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Bokeh heaven with the Olympus 75mm f/1.8 lens on Australia Day

Saturday, January 26th, 2013

Today is Australia Day, and in Melbourne, we have an annual vintage heritage car rally and the locals take the opportunity of going for a stroll amongst the cars and snacking on the many options from the temporary food stalls while listening to free music and watching the aerial antics of the Roulettes.

I took the opportunity to have a leisurely stroll and play with my beloved Olympus mZD 75mm f/1.8 lens on the Olympus E-M5 Micro Four Thirds camera – an absolutely awesome combination when you want bitingly sharp images with beautiful smooth bokeh – a photographer’s dream!

So here I present a few from today.

vintage bokeh

vintage bokeh

and some of the Paparazzi Dogs – a new, larger than life size series of statues in Melbourne’s Federation Square:

Paparazzi Dogs

Paparazzi Dogs

seems they are using a Canon dSLR:

Paparazzi Dogs

If you are taking shots like these, make sure you turn off the E-M5′s face detection AF as this will over-ride your AF selection as in this shot where it automatically sets AF to the nearest person’s closest eye – great for portraiture but stuffs up your vintage car shots!

E-M5 face detection AF

 

 

 

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Photographing the Australian Open Tennis and dealing with the pros and cons of the Olympus E-M5 Micro Four Thirds camera

Sunday, January 20th, 2013

This week I had the good fortunate to have a day off from work so I could buy a ticket for the HiSense Arena at the Australian Open Tennis and as usual I take opportunities like this to test out my camera gear and hopefully get some shots that portray the ambience of the occasion.

If you have read my blog posts or wikipedia articles on mirrorless cameras which includes Micro Four Thirds cameras such as the wonderful Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera, you will quickly realise I keep repeating that as good as they are, they do NOT autofocus on fast moving subjects and do NOT do AF tracking of a moving subject as well as a dSLR camera with true phase detect AF systems.

So why am I taking such a camera to a sports event?

There are many great reasons why an E-M5 camera is better than a dSLR for the tennis:

  • the camera and its lenses are nice and small so carrying it around is not a big issue and it does not become intrusive and obstruct your fellow spectator’s view
  • the higher sensor pixel density gives it the best telephoto reach for focal length which is important given they do not allow focal length more than 200mm into the event (such lenses are only allowed by accredited pro photographers who pay for that privilege)
  • the absence of a mirror means that it is much less noisy and this is a major issue during play when the crowd is silent and firing off a barage of shots in burst mode can really annoy those nearby
  • it can shoot at 9fps (albeit without sensor-based IS or continuous AF)
  • it gives great image up to ISO 800-1600 as long as your exposure is nearly correct with a wide dynamic range which is often needed at the tennis
  • it has the best image stabilisation available (just not in 9fps burst mode)
  • it looks cool  – and the tennis is really as much a fashion event as a sports event!

Now for the issues and how I managed them or would like to manage them:

  • no phase detect AF for moving subjects – you just have to deal with this like all photographers did prior to 1990 or so – pre-focus while they are stationery, half-press shutter to lock focus, wait until the action starts.
  • no pinpoint AF – this was a substantial problem. Even using only the small centre square place entirely over the tennis players body while relatively stationary, the camera’s AF algorithms somehow decides to ignore the subject if there is a lack of contrast of the clothing or skin and instead AF on more contrasty adjacent backgrounds such as letters on advertising hoardings. PLEASE Mr Olympus, add pinpoint AF! My method to get around this was to AF on their shoes so there is no distant background to confuse the system, keep the shutter half-pressed for AF lock, then recompose, and in 9fps, the focus is deactivated for subsequent shots in that burst.
  • shutter lag – there is a tiny but noticeable degree of shutter lag, one just needs to anticipate this and start shooting a touch before you want the shot.
  • long telephoto wide aperture lens selection – the only long telephoto I have for Micro Four Thirds is my very handy Panasonic 14-140mm HD OIS lens which was great when the light was bright but at f/5.8 at 140mm, one has to crank the ISO up too high when heavy clouds come over or they close the roof and use the lights. A better option would be the promised Panasonic 150mm f/2.8 lens which would allow 4 times as much light in and thus allow 2 stops lower ISO to be used. Hopefully someone will also make a 100-200mm f/2.8 lens which would be awesome indeed for the tennis!
  • image stabilisation in 9fps burst mode – although the E-M5 cannot do IS during 9fps shots, this is generally not a great issue given that you will need to be shooting at 1/500th or faster to freeze the action anyway. However, to get around this, if you have a Panasonic lens with OIS, turn the lens OIS on and turn the E-M5 IS off, and you will get OIS even at 9fps!!! Very cool indeed … here’s hoping the Panasonic 150mm f/2.8 lens has OIS!
  • camera settings – S-AF, RAW+jpeg, 9fps burst rate, AWB, vivid picture style for faster AF, OIS on, IS off, autoISO with limit at 1600, Shutter priority with shutter at ~1/500th sec.

