Regulars of this forum will be aware that I have been dabbling with the Oly 4/3rds system for a while now, up until now the story has been great lens quality albeit slightly slow focussing compared to Canon USM but main bugbear is the high iso sensor noise. Other likes of the Oly system has been the Olympus colour quality straight out of the camera and the accurate metering and White Balance, I likened the Oly RAW file look to being like Velvia film when compared to the Canon RAW files more akin to Sensia film.
Things have moved on a pace this year with the 410/510 bodies getting the new Pany live view CMOS sensor as a replacement to the Kodak CCD sensors previously used and considerably better noise handling ability. I took delivery of the new 510 this week and had my first play with it tonight in the garden taking some random flower shots using the 50-200mm lens, 1.4 tc and image stabilisation and hand held. And yes the Oly image stabilasation has come of age. What is slightly disconcerting coming from Canon IS is that the viewfinder image is wobbling all over the place, but the captured shot is sharp.
The techs of this particular shot were
Centre weighted metering, Aperture priority mode, ISO 400, 204mm = 408mm effective field of view at 1/100s at F4.5 (wide open) and minimum focus distance, in other words about 1/4 shutter speed of the recommended reciprical of focal length for a hand held shot. - hand held macro 400mm at 1/100s sounds nuts right?
Shot in JPEG SHQ, NR off, sharpness -1 (concensus of opinion is this yields best jpeg files for processing). The digital processing in PS was a mild dose of Noise Ninja to smooth out some obvious and ugly green jpeg artefacts, 3 passes of unsharp mask 50%, 0.3r,0 threshold faded to luminosity channel copy the 100% crop to new file, resize and then add a layer to paste in the 100% screen shot of the stigma tube. Convert to sRGB mode and save
No exposure adjustment, the metering system left to its own devices, Jpeg colour style is set to neutral, so the vivid colours from the older Kodak CCD sensors have been pretty well retained in the new Pany L-CMOS sensors.
I will have a go at manual focus macro with my OM 90mm macro using a tripod and the live view function tomorrow night to see if live view focussing is all that is cracked up to be compared to using the rather small E-sytem viewfinder
Interesting Mike. Thanks for that. Before I bought into Canon DSLR systems I used Fuji and when looking to upgrade I toyed long and hard with the Oly 4/3rds that was just announced. I went Canon and have few regrets but the Oly systems still hold much interest for me.
Nice colours and sharpness at this size.
Noise seems to be controlled well enough, but for ISO 400 I'd be looking for it to be cleaner.
1/100th at 400mm is not out of the question for ANY IS system, it's only 2 stops!
I handhold my 400 at 1/125th regularly, with IS set to mode 2, when panning and the shots are sharp where they're meant to be.
The one thing that put me of the 4/3 system was the sensor size and the potentially limiting (because of pixel population noise) size of prints that would be acceptable to me.
I do still use an OM1 and love it for when discreet shooting on film is a requirement. (you don't want to know, and if you do I'm not telling )
The foreshortening of minimum focus distance probably adds up to a bit more than a 2 stop advantage for the IS system effect, I agree handholding a 400 at middle to infinity focus is possible at 1 stop or faster ie 1/250 or so especially when panning in mode 2 where technique and practice count a lot, but to handhold and photograph a stationary subject focussed at under 3 feet at 8 x magn is not within my normal shooting ability
Compared to the 500 body, Oly seemed to have made good progress with these 2 latest bodies - iso 400 was not very nice on the 500 body when pixel peeped at 100%, I would only really use that body for travel or backpacking landscape work at 100 or 200 iso max.
Hmm interesting, i'm waiting with baited breath, for the new Oly "pro" camera, i loved the E-1 to bits, and still think its the best DSLR body on the market.
As to the IS and image, looks good but the 100% crop still looks a little unsharp, but resized looks fine.
