Thank you for this post Mitesh! The Mk II is supposed to be 1 stop better than the Mk I. I've set my Auto ISO upper ceiling at 6400. Most NR tools will do a good job of noise removal without sacrificing too much detail. Not over-processing and/or sharpening your images helps a great deal.
BTW did you have your "warm setting" turned on? I am surprised by the warm tone of the Mk II shot. I have found the Olympus OM-D Auto White Balance setting to be far superior to the Sony cameras. In the short period that I owned the A7 II and A7R II, I was very unimpressed with Sony's AWB.
mitesh wrote:
One of the "problems" with m43 cameras that I often read about and that kept me from trying the format before now, was that the high-ISO performance was just not that good. Since my primary photographic interest is nature and wildlife, high-ISO performance is fairly important. The a7rII is a very good high-ISO camera, and I wondered how the E-M1.2 compared against it at ISO 3200. I rarely ever shoot higher than that, and even ISO 3200 represents less than 10% of the total images that I've ever taken.
To satisfy my curiosity, I did a quick, unscientific experiment I did last night. Now, I know you're not supposed to compare a high-resolution, FF file at the pixel level with an m43 file, but I threw caution to the wind and did just that. I shot a dimly lit scene shot indoors with both cameras set to the same exposure parameters and with excellent lenses shot wide open. I tried to keep the framing as close to identical as I could, but I didn't have a plate to allow tripod mounting of the E-M1.2. I placed both cameras on a small stool for stability. Sony file was resized to same dimensions as Olympus file. No sharpening or NR applied (in-camera NR turned OFF).
The image below is a screenshot of my LR screen showing both files at 2:1. To my eye, it is fairly obvious that the Sony file is cleaner, but even with more noise, the Olympus file holds detail very well. If you step back from the screen and view from just a few feet back, the difference becomes even les noticeable. Pretty remarkable, I think.
That said, I don't believe I'll be giving up my full-frame cameras just yet. But I no longer believe that m43 cameras can't handle high-ISO situations.
Thank you for this post Mitesh! The Mk II is supposed to be 1 stop better than the Mk I. I've set my Auto ISO upper ceiling at 6400. Most NR tools will do a good job of noise removal without sacrificing too much detail. Not over-processing and/or sharpening your images helps a great deal.
mitesh wrote:
One of the "problems" with m43 cameras that I often read about and that kept me from trying the format before now, was that the high-ISO performance was just not that good. Since my primary photographic interest is nature and wildlife, high-ISO performance is fairly important. The a7rII is a very good high-ISO camera, and I wondered how the E-M1.2 compared against it at ISO 3200. I rarely ever shoot higher than that, and even ISO 3200 represents less than 10% of the total images that I've ever taken.
To satisfy my curiosity, I did a quick, unscientific experiment I did last night. Now, I know you're not supposed to compare a high-resolution, FF file at the pixel level with an m43 file, but I threw caution to the wind and did just that. I shot a dimly lit scene shot indoors with both cameras set to the same exposure parameters and with excellent lenses shot wide open. I tried to keep the framing as close to identical as I could, but I didn't have a plate to allow tripod mounting of the E-M1.2. I placed both cameras on a small stool for stability. Sony file was resized to same dimensions as Olympus file. No sharpening or NR applied (in-camera NR turned OFF).
The image below is a screenshot of my LR screen showing both files at 2:1. To my eye, it is fairly obvious that the Sony file is cleaner, but even with more noise, the Olympus file holds detail very well. If you step back from the screen and view from just a few feet back, the difference becomes even les noticeable. Pretty remarkable, I think.
That said, I don't believe I'll be giving up my full-frame cameras just yet. But I no longer believe that m43 cameras can't handle high-ISO situations.
Jan 08, 2017 at 12:57 PM
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