Thats true Douglas my only experience with EVFs is the x100 one which I understand is crap by comparison. I will probably try the better ones one day but for the time being I dont need to, fuji has me covered with OVFs on cameras that have all the specs I need. But good to know Sony understands the problem of EVF dynamic range, I hope the market rewards it and others are forced to move in the same direction.
Actually when the new nex hits the stores I will go and try one just to see what it's like, you've praised the sony evf so much that I feel I owe it to you personally
Douglas in a photo like this one, what would the sony EVF show you? I would need to check both her facial expression and the bright background to make sure there's no trees growing our for her head. If I can do this I'm good.
Spyro P. wrote:
OMG photographers are so different...
Extra dof per shot means a bigger part of your photo will be sharp... I can see how some weird photographers tend to consider their backgrounds interesting and work with them and include them in the photo, so they consider extra dof a good thing (sharp photos, they're kinda nice), but YMMV.
Color me as strange then for thinking that shallow DOF is not the be all, end all of photography. For what I'm doing it's more often a detriment, not a blessing. And what I'm doing is not that outlandish - these days I'm doing theatre photography and very often find myself unable to make decent scene/group shots because only one person's face is within DOF (so the rest is annoyingly smudged) but I can't stop down because of subject motion blur (I'm shooting in Tv mode and it almost always chooses f/2.8 - which often doesn't guarantee sharp photos anyways, the shutter speed is that borderline: 1/200 at best). That at maximum fully usable ISO of 800 on my Canon DSLR (I go to 1600 in a pinch but the noise gets bad). I'd rather go for a body with higher available/usable sensitivity than faster lenses - though they'd be nice to have - because for the extra shutter speed available I'd have to pay in even thinner DOF and therefore probably less keepers.
Oh, and speaking of backgrounds: a lot of times the discernible background is needed, like when there's an important detail there needed for context. Who says it always needs to be blurred away. Two particular examples: I was photographing my girlfriend atop Montjuic hill in Barcelona in dim lighting and wanted to have the Sagrada Familia cathedral in the distance recognizable for IDing the location for the viewers. I had to stop down to f/13 (thus bringing the shutter speed to the really borderline value of 1/40s) and the cathedral was still only just recognizable. FL was 85mm (70-200/2.8 L IS lens). Another time I was photographing a carnival in Santiago de Cuba in really dark time of the day and had to stick to f/2.8. There was a big poster of Fidel Castro's face on a building a block away behind which would've given a good context and location ID to the image but it was blown out of recognizability totally because I found it impossible to stop down to enlarge the DOF. I tried stopping down to about f/5 and it was better but the shutter speed became unacceptable and I was at ISO3200 already. No luck.
not as far as I'm concerned
90% of the time I shoot as stopped down as the light and camera's high iso allows. I find a carefully selected, well composed background about 20318947 times more interesting than a blurred one, but this is up to each person's individual tastes.
I'm also thinking of wedding photographes taking photos of couples in front of the main function venue. The tog might find it artistically inspirational to use shallow dof, but the couple paid through their nose to book the whole friggin country club for the day so they can show it off, not so that the tog can blur it out
Fine, you talked your way out. However I find it rather odd that you claim the fast 28 (28/1.8 USM I presume) becomes as focus free as a fisheye or superwide when mounted on APS-C. Not even ultrawides are focus free on any sane sensor size, TTBOMK.
For me, this could turn out to be a compelling option if Olympus nails a few critical details. I'm very curious what tweaks Olympus has made to the EVF. Since this camera is supposed to have amazing AF speed, that will be close to useless if the EVF lag is too much to keep up with the AF. The rear viewfinder view appears to be quite large so I'm really curious to see the spec for it's magnification. Finally, the price must be right which I think is somewhere close to 1K. If Olympus prices this thing aggressively, I suspect they will sell like hotcakes.