Posted by Paul Thomas on August 9, 2007 at 1:39 PM
I thought the E-510 might tempt you Mike I've had mine for just over a month now and I'm very pleased with it. I've done a lot of testing with the IS and can get reliable results at 1/60th using the 50-200 + TC (560mm equivalent). I think that's about 3 stops. I've not tried LiveView for macro work yet but I do use the live histogram to set manual exposure.
Yup, and if Digital Depot are to be believed the E-3 will be shipping before Xmas, just in time for Santa......
then the next big question is when SWD is to be introduced into the top pro lens range
Posted by Paul Thomas on August 10, 2007 at 7:24 AM
Olympus have said several times that the E-3 will ship this year. We're probably looking at October for the official press release and November for the camera being shipped. I'm not aware of any plans to put SWD into any top pro lenses but perhaps the new 14-35/f2 might have it. I think their motors are pretty quick anyway but require a grip to provide enough current to achieve maximum speed.
Discussion
7 repliesRegulars of this forum will be aware that I have been dabbling with the Oly 4/3rds system for a while now, up until now the story has been great lens quality albeit slightly slow focussing compared to Canon USM but main bugbear is the high iso sensor noise. Other likes of the Oly system has been the Olympus colour quality straight out of the camera and the accurate metering and White Balance, I likened the Oly RAW file look to being like Velvia film when compared to the Canon RAW files more akin to Sensia film.
Things have moved on a pace this year with the 410/510 bodies getting the new Pany live view CMOS sensor as a replacement to the Kodak CCD sensors previously used and considerably better noise handling ability. I took delivery of the new 510 this week and had my first play with it tonight in the garden taking some random flower shots using the 50-200mm lens, 1.4 tc and image stabilisation and hand held. And yes the Oly image stabilasation has come of age. What is slightly disconcerting coming from Canon IS is that the viewfinder image is wobbling all over the place, but the captured shot is sharp.
The techs of this particular shot were
Centre weighted metering, Aperture priority mode, ISO 400, 204mm = 408mm effective field of view at 1/100s at F4.5 (wide open) and minimum focus distance, in other words about 1/4 shutter speed of the recommended reciprical of focal length for a hand held shot. - hand held macro 400mm at 1/100s sounds nuts right?
Shot in JPEG SHQ, NR off, sharpness -1 (concensus of opinion is this yields best jpeg files for processing). The digital processing in PS was a mild dose of Noise Ninja to smooth out some obvious and ugly green jpeg artefacts, 3 passes of unsharp mask 50%, 0.3r,0 threshold faded to luminosity channel copy the 100% crop to new file, resize and then add a layer to paste in the 100% screen shot of the stigma tube. Convert to sRGB mode and save
No exposure adjustment, the metering system left to its own devices, Jpeg colour style is set to neutral, so the vivid colours from the older Kodak CCD sensors have been pretty well retained in the new Pany L-CMOS sensors.
I will have a go at manual focus macro with my OM 90mm macro using a tripod and the live view function tomorrow night to see if live view focussing is all that is cracked up to be compared to using the rather small E-sytem viewfinder
Rob
Noise seems to be controlled well enough, but for ISO 400 I'd be looking for it to be cleaner.
1/100th at 400mm is not out of the question for ANY IS system, it's only 2 stops!
I handhold my 400 at 1/125th regularly, with IS set to mode 2, when panning and the shots are sharp where they're meant to be.
The one thing that put me of the 4/3 system was the sensor size and the potentially limiting (because of pixel population noise) size of prints that would be acceptable to me.
I do still use an OM1 and love it for when discreet shooting on film is a requirement. (you don't want to know, and if you do I'm not telling
Compared to the 500 body, Oly seemed to have made good progress with these 2 latest bodies - iso 400 was not very nice on the 500 body when pixel peeped at 100%, I would only really use that body for travel or backpacking landscape work at 100 or 200 iso max.
As to the IS and image, looks good but the 100% crop still looks a little unsharp, but resized looks fine.
then the next big question is when SWD is to be introduced into the top pro lens range
Paul