So let’s look at what can be achieved with the Panasonic 14-140mm lens at 140mm in the stadium – all these have been cropped about 30-50%:

13th seed Serbian player, Ana Ivanovic serving it up to fellow Serbian, Jelena Jankovic:

Ana Ivanovic serving it up

Ana Ivanovic powering her way through:

Ana Ivanovic in full flight

The joy of hitting a winning shot, but then Ana looked like she was enjoying the whole game – her wonderful smile was always there!

Ana Ivanovic - the joy of hitting a winning shot

Ana Ivanovic pumped up after finishing off a winning set:

Ana Ivanovic pumped up as she powers her way over fellow Serbian Jelena Jankovic

When you need a break from the stadium, it is time to swap lenses to the awesome Olympus 75mm f/1.8 and go for a walk to the other courts where you can get closer to the action and shoot some iconic shots on the way:

Note, I turned off the burst rate when on these courts close to the action as I didn’t want to distract the players with noise – even though the E-M5 is very quiet it is audible at 9fps – although perhaps the players would not notice it from 5-10m away.

Belgian player, Yanina Wickmayer:

Belgian player, Yanina Wickmayer in a doubles event

Serbian player, Bojana Jovanovski:

Serbian Bojana Jovanovski in a doubles event

Thought this promo girl was from Skin Cancer Australia stand advising that tanning is not healthy – it gives old guys heart attacks, or at least the poor guy inside this promotional Wilson tennis ball:

cheeky hands

But not everyone attending the tennis wore skimpy shorts:

not everyone wears skimpy shorts

On the way back to the trains at Federation Square, a chap in overalls was chillaxing in the late afternoon sun watching the tennis on the big screen Melbourne style:

Chillaxing in Fed Square watching the tennis

Hopefully these tips have been useful, cheers.

 

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Metabones Speed Booster focal reducer lens adapters for Sony NEX, Micro Four Thirds and Fuji mirrorless cameras

Wednesday, January 16th, 2013

Metabones has just announced 0.71x focal reducer lens adapters which they have named “Speed Booster” for a variety of mirrorless cameras including Sony NEX, Olympus and Panasonic Micro Four Thirds, and Fuji-X.
adapter

Although expensive at $US599, these adapters will significantly add to the versatility of these camera systems as they will allow:

  • high image quality reduction in effective focal length and thus field of view will be closer to that of the native lens field of view – on a 1.5x crop camera such as Sony NEX, the crop factor becomes 1.09x, while on a 2x crop factor Micro Four Thirds camera, the crop factor becomes 1.42x (almost the same as a 1.3x crop APS-H Canon 1D dSLR camera)
  • effective aperture for exposure becomes 1 stop brighter, as in effect, more light is squeezed onto the sensor, in other words, it gives you 1 stop higher ISO in effect which can also mean 1 stop less noise
  • the Canon EOS adapter will allow aperture change, optical IS, EXIF data, presumably MF-ring activation of magnified view, and, on the post-2006 EF lenses, slow autofocus – an adapter which can do all this at last given that the long awaited Birger Engineering adapter that was meant to achieve these functions has not eventuated.
  • and of course, if you use a Olympus camera such as the E-M5, you will get sensor based image stabilisation to any lens – and perhaps you may not even have to dial in the focal length – we shall have to wait and see on this aspect
  • the white paper promises excellent correction of spherical aberration as well as field curvature, coma, astigmatism, distortion, and chromatic aberration. Intentionally, it has a very small amount of undercorrected spherical aberration at f/0.90 to improve the bokeh when the Speed Booster is used with ultra high speed f/1.2 objectives. Aberrations should be considerably less than with front-mounted wide adapters.
  • being a focal reducer, it increases resolution and contrast (MTF) compared with using the lens without this adapter as it should compress aberrations
  • improves telecentricity by moving the exit pupil further away and potentialy could reduce vignetting
  • improves image quality of wide aperture legacy film lenses due to improved interaction with low pass and IR filters on the camera sensor, although it appears that image quality may be worse in the corners with some lens combinations such as when using cheap 50mm prime lenses
  • physical length is reduced by 6mm on Micro Four Thirds and by 4mm on Sony NEX compared with using a normal adapter