Personally, I absolutely love the way this thing looks. The "retro" aspect to me looks like it will make this camera an ergonomic paradise to actually hold and use. The protruding rear thumb grip (built in "thumbs up" basically) combined with the front grip (just the body grip) looks like the camera will be very easy to hold securely with one hand. With cameras this small, this is one area where so many manufacturers get it wrong and I think Olympus may have nailed it. The body size also looks to be about perfect for a camera that can be used as both a "take everywhere" compact with a pancake lens or as a real backup system (or for some even a main system) to something else with all the available M43 lenses. Just copare the dimensions of this Olympus to the Fuji X-Pro 1 for instance.
@Shopchenko, I was referring to a 14mm lens on m4:3, or better yet a 8mm lens on a compact p&s which give you an effective field of view of 28mm. You'd still have to nudge the focusing ring on the 14mm a little bit every now and then (now that we finally have an M4:3 lens with distance markings on it), but the 8mm on the compact is essentially focus free even at f2, just set focus permanently at 2m-2.5m dof will cover pretty much everything. Set ISO and aperture to auto, pick a shutter speed that suits your hand and you are free to concentrate 100% on composition and timing. Thats probably the most efficient way to shoot street (of course with the compact once you hit ISO400 you're toast, unless you're doing grainy B&W)
one of the benefits of a smaller sensor and larger dof
I've already been burned expensively once by going MFT, this would have to be really compelling to be burned twice.
But, I do hope it is amazing.
Shallow DoF is of course not the end all of photography since that's just a stupid straw man. However, you can't achieve the look of 35mm F1.4 full frame with a MFT.
Spyro P. wrote:
Douglas in a photo like this one, what would the sony EVF show you? I would need to check both her facial expression and the bright background to make sure there's no trees growing our for her head. If I can do this I'm good.
I'd have to try that out, as I don't do a ton of strongly backlit environmental portraits. I agree that this would be the toughest challenge for an EVF, so I don't want to lead you astray. If you do try one out, make sure that you play with the jpeg settings, as they affect the EVF quite a bit.
Spyro P. wrote:
Douglas in a photo like this one, what would the sony EVF show you? I would need to check both her facial expression and the bright background to make sure there's no trees growing our for her head. If I can do this I'm good.
I know at least the Panasonic EVFs could pull this off - but not in their default setting. By default they auto-gain completely independently of the exposure settings trying to make as much of the scene visible as possible. They might gain down for the sun even if you have exposure set to blow the sun and bring up the foreground. On the Panasonic bodies at least, you can force the EVF to show a live-view of the final exposure - so if it is going to be visible in your processed image it will be visible in the EVF. It is, admittedly, a bit round about to set that though (you normally have to hit two buttons to get to this mode, although on the most recent cameras you can make it the default behavior in full manual mode).
You can also help yourself (or the EVF out) with the right JPEG settings, turning on intelligent DR modes and altering contrast settings and what will alter the EVF view (without altering the RAW file of course). Sometimes this can be really helpful and let you do somethings easier than with an OVF.
The "feel" of an EVF is always "washed out" compared to an OVF though.
kwalsh wrote:
I know at least the Panasonic EVFs could pull this off - but not in their default setting. By default they auto-gain completely independently of the exposure settings trying to make as much of the scene visible as possible. They might gain down for the sun even if you have exposure set to blow the sun and bring up the foreground. On the Panasonic bodies at least, you can force the EVF to show a live-view of the final exposure - so if it is going to be visible in your processed image it will be visible in the EVF. It is, admittedly, a bit round about to set that though (you normally have to hit two buttons to get to this mode, although on the most recent cameras you can make it the default behavior in full manual mode).
You can also help yourself (or the EVF out) with the right JPEG settings, turning on intelligent DR modes and altering contrast settings and what will alter the EVF view (without altering the RAW file of course). Sometimes this can be really helpful and let you do somethings easier than with an OVF.
