympus E-M1 body for 4/3 and m4/3 lenses

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classiccameras
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Re: New Olympus E-M1 body for 4/3 and m4/3 lenses

Unread post by classiccameras »

Thanks, interesting thread and worth keeping in mind.
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bfitzgerald
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Re: New Olympus E-M1 body for 4/3 and m4/3 lenses

Unread post by bfitzgerald »

There are consequences for ILC cameras with adaptors for other lenses.
Sony have not resisted this as the thread says, Fuji also actually put a few videos on youtube encouraging people to use adaptors (X system)
Samsung have not really embraced the idea at all though.

The good news is yes you can use older lenses (MD mount seem popular on the Fuji X's though you can get an adaptor for A mount manual aperture control though)
My question is this, if I buy an ILC and start using adaptors then it's not very likely that I'd be buying many of the makers native lenses. So long term it's questionable if this is profitable for the company which might mean they charge more for bodies.
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Re: New Olympus E-M1 body for 4/3 and m4/3 lenses

Unread post by bakubo »

bfitzgerald wrote:There are consequences for ILC cameras with adaptors for other lenses.
Sony have not resisted this as the thread says, Fuji also actually put a few videos on youtube encouraging people to use adaptors (X system)
Samsung have not really embraced the idea at all though.

The good news is yes you can use older lenses (MD mount seem popular on the Fuji X's though you can get an adaptor for A mount manual aperture control though)
That thread in its entirety was not about using an adaptor with old MF lenses. That is amazing that after reading it somehow that is what you thought. :lol: I sort of think you didn't read it. :lol:

http://www.photoclubalpha.com/forum/vie ... =49&t=5690
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Re: New Olympus E-M1 body for 4/3 and m4/3 lenses

Unread post by bfitzgerald »

Henry it's time to visit your optician soon ;-)
I speak for all lenses in a general sense, but you cannot assume in any way that makers will support AF with adaptors there is no evidence at all for this.
And most likely it will never happen for many reasons.

What is amazing is that anyone would think a maker would embrace/allow AF with other makers lenses on their own mount. Did anyone do business classes at school? Naive assumptions about mirror less have been the problem since day one. If there was money to be made reverse engineering adaptors to do AF and aperture control (fairly pointless just having AF on it's own) on ILC models it most likely would have been done

Did it not strike anyone out there that maybe your average Canon EOS users wants to actually use their lenses mostly on Canon EOS products, and not on micro 4/3, NEX or X mounts?

Because it was pretty damn obvious to me :roll:
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Re: New Olympus E-M1 body for 4/3 and m4/3 lenses

Unread post by bakubo »

bfitzgerald wrote:Henry it's time to visit your optician soon ;-)
I speak for all lenses in a general sense, but you cannot assume in any way that makers will support AF with adaptors there is no evidence at all for this.
And most likely it will never happen for many reasons.

What is amazing is that anyone would think a maker would embrace/allow AF with other makers lenses on their own mount. Did anyone do business classes at school? Naive assumptions about mirror less have been the problem since day one. If there was money to be made reverse engineering adaptors to do AF and aperture control (fairly pointless just having AF on it's own) on ILC models it most likely would have been done

Did it not strike anyone out there that maybe your average Canon EOS users wants to actually use their lenses mostly on Canon EOS products, and not on micro 4/3, NEX or X mounts?

Because it was pretty damn obvious to me :roll:
Again, your comments indicate you didn't really read the thread. :lol:
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Re: New Olympus E-M1 body for 4/3 and m4/3 lenses

Unread post by bfitzgerald »

I read the thread in depth. You are suggesting adaptors with "full functionality" that means AF and aperture control I assume.
My reply is as above "not going to happen" by all means keep dreaming, but it's not viable for a number of reasons. And even if it were then it would have been done already.