Thus on a Olympus OM-D E-M5 Micro Four Thirds camera, here are some awesome possibilities:

  • Sigma 8-16mm DX lens = image stabilised 5.6-11.2mm ultra wide angle zoom lens which is even wider than the Micro Four Thirds 7-14mm lenses but the fixed lens hood may become visible
  • Canon TS-E 17mm f/4 tilt-shift lens = image stabilised 12mm f/2.8 lens which will give the same field of view and depth of field as a 24mm f/5.6 tilt shift lens on a 35mm full frame camera, but exposure value of an f/2.8 lens image stabilised
  • Canon EF 24mm f/1.4L II lens = image stabilised 17mm f/1.0 lens which will give the same field of view and depth of field as a 34mm f/2.0 lens on a 35mm full frame camera, but exposure value of an f/1.0 lens image stabilised
  • Canon 50mm f/1.2L lens = image stabilised 36mm f/0.85 lens which will give the same field of view and depth fo field as a 72mm f/1.7 lens on a 35mm full frame camera, but exposure value of an f/0.85 lens image stabilised
  • Canon 85mm f/1.2 lens = image stabilised 60mm f/0.85 lens which will give the same field of view and depth of field as a 120mm f/1.7 lens on a 35mm full frame camera, but exposure value of an f/0.85 lens image stabilised
  • Nikon 85mm f/1.4G II lens or Rokinon 85mm f/1.4 lens = image stabilised 60mm f/1.0 lens which will give the same field of view and depth of field as a 120mm f/2.0 lens on a 35mm full frame camera, but exposure value of an f/1.0 lens image stabilised
  • Canon EF 135mm f/2.0L lens = image stabilised 96mm f/1.4 lens which will give the same field of view and depth of field as a 190mm f/2.8 lens on a 35mm full frame camera, but exposure value of an f/1.4 lens image stabilised

The adapter will open up many exciting possibilities, particularly for those who already have full frame lenses.

Adapters will be available for Canon EF/EF-S, Nikon F/G/DX, Leica R, ALPA, Contarex, Contax C/Y , and Olympus OM lenses.

Note that cropped sensor lenses such as EF-S and DX can be used on Micro Four Thirds with this adapter as long as they do not have fixed lens hoods such as the Nikon DX fisheye, or the Sigma 8-16mm zoom, but the image circle is too small for use on Sony NEX size sensors.

Interestingly, I posted in Feb 2010 about a patent by Olympus for a similar type of adapter which would be a 0.5x reducer (2 f stops) for use with Olympus OM lenses, and it was hoped they would be incorporating SWD or contrast detect AF elements as well which would add fast AF to Olympus OM lenses when used on Micro Four Thirds cameras. Unfortunately, this has not seen the light of day, but perhaps this adapter from Metabones may inspire them to produce such an adapter.

See a review of the Metabones adapter by EOSHD from a video perspective here.

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Rainforest bushwalk with the new Olympus mZD 60mm f/2.8 macro lens

Saturday, December 8th, 2012

Olympus released the Olympus 60mm f/2.8 macro lens for Micro Four Thirds cameras in the middle of this year and I am now a proud owner of said lens.

I took it for a test drive on a few 4 hour rainforest bushwalks in our lovely Otway Ranges. I decided to leave my tripod and ring flash home so I could hike with a lighter pack – after all that is one of the enormous benefits of Micro Four Thirds – lighter, smaller cameras and lenses, reduced need for tripods as you can hand hold the Olympus 12mm lens down to about 1/3rd of a second to get those flowing water shots, and if you do want to bring a tripod, you can get away with a smaller, lighter tripod and tripod head.

