Micro 4/3 have teeny sensors - discuss

[etrigan63]

I wonder why KR doesn't consider the OM-D E-M5 a pro level camera? Sensor size? Lens selection? Weather sealing? The fact that Olympus won't send him a freebie? Who knows?

(BTW: This is post #2000 for me - :clap

 

[pellicle]

If you think of this as equivalent print sizes for a given resolution, then one realises how small the difference really is.

I'd have thought this was done to death, but then there's always the new people to the table.

Personally I'm more interested in:

• size of photosite (to minimise noise)
• size of format to change bokeh and DoF

from where I sit the difference to APS is negligible, the steps are more like doubling before you see substantial changes. So:

• 4/3
• 35mm
• 645
• 6x9
• 4x5
• 8x10

 

[jonoslack]

I'd have thought this was done to death, but then there's always the new people to the table.

Personally I'm more interested in:

• size of photosite (to minimise noise)
• size of format to change bokeh and DoF

from where I sit the difference to APS is negligible, the steps are more like doubling before you see substantial changes. So:

• 4/3
• 35mm
• 645
• 6x9
• 4x5
• 8x10

Hi There
I quite agree - on all counts except noise, which doesn't seem to me to be much of an issue these days - but it's worth re-iterating occasionally when you see the µ4/3 is tiny messages appearing.

It was mostly meant as a casual interest - I thought the sensor size site interesting and informative. I wasn't trying to start a bun-fight, and there doesn't seem to be one (good!).

 

[biglouis]

The whole size thing matters very little for most (all?) amateur uses. I'd even argue for professional work it matters less and less, unless you are shooting food pictures for MacDonalds.

LouisB

 

[smartwombat]

Oh Ken huh? I treat what he says with a large bag of salt.
The way his opinions shift is interesting, wasn't he a Nikon zealot a few years ago?

Oh wow read the article, should have listened to you Jono.
Anger levels rising, stress-related damage to inanimate objects likely

 

[RichA]

Well, not really!

I just found an interesting website - I think that in most comparisons you only see 1/4 of the sensor, which makes the difference look bigger.

There is a common feeling that APSc is much bigger than m4/3, but, when you look at it like this:

all the best

The only real jump is from APS to FF or larger. The only APS sensor that is better than the Olympus m4/3rds sensor is the one in the Fuji X-Pro1 and that has to do with design, not size. If Fuji releases a FF sensor, that'll be it for Nikon-Canon dominance in image quality.

 

[Pat Donnelly]

Interesting and valid points.

I am still using a newly acquired epm-1 rather than my E-410 or Nikon D100. After successfully and almost painlessly acquiring a grandchild, I gave my ep-1 to the mother of that child and have been getting visual proof of continued good health, but not as often as I would like!

Trend is for semi-conductors to improve and we have no theoretical boundaries on that front as yet, so sensors will become more sensitive and pack more into less, at less cost. Micro4/3 is looking very mature as a system, for stills and video and is more than acceptable at the moment. We are also surrounded by 16:9 display devices with 4k planned for the next credit boom! Delayed 20 years, but some will buy anyway. In a few short years, I will be telling my daughter off about the length of her daughter's skirts and we will have amazing sensors, quad deckers, detecting maybe 800Mp at the flick of a damned small switch, annoying placed, allowing 16 bits of light pp and with all this there will still be arguments about this or that sensor!

I wholeheartedly agree with Godfrey on this one.

Lenses will be more important than ever, as that part of the process as a bottleneck will then be more apparent and the user, as always?

 

[Riley]

>so the APS-C is 163% of the size of the micro 4/3

Maybe a linear comparison is more realistic? 128% linear and the diff sounds less.

thats the case,
whenever you square the result its bound to look a little stretched

Then theres another way to look at it, the marketing arena which is how the habit of squaring became popular and Olympus should have woken up to this when the entered mFT, there is no differentiation between mFT and 43rds aka no real reason for 43rds to exist. They could have taken the sensor size out to 15x20mm for 300 sq mm which would put them so close to canon APSC that it all just goes away, 43rds would be given back some purpose. But they didnt.

But then they made a lot of little mistakes there that make it difficult to engineer a merging of the two technologies mFT and 43rds. If the mounts were just a few mm closer in register that would have meant a pdAF adapter between the two would be possible, or if the micro mount were just a tiny bit narrower it could fit within the 43rds mount, and you could sleeve mFT lenses inside the 43rds mount. Stupid, hasty, negligent improperly thought out proposition and particularly unclever engineering has left 43rds marooned and disenfranchised a lot of people for no good reason. Just to be able to punch out a bunch of little boxes that look virtually the same while hungry 43rds users looked on. They might just as well have told us theyre out of the camera business b/se now theyre going to make lawnmowers and panama hats.

for mFT the present size seems more ideal as it is the axis of all mirrorless formats
I guess unless something cheaper than M9 rocks up in FF theyre pretty safe
unless...