Anyone Doing Weddings with 4/3 ?

[Godfrey]

actually a very good point I did not consider before.
Having said that, if I want to do more advanced video then I might go A7RII.

I tried a bit of video with the A7. Frankly, I think its rolling shutter issues are much greater than the E-M1. The one thing Sony did do right was that you can connect a monitor with the HDMI port and monitor video while recording, rather than disabling all other operations when the HDMI port is connected and outputting.

I dunno. Shooting 35mm format movies takes a lot more work than shooting smaller formats due to the focusing skills required. FourThirds format is a bit larger than the 16mm cine that I used to do, it's a nice format for movie work with a good balance of speed and DoF control.

G

 

[mazor]

If I were doing serious movie work with my E-M1, I'd buy into the manual Voigtländer lenses for full manual iris and focus control. Focus by servo and aperture control by body controlled servo are both noisy and jumpy by comparison. Video simply has different requirements from doing stills.

G

true that is one way to get around it, but it would still be nice to be able to use Olympus m43 lenses for creative video, without having to go out and get a gh4 or gh7.

 

[mazor]

I tried a bit of video with the A7. Frankly, I think its rolling shutter issues are much greater than the E-M1. The one thing Sony did do right was that you can connect a monitor with the HDMI port and monitor video while recording, rather than disabling all other operations when the HDMI port is connected and outputting.

I dunno. Shooting 35mm format movies takes a lot more work than shooting smaller formats due to the focusing skills required. FourThirds format is a bit larger than the 16mm cine that I used to do, it's a nice format for movie work with a good balance of speed and DoF control.

G

Sure using a full frame sensor may be harder to manual focus real time during video capture, but one can just learn to deal with it, otherwise stop down 2 stops and the video focusing should be nearly identical to m43.

What I am interested in is how the new a7ii and possibly the a7rii IBIS performs in comparison to Olympus's IBIS for video. Olympus IBIS is already very good

 

[Tim]

I recalled reading about m43 and weddings in this article on a Portrait/Wedding photographer in the UK.
Have a look at her link here - Why I Use Micro Four Thirds Cameras | Featured in Photo Professional Magazine » Lindsay Dobson Photography and check out her work.
I think quite a successful user of m43 IMO.

 

[Godfrey]

Sure using a full frame sensor may be harder to manual focus real time during video capture, but one can just learn to deal with it, otherwise stop down 2 stops and the video focusing should be nearly identical to m43.

What I am interested in is how the new a7ii and possibly the a7rii IBIS performs in comparison to Olympus's IBIS for video. Olympus IBIS is already very good

It's not quite that simple due to the exposure time requirements for movie work. Really, the best solution is to use a three way exposure control — fixed exposure time at 2x frame rate, fixed lens opening for DoF control, and variable ND filter for light control. Manual focus, stepless iris, etc., all contribute.

The Olympus 5-axis IS is outstanding and works for all lenses since it's wholly contained in the body. The smaller sensor assembly has less mass to control as well. My understanding is that the Sony 5-axis IS relies partially upon the in-lens IS mechanism, so you're limited to Sony IS lenses.

Different systems, different pluses and minuses. Needless to say, either will work fine for a wedding...

G

 

[mazor]

It's not quite that simple due to the exposure time requirements for movie work. Really, the best solution is to use a three way exposure control — fixed exposure time at 2x frame rate, fixed lens opening for DoF control, and variable ND filter for light control. Manual focus, stepless iris, etc., all contribute.

The Olympus 5-axis IS is outstanding and works for all lenses since it's wholly contained in the body. The smaller sensor assembly has less mass to control as well. My understanding is that the Sony 5-axis IS relies partially upon the in-lens IS mechanism, so you're limited to Sony IS lenses.

Different systems, different pluses and minuses. Needless to say, either will work fine for a wedding...

G

agree, but there is one more method for exposure control, and that is ISO. With Sony ILC cameras, one can maintain exposure with constant 2x frame rate (fixed shutter speed) and yet be able to vary the aperture without using a variable ND filter, but instead by varying the ISO. Being able to adjust ISO real time during recording just adds to the flexibility of shooting digital.

Maybe someone will make a hack firmware for the Olympus OMD to allow for similar manual controls.

 

[Godfrey]

... insteX by varying the ISO. ...

The Sony's allow you to vary ISO while capturing? That's news to me! I sure never saw that in the*(mostly useless) instruction manuals.

That said, I suspect that you'd see changes if you vary ISO during capture too much. Dynamic range narrows as ISO goes up... This is just as true for Sony as any other digital camera. And noise goes up. It's probably a pretty small difference at the low end of the ISO scale, but the upper end does actually get noisy at some point.

It's an interesting concept, however. That said, I didn't see anywhere near the difference in imaging quality between the A7 and the E-M1 that I expected. My gut feeling, looking at my photos, is that the E-M1 held its own on par with the A7 to ISO 6400.

G

 

[mazor]

The Sony's allow you to vary ISO while capturing? That's news to me! I sure never saw that in the*(mostly useless) instruction manuals.

That said, I suspect that you'd see changes if you vary ISO during capture too much. Dynamic range narrows as ISO goes up... This is just as true for Sony as any other digital camera. And noise goes up. It's probably a pretty small difference at the low end of the ISO scale, but the upper end does actually get noisy at some point.

It's an interesting concept, however. That said, I didn't see anywhere near the difference in imaging quality between the A7 and the E-M1 that I expected. My gut feeling, looking at my photos, is that the E-M1 held its own on par with the A7 to ISO 6400.

G

Yup, just did a test with my rather old Sony Nex 5r (APS-C). When set to manual, native E mount lenses aperture, shutter speed and ISO can be adjusted real time during recording. Setting the camera to shutter priority with a legacy cine lens will allow one to set the shutter speed eg 1/50 or 1/60 and allows the ISO to be set to Auto. The only adjustments then are the aperture and exposure compensation, which automatically adjusts the ISO to maintain the same exposure when varying the aperture.