These have had minimal post-processing in Lightroom with some vignetting added and some tonal adjustments done.

This lens has lovely bokeh!

Carnivorous native rainforest wild flower, Stylidium graminifolium:

carnivorous wildflower

Romance in the rainforest:

romance

I spotted this tiny 3mm subject on a rock and thought it may be a rare type of carnivorous Otway snail … but on closer inspection it was just some hardened sap droplet which had fallen from the trees, but nevertheless, a worthy subject:

carnivorous snail or..

The Australian native bull ants are quite large ants measuring up to 2cm or so long, and have a painful bite which can be fatal if you happen to be allergic to it. This one was foraging in the dark recesses of the forest floor and was about 1cm long and normally very hard to focus whilst moving but the 60mm macro did a great job after a few tries of me getting used to how it worked:

bull ant

Lastly, a native Pelargonium wildflower:

Pelargonium

The many formal lens tests show that this lens is at least as sharp and optically excellent as is the brilliant Olympus ZD 50mm f/2.0 macro lens, but this lens is lighter, has closer macro capabilities of 1:1 macro, faster, more silent AF, and importantly has autofocus limiters and a switch to take you to 1:1 focus point.

For hand held work at close macro distances near 1:1, even using the fantastic Olympus E-M5 with its 5-stop 5 axis image stabiliser, the high magnification requires shutter speeds faster than 1/125th second for reliable shooting.

Now I am just waiting on the Olympus Ring Flash adapter, and hopefully Olympus will develop a new macro flash system which is smaller, lighter, and be a master for controlling the remote TTL flashes – a major deficiency with the current macro flash system.

More photos on my Flickr account using this lovely lens can be seen here.

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More outdoor portraits with the brilliant Olympus 75mm f/1.8 lens at f/2.5 this time

Sunday, November 4th, 2012

Olympus released the Olympus 75mm f/1.8 lens for Micro Four Thirds cameras in the middle of this year and I am now a proud owner of said lens.

The previous post showed some of the imagery I managed to get with this brilliant lens when I decided to join the thousands of zombies and photographer’s at this year’s Zombie Shuffle in Melbourne – a great fun family event with a fantastic vibe and best of all for photographers, plenty of great portrait opportunities with some fantastic makeup and costumes and their owners very willing to pose for you.

In this post I have added a few more of people attending a “color” meet up who graciously agreed to pose for me as well as another from the Zombie shuffle.

Check out the incredible sharpness and lovely bokeh of the blurred backgrounds of these shots taken at f/2.5 (the first image though was at f/1.8)!

These have had minimal post-processing in Lightroom with some vignetting added to a few.

another zombie

A young lady enjoying the opportunity to dress up (this has been cropped ~40%):

girl with hat

Flower power couple:

flower power

Lady in a bird cage:

bird cage

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Outdoor portraits with the Olympus 75mm f/1.8 lens – Melbourne’s Zombie Shuffle, bokeh heaven!

Tuesday, October 30th, 2012

Olympus released the Olympus 75mm f/1.8 lens for Micro Four Thirds cameras in the middle of this year and I am now a proud owner of said lens.

I decided to join the thousands of zombies and photographer’s at this year’s Zombie Shuffle in Melbourne – a great fun family event with a fantastic vibe and best of all for photographers, plenty of great portrait opportunities with some fantastic makeup and costumes and their owners very willing to pose for you.

The 75mm lens is not the ideal lens for use within a crowd, particularly when they start moving – the long focal length and lack of room to get distance from your subject combined with the very narrow depth of field, makes accurate autofocus very challenging indeed.

Nevertheless, I wanted to test out the 75mm lens to find out how to use it best.

It was a bright sunny day, but fortunately, I could choose to shoot mainly under the shade of the big elm trees and thus could shoot at f/1.8 without having to resort to using polarising filters or ND filters. When I did go into the sun, I just switched the exposure mode dial to Shutter Priority to avoid over-exposure which would otherwise occur in Aperture Priority mode set at f/1.8. The Shutter Priority mode was set to shutter speed of 1/4000th sec (so it would give the the largest aperture possible), and ISO set to auto ISO with high level of ISO 800 (in case I moved back into the shade).