The "feel" of an EVF is always "washed out" compared to an OVF though.
the sony evfs show gain according to actual exposure, so you could simply change exposure to see details in her face versus the background. i've certainly shot such a scene with sony's old evf on the a55 and don't remember any difficulties, but i wasn't paying attention to the background so i don't remember how much detail there was through the evf.
wjmeyer wrote:
One other thing, with a 75mm f/1.8 this will hopefully lead to more long primes from Oly, I'd love to see some 1.4x and 2x TC's from Olympus for MFT. So come on Oly, bring on the 150mm f/2, the 200mm f/2.8 and the 300mm f/4, if the new 5-axis IBIS really works then what a killer birding/wildlife combo this would be Not to mention sports and other applications, even spy work, maybe the CIA will buy into this
One thing that bugs me about Hollywood is the movies/TV shows that show taped out Nikon's and Canon's with cheap consumer lenses and the resulting image is this superb closeup, haha.
The worst I've seen is "Person of Interest" (which I love) but when they have John using an iPhone to take a quick snapshot in low light and the resulting image looks like it came from a 400mm f/2.8, then that is a bit much. One of the best "real world" situations was last week in "White Collar" when Jones (an FBI agent) was snapping some shots and he was using a nice big telephoto ...Show more →
This has me wondering as well. Why else would they have the big battery grip? For this to be taken seriously though the AF would have to be outstanding.... Nikon D300 type AF for tracking birds and fast moving sports. If this camera can do that it opens up a whole new world of possiblities with the 2x crop factor already built in.
Personally i don't think they are there yet, but who knows it may only be a year or so down the road. We can all hope it is now though
What strikes me when I see the system overview photo from Olympus is that this is exactly that, a camera system. With nearly 30 AF lenses, partly of very high quality, plus some third party alternatives and lots of accessories, m4/3 is miles ahead of the competition in this regard. The only critical components I'm missing are a couple of large aperture long telephoto lenses, like a 150 and a 300. But apart from that, I could probably live with m4/3 as my only system.
The flash bracket is excellent. I've never like to have a flash that is high above the camera, particularly when doing pj work. Seems like my broke Metz won't be replaced after all
I agree it's an exciting time for micro 4/3. As you mention, after the next few months, when Panasonic gets their 12-35 f/2.8 and 35-100 f/2.8 to market, and Olympus gets the new 75/1.8 and 60/2.8 macro, the only holes in the system will be long and fast, beyond 200mm equivalent. I would imagine Olympus will probably remedy that in the next year or so. I'd love to see a 150 f/2, or even a 150 f/2.8. A 200 f/2.8 or a micro 4/3 version of their excellent 50-200 f/2.8-3.5 would be awesome, though I'd really like Panasonic to release a fast long zoom with a solid OIS, as I use Panasonic bodies and the long lenses would be best with IS. (Or, I could upgrade my GH2 to an E-M5 at some point)
This is a very strange sentence: "The camera comes with an external GN10 flash called FL-LM2, which is “weather sealed” and can be used as remote trigger". Does anyone recall any camera that comes with an external flash?
Two particular examples: I was photographing my girlfriend atop Montjuic hill in Barcelona in dim lighting and wanted to have the Sagrada Familia cathedral in the distance recognizable for IDing the location for the viewers. I had to stop down to f/13 (thus bringing the shutter speed to the really borderline value of 1/40s) and the cathedral was still only just recognizable. FL was 85mm (70-200/2.8 L IS lens). Another time I was photographing a carnival in Santiago de Cuba in really dark time of the day and had to stick to f/2.8. There was a big poster of Fidel Castro's face on a building a block away behind which would've given a good context and location ID to the image but it was blown out of recognizability totally because I found it impossible to stop down to enlarge the DOF. I tried stopping down to about f/5 and it was better but the shutter speed became unacceptable and I was at ISO3200 already. No luck.
Not even ultrawides are focus free on any sane sensor size, TTBOMK. 