A few obvious reasons why
Cost of making adaptors, Canon have electronic aperture control everyone else is mechanical. The Sony adaptor you mention is expensive (nearly as much as a budget SLT body)
Second reason, if you want an ILC it's likely at least partly down to size. As most of these lenses are not that small (bar a few shorter focal length primes) it's going to be counter productive to that goal

The reason buying up MF lenses on ebay for "next to nothing" appeals to some ILC users is these are lenses very few people want (because of mount changes etc) and "THEY ARE CHEAP" (mostly) The situation changes quite a bit with AF lenses and lenses with no aperture ring (ie modern SLR lenses)
Anyone who want's to dump their DSLR/s and lenses would be better off just selling them rather than trying to use them on an ILC model, then hit ebay and buy up some of those golden oldie MF lenses to fill in the gaps you need.
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Re: New Olympus E-M1 body for 4/3 and m4/3 lenses

Unread post by Greg Beetham »

This reply is now in it's proper location in the thread about adaptors.
Greg
ps I took the liberty of deleting the offending post H now that things have been put to rights. And there is no need to be humble when beseeching errant posters, just say your piece with your usual impeccable diplomacy, after all it’s your thread.
I totally agree with getting things in order, threads have a way of wandering off track almost of their own accord. I remember wondering about the very same thing when there were numerous posts in the G15 thread about cameras and other topics that had nothing to do with the G15.
Anyway it’s nice to see some order amidst all this mayhem and confusion, I was starting to get confused as to which thread I was in myself, I wasn’t even sure if I was replying to anyone in particular or just making conversation, I have been known to talk to myself now and then in real life just to hear how something sounds before I say it for real, and that sometimes confuses people who overhear my real time QC as well.
Actually I think confusion is on the increase in this day and age when I stop and think about it, so any reduction of that is going to be beneficial in the long run.
Last edited by Greg Beetham on Fri Sep 27, 2013 11:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: New Olympus E-M1 body for 4/3 and m4/3 lenses

Unread post by bakubo »

A humble request: For comments relating to the other thread, please post them in the other thread. It is rather confusing for readers, now and in the future, to see lots of comments about the other thread in this mostly E-M1 thread. Thank you.

http://www.photoclubalpha.com/forum/vie ... =49&t=5690
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Re: New Olympus E-M1 body for 4/3 and m4/3 lenses

Unread post by bakubo »

Very interesting post by Timur Born who had a chance to talk with Toshi Terada, Manager, Olympus Product Planning SLR products. Timur had a chance to play with the E-M1 also and, as usual, he discovered a whole lot, stuff reviewers always miss.

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/52282305

Timur is a regular at dpreview and discovered so much good info on his own about the E-M5 that he ended up helping to write an E-M5 user guide along with one of the dpreview reviewers:

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/911517 ... ympus-e-m5
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Re: New Olympus E-M1 body for 4/3 and m4/3 lenses

Unread post by bakubo »

Today I noticed that Mike Johnston over at his website (The Online Photographer) has posted something about the E-M1. What he posted is not all that interesting so I won't bother providing a link, but there was one thing in it that caught my eye because it is exactly one of the things that has befuddled me about some posters on this forum and at dpreview for a long time:

This whole deal with hobbyists being preoccupied with the business concerns of suppliers is a recent phenomenon; historically, photographers have mostly seen themselves as being outside of the mainstream market for photographic products and materials, going their own way after their own fashion, "doing their own thing" as the '60s expression had it. As long as they could get what they needed to do their work.

I used to think that there are people who are most interested in photography and others who are most interested in camera gear, of course, with some overlap. But, then I realized there is another group who seem to be most interested in all the business aspects of the camera business, who's winning, who's losing, seeing it all like sports teams. All three groups are on the forums and after awhile it is easy to see which of the three hobbies they enjoy the most.
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Re: New Olympus E-M1 body for 4/3 and m4/3 lenses

Unread post by bakubo »

If anyone here is interested I see that dpreview now has their E-M1 review up.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/olympus-om-d-e-m1
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Re: New Olympus E-M1 body for 4/3 and m4/3 lenses

Unread post by bakubo »

Someone on dpreview posted a comparison of the m4/3 16mp E-M1, the APS-C 16mp NEX 6, and the m4/3 16mp E-M5:

http://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Compare- ... 29/Olympus

Very close. Look at SNR and DR measurements. These sensors have gotten so good.
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Re: New Olympus E-M1 body for 4/3 and m4/3 lenses

Unread post by bfitzgerald »

I see Oly are still faking their ISO settings (DPR again seemed to have missed that surprise!)
DPR review as expected Gold but hey DPR are not on my must read review sites (no mention of high price and poor value)

I'm not overly impressed, I can get slightly better sensor performance off the A57 for a fraction of the price :mrgreen:
Def not seeing a £1300 camera here, even if DPR do their usual love affair reviews
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Re: New Olympus E-M1 body for 4/3 and m4/3 lenses

Unread post by bakubo »

bfitzgerald wrote:I see Oly are still faking their ISO settings (DPR again seemed to have missed that surprise!)
You have said the same thing multiple times and then disappear. I am still trying to understand what you are saying and what difference your assertion makes.