When taking portraits with the E-M5 with eye detect AF mode ON, it is important to give the camera that extra split second to detect the face and the closest eye, otherwise you will end up with AF on the default AF region (for me that is the central square, and thus not always what I am wanting).

This AF technique gives you wonderful opportunities to get sharp eyes no matter where they are in the frame without having to recompose – BUT, the short lag in acquiring the face detection may mean a trigger happy finger gets out of focus shots or you may miss a critical moment – that’s a compromise but a reasonable one.

An issue with face detect AF in a Zombie shuffle is that it does not always detect faces with extreme makeovers.

Finally, the E-M5 is not great at subject tracking of subjects moving towards the camera as Zombies tend to do!

The solution when using a lens with very narrow depth of field such as the 75mm lens – just wait for them to stop then get the shot.

Check out the incredible sharpness and lovely bokeh of the blurred backgrounds of these shots taken at f/1.8!

These have had minimal post-processing in Lightroom with some vignetting added to a few.

zip it up!

A beautiful zombie who met a sad end:

zombie girl

A backlit bride:

zombie bride

and a couple more:

zombie 1

zombie 2

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The Olympus mZD 75mm f/1.8 lens in action

Friday, October 26th, 2012

Olympus released the Olympus 75mm f/1.8 lens for Micro Four Thirds cameras in the middle of this year and I am now a proud owner of said lens.

This is a lens that suits my style of photography and will now replace my heavy Canon 1D Mark III pro dSLR with Canon 135mm f/2.0L lens as it gives a similar imagery when that lens is used at about f/2.8 which is my usual aperture for 3/4 body shots but is sharper, and more importantly is image stabilsied on the Olympus E-M5 camera so that I don’t have to get too worried about camera shake at flash sync when using fill-in flash which was always an issue with the Canon.

Even better, the E-M5 will allow rapid autofocus on the subject’s closest eye wherever it is within the frame, and rarely do I place the subject’s eye in the central third where the AF sensors are in dSLRs.

The fast AF makes my lovely, but manual focus Rokinon 85mm f/1.4 lens redundant.

This is a fantastic combination and made even better given the price, weight, size and the lovely bokeh.

Here are a couple of quick shots I took on an annoyingly sunny day in a forest which gives lots of contrasty imagery and very busy backgrounds, yet the 75mm f/1.8 handled this with ease.

forest bokeh

forest wild flowers in Victoria, Australia in Spring:

wild flowers

and despite a field of view of a 150mm lens, the following shot taken without care was reasonably sharp even at 1/20th sec hand held!

wild flowers

more shots with the 75mm lens on my Flickr set here

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The Olympus OM-D E-M5 in Dublin and the Whitlow Mountain region of Ireland

Monday, October 22nd, 2012

After the many posts on new cameras and lenses in September, I had forgotten to finish off my UK/Ireland holiday series of posts, so here is my final post from that trip… Dublin and the Whitlow Mountain region.

A mountain stream hand held at 1/5th second to show some water blur thanks to the image stabilisation of the Olympus E-M5 combined with the 12mm lens.

hand held long exposure

Cemetery at Glendalough, a 10th century abbey:

Glendalough

Glendalough

Guiness cash:
Guiness cash

Sorrow and despair of the potato blight famine (Olympus 45mm f/1.8 lens):
Potato famine

Temple Bar, Dublin at night (Olympus 12mm lens 1/13th sec ISO 200, hand held no flash):
Temple Bar, Dublin

Faces in the crowd at a march in Dublin’s streets (Panasonic 14-140mm lens):

faces

More on my Flickr set here.

My must have compact, high image quality, versatile camera travel kit:

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Even more exciting news.. Panasonic announces the GH-3 and 2 exciting lenses for the roadmap – 42.5mm f/1.2 and 150mm f/2.8 – wow, now I am excited!!!

Tuesday, September 18th, 2012

Panasonic’s upgrade to the GH-2 will be the GH-3 as leaked, and it will have the best HD video capabilities of any hybrid camera available.