This is worth reading:

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/424180 ... ensitivity

Sensitivity (ISO) in digital imaging seems to be the subject of quite a lot of confusion - it's becoming common to hear talk of manufacturers 'cheating with ISO.' So we thought it made sense look at why sensitivity appears hard to pin down, why we use the definition we do and how it's actually not as complicated as it can sometimes seem.

Awhile back I pulled out my Sony A700 and my E-M5 and shot the same subject in the same light using raw. I was curious to see what the meter would do. I set both to ISO 200 and f2.8:

A700: 1/20
E-M5: 1/25

I shot another subject using ISO 200 and f4:

A700: 1/160
E-M5: 1/160

I looked at the resulting photos and they seemed to be the same. DxO says at ISO 200 the A700 is 150 and the E-M5 is 107 and yet the meters resulted in the same exposures. From a practical standpoint it doesn't seem to make any difference what is happening inside the bowels of the camera as long as the exposures for a given light level and ISO are the same among various cameras. I am talking about from a photographer's perspective.

As long as the results look good to me and I get exposures that I expect for a given ISO then I am okay. So, you can compare photos from various cameras set to a particular ISO and know that you are seeing what they do at that ISO.

I recently tried something else. I used my E-M5 and G3 with the 20mm f1.7 to take a photo. I set both to ISO 400 and f2 and took the same photo using raw.

G3: 1/20
E-M5: 1/25

DxO says at ISO 400 the G3 is 372 and the E-M5 is 214 and yet the meters resulted in almost the same exposures. Both of the photos look to be exposed the same when I open them in LR.

Barry, this time rather than disappearing how about going into some detail explaining exactly what you mean and what the practical results are for photographers? If there is something then I would like to know so that I can adjust my thinking on this issue. Thank you in advance.

Yes, the E-M1 is rather expensive and I am not interested in it. The improvements compared to my E-M5 are not enough to make me care and the increase in size/weight makes it definitely less interesting. If it doesn't sell then I suspect Olympus will lower the price. If it does sell then the price is probably okay.
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Re: New Olympus E-M1 body for 4/3 and m4/3 lenses

Unread post by bfitzgerald »

Simple if you post linking to DxO I "assume" you have some kind of faith in those measurements.
Allowing for the usual "margin of error" that any test has, DxO clearly show fudged ISO numbers..

http://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Camera-S ... /OM-D-E-M1

Olympus are not alone Sony are doing the same (and recent models more than previous ones)

http://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Camera-S ... T-Alpha-99


As you can see almost a stop off the stated ISO levels.
It's not rare to see makers messing around with the ISO numbers and actual sensitivity, but it's the degree of messing around that's a bit worrying (ie almost a full stop)

Evidently DPR are working with DxO at least for lens reviews. But they don't seem to agree about the ISO sensitivity
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/olympus-om-d-e-m1/18

"In our testing, the E-M1's images were consistent with the ISO standard - ISO 100 = ISO 100."

Well the DxO numbers show ISO 100 is actually a bit more than ISO 100, about ISO 122, but the problem is "above ISO 100"

So in summary here is my problem
Do I trust Henry's "unseen" test with a G3 v a OMD-EM5?
How did DPR miss the ISO values being fudged if they are testing properly?
Are DxO's figures accurate and how are they testing it?

Someone has to be right and someone has to be wrong!
As said before I think the fudged numbers are misleading to potential buyers. A99/OMD users ..hey wow I get good ISO 6400 shots, but in reality you are much closer to ISO 3200 (only a bit above)
There are marketing reasons for makers to do this kind of tweaking around.
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