Key features of the new GH-3:

  • 16mp sensor, 6fps burst rate
  • ISO 125-25,600 extended range
  • much larger than the GH-2 – more dSLR-like in size
  • weatherproofed
  • designed for pro-videographers in particular
  • fast AF
  • new EVF with 8x faster data transfer to it for smoother display on panning
  • three-core Venus 7 FHD engine
  • swivel, rotate, articulated touch screen
  • wireless TTL flash for the 1st time in a Panasonic camera – will it be compatible with Olympus – I would hope so!
  • PC sync socket
  • iOS and Android app control via WiFi (built-in)
  • .MOV and AVCHD video formats with Timecode support
  • 60p/50p/30p/25p/24p HD video with 50Mbps in IPB and 72-80Mbps in All-I compression .MOV modes, 28Mbps in AVCHD format and 20Mbps in MP4 format
  • stereo mic plus 3.5mm mic socket
  • shutter 60sec – 1/4000th sec, flash sync only 1/160th sec though
  • HDR mode
  • electronic shutter
  • optional vertical grip
  • 550g

More details here.

Awesome stuff which really value adds to the Micro Four Thirds system

But what I am really interested in are the new Panasonic lenses they are teasing us with (on the roadmap for 2013-14):

  • 42.5mm f/1.2
  • 150mm f/2.8 HD

Plus their previously announced 35-100mm f/2.8 OIS high end lens now has a pre-order on Amazon for $1499 – not cheap, but that is the price of quality, in compact size.

What a brilliant system the Micro Four Thirds is turning into!

Meanwhile still waiting on shipment of the stunning Olympus 75mm f/1.8 lens to go with my Olympus 12mm f/2.0 and 45mm f/1.8 lenses.

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Sony announce some nice new cameras and lenses and finally rid themselves of the legacy Minolta hotshoe as last!

Wednesday, September 12th, 2012

There is lots of news from Sony today.

1. Sony have introduced a new ISO-standard flash hotshoe finally doing away with the crazy Minolta design which was incompatible with non-Minolta flashes even in manual mode. Users of Minolta flashes can buy a Sony adapter for use on the new cameras. This is big news for me as I have been critical of the Minolta hotshoe ever since they invented it!

2. Sony RX-1 – a very interesting full frame compact fixed lens camera without built-in viewfinder but with a 35mm f/2 optically stabilised lens with leaf shutter. At $2800 it will have a restricted audience but still may be a very attractive option for wedding photographers as a 2nd camera for those group photos outdoors, assuming the flash sync goes to 1/2000th sec which is unique outside the medium format world.

3. Sony SLT Alpha A99 dSLR – the lightest, most compact full frame dSLR and weathersealed, sensor-shift IS, with perhaps the best subject tracking AF system available – as long as your subject is in the centre and it works!!!

4. Sony NEX 6 – essentially their NEX-5R with the EVF from the NEX7 and a few extra goodies such as a PASM dial.

5. a couple of high end video cameras, one with APS-C sized sensor, the VG-30, but suprisingly, a full frame VG900 using the small NEX E-mount!

6. Three new NEX lenses to give a collapsible compact zoom, a 50mm prime and a 15-27mm ultra wide angle (in 35mm terms).

The NEX5R, NEX6 and A99 all use on-sensor phase detect sensors, but in addition, the A99 uses full time normal phase detect sensors courtesy of its fixed translucent mirror (SLT design) which does have the downside of losing 1/3rd of your light and adding an extra bit of glass in your image train.

The unfortunate problem with these phase detect sensors are that they are all closely packed to the centre of the image – so bad luck if you compose by the Rule of Thirds intersections as these lie outside the sensor area. Other than this issue, and the fact none of the Sony flashes or lenses are compatible with my gear, the RX-1 and A99 at the right price would be interesting options to me to give me additional full frame capabilities such as shallower DOF.

Nevertheless, these cameras represent another step forward into the eveolution of the digital camera and the full frame options are very interesting indeed if the image quality is realised and the price is low enough to provide a reason to change from Canon or Nikon full frame dSLRs.

I wonder how Sony are dealing with the periphery image issues created by using a full frame sensor with such a short lens flange distance as it appears they are using with the RX-1 – time will tell I guess.

Will they compliment your Micro Four Thirds system?

Assuming these are cracked up to be what the specs suggest and image quality is fantastic, how would the RX-1 or Alpha A99 compliment a compact Micro Four Thirds system?

1st the RX-1:

For a 35mm lens field of view on a Micro Four Thirds camera one could use:

  • Olympus 17mm f/2.8 pancake lens for compact, pocketable kit but lose low light and shallow DOF capability
  • Cosina Voigtlander Nokton 17.5mm f/0.95 which would give similar DOF but no autofocus and no camera-controlled aperture
  • the rumoured Olympus 17mm f/1.8 (presumably available in 2013) or the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 pancake would mean 1.5 stops less control over shallow DOF

Thus adding the RX-1 to your kit could be very handy if shallow DOF at 35mm is important to you, or the leaf shutter which will presumably allow full flash output at any shutter speed be a boon to those wishing to over-power the sun with their flash.

But it will not be so handy if you are wanting more DOF at wide aperture such as when shooting urban shots hand held at night – in this scenario, your Olympus OM-D E-M5 with a 12mm or 17mm lens will be a much better choice.

For most, they may prefer adding the versatility of a full frame dSLR rather than being constrained by such an expensive fixed lens camera.

2nd, the SLT Alpha A99:

Now this camera could compliment Micro Four Thirds reasonably well (better if it had a compatible TTL flash – but it seems unlikely that Panasonic or Olympus will be heading into full frame dSLR territory any time soon).

It would offer 2 main features which are currently lacking in Micro Four Thirds, and thus are the main reason why one would consider a dSLR:

  • AF tracking of fast moving subjects thanks to its dual and full time phase detect AF system – although as mentioned, this only applies to subjects in the centre of the frame
  • even shallower DOF

The problem for me though is that I own lots of Canon Pro full frame lenses so jumping onto a Sony dSLR is not going to happen for me, and if I need AF of faster moving subjects then the new Olympus E-7 when it comes out would be a better fit with the Micro Four Thirds flash system but of course, it will not give full frame level of shallow DOF.

It does have several advantages over the Canon or Nikon full frame dSLRs:

  • sensor based image stabilisation so even your wide aperture prime lenses are stabilised – try shooting your 135mm f/2.0 lens with fill-in flash at 1/250th second and you will see sharpness often suffers without IS on a Canon or Nikon.
  • fixed mirror so no mirror vibrations, no mirror noise and full-time phase detect AF calculations for better subject tracking and ability to programmatically choose a focus range for AF
  • better video capabilities – such as XLR mic adapter, improved autofocus during video, live video output via HDMI
  • EVF and full time live view for seemless video / magnified live view and other capabilities
  • smaller size, lighter weight, quieter, yet still weathersealed and shutter rating of 200,000 shots

BUT, specs may not prove to be the real world advantages as they seem on paper – see what happened with the Sony SLT Alpha A55 launched in 2010. It too had this SLT fixed mirror system and offered subject tracking at 10fps but it was inaccurate and had many compromises – we will have to await testing to see how this SLT camera fairs given it has the benefit of a further 2 years of technology development to hopefully address the previous issues.

 Where to now?

Now that we are seeing more full frame cameras hitting the market and their prices fall, photographers will increasingly be thinking:

  1. if I am going to carry around a larger lens, then why bother with cropped sensor cameras such as APS-based mirrorless or dSLR cameras, I may as well get a full frame camera
  2. for most of the time when one just wants a small, compact camera with small lenses, then Micro Four Thirds is the perfect compromise on size, image quality, fun, price, versatility and ability to gain sufficiently shallow DOF.
  3. niche cameras for special applications such as the Sony RX1′s leaf shutter and x-sync to 1/2000th sec
  4. sports / wildlife camera with AF for fast moving subjects at f/8 lenses and great telephoto reach such as Olympus Four Thirds, Canon 1D Mark IV, Nikon D300s or Nikon D4 (although the last being full frame has limited telephoto reach)
  5. tough, almost indestructible, waterproof, droppable cameras for the beach, surf and kids such as the Olympus TOUGH TG-1 camera
  6. for most other casual photography where image quality is less important than the photo, a smartphone may be adequate

I can see why both Canon and Nikon have been reluctant to make APS-sized mirrorless cameras – soon we will have full frame mirrorless to address those needs.

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