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I just bought an OM-D EM-5 MKII used from a local shop - the first digital camera of my adult life (I've been shooting film as a hobby for years). It has this f

I just bought an OM-D EM-5 MKII used from a local shop - the first digital camera of my adult life (I've been shooting film as a hobby for years). It has this feature. I used it a couple times and abandoned it, for the same reasons the author lays out. The folks running the shop are obviously huge camera geeks, and they were really psyched about that feature. To their credit, it's damn impressive that a camera that small, and a sensor that small, can produce a true 40MP image where every pixel actually captures a geometrically unique location on the focal plane. As a key selling point over an E-M10 though? Nah. It's a marvel of engineering, but extremely limited in its practical value - a hallmark of "features for nerds." Sadly, in today's consumer landscape you kinda have to satisfy the spec sheet gawkers if you're going to sell a product. That's another reason features like this exist. 16MP on a sensor of that quality can still be blown up to enormous sizes without it looking crunchy. The real reason to spring for an E-M5 is the weather sealing and bigger viewfinder.

cesaref 3y ago
I think these 4/3rds camera were dismissed by armchair photographers in the early years because of the sensor size, and I think these pixel shift type features were added so that they could add a higher resolution mode to the headline features of the camera, to compete with higher resolution sensors. However, as you have probably found, 16mp is actually a very useful size - a good compromise between image size and resolution. I actually shoot a 16mp camera (Fuji X1) most of the time, even though I have much higher resolution cameras to hand.
- klodolph 3y ago
  Yeah. Armchair photographers fighting over cameras by looking at the specs and comparing photographs under a microscope. There’s a tradeoff here between making a small, portable, inexpensive camera that you want to carry with you, and making a bigger, clunky, expensive camera that takes high-quality pictures. Armchair photographers looking at the specs will always pick the bigger, more expensive equipment. I know some people that bought into the 4/3 system, and I personally bought into larger systems. At the time, maybe that made sense for me. But if the camera is smaller, you actually bring the damn camera with you and get a shot. The 4/3 is a beautiful compromise where the shots are probably going to be noticeably better than your phone, and you’re going to bring the camera a lot more often than the APS-C or full-frame cameras. The resolution differences are on a square-root scale when you count megapixels. 24 MP has 22% better resolution than 16 MP — √(24/16). There’s a whole complicated story here involving aperture size, optical resolution, sensor efficiency and all sorts of other factors, which means that in the end, you don’t sacrifice as much image quality as you expect when switching to a smaller camera.
  - jeffbee 3y ago
    It's a funny thing about the small bodies. My Olympus is too small to handle. I use both the optional grips to make it a decent size.
    - semi-extrinsic 3y ago
      I made a heftier grip for my E-M5 just using black Sugru. Textured it a bit so it looks damn near stock, it's held up well for six years now.
    - ryukoposting 3y ago
      My other regularly-used cameras are an SRT-102 and an RB67. The smallness is refreshing.
- ricardobeat 3y ago
  It was never about resolution. 4/3s was dismissed because it’s very hard to get nice depth / bokeh, poor ISO, and great lenses were rare. It works great for niches like wildlife, news, street photography, not so for others. I owned an E-M10 for a while and ended up selling because it had nothing much to distinguish itself from my iPhone, and with all the computing power the phone photos were sharper and with better dynamic range. Portrait mode also evolved to do a pretty decent job for family pictures. APS-C is at the sweet spot of enabling very small bodies and lenses, but still getting FF-like images with a fast lens and decent low-light performance. My current Fuji kit is actually lighter than the old MFT one and about the same size, while taking far better pictures.
  - foldr 3y ago
    >very hard to get nice depth / bokeh F1.2 lenses are quite widely available for micro 4/3 systems, which is equivalent to f2.4 on full frame in terms of depth of field. Not enough to get you absolutely razor thin depth of field, but perfectly sufficient to blur the background.
    - semi-extrinsic 3y ago
      I have an old manual Nikon 50mm F1.2 with adapter on my E-M5. If you shoot portraits, you run into the "your eyes are in focus but not the tip of your nose" problem. Surely you don't need any shallower DoF than that.
      - jeffbee 3y ago
        F-mount lenses with a speed booster on a micro four thirds body is a seriously underrated setup.
      - ricardobeat 3y ago
        That's 100mm/f2.4 equivalent, of course you get razor thin DoF - even on a 100mm/f4 that's a handful cm at portrait distances. Maybe I shouldn't have said 'hard to get', cause you certainly can get decent DoF like that, but it's a real physical limitation. You won't get it that easily with classic 28mm/35mm/50mm focal lengths. And there will never be a practical f0.6 lens.
- jeffbee 3y ago
  I always imagined that after they added the voice coils for body stabilization, the high resolution shooting modes could be added at no cost, so they just added them.
moolcool 3y ago
I started shooting on a 12mp sensor after spending most of my time on 24mp (Sony A7 II to a Nikon D700) and I was surprised at how much detail was in the 12mp images. Unless you're cropping really heavily or printing really large, you really don't need the resolution most of the time.

cesaref 3y ago

I think these 4/3rds camera were dismissed by armchair photographers in the early years because of the sensor size, and I think these pixel shift type features were added so that they could add a higher resolution mode to the headline features of the camera, to compete with higher resolution sensors. However, as you have probably found, 16mp is actually a very useful size - a good compromise between image size and resolution. I actually shoot a 16mp camera (Fuji X1) most of the time, even though I have much higher resolution cameras to hand.

klodolph 3y ago
Yeah. Armchair photographers fighting over cameras by looking at the specs and comparing photographs under a microscope. There’s a tradeoff here between making a small, portable, inexpensive camera that you want to carry with you, and making a bigger, clunky, expensive camera that takes high-quality pictures. Armchair photographers looking at the specs will always pick the bigger, more expensive equipment. I know some people that bought into the 4/3 system, and I personally bought into larger systems. At the time, maybe that made sense for me. But if the camera is smaller, you actually bring the damn camera with you and get a shot. The 4/3 is a beautiful compromise where the shots are probably going to be noticeably better than your phone, and you’re going to bring the camera a lot more often than the APS-C or full-frame cameras. The resolution differences are on a square-root scale when you count megapixels. 24 MP has 22% better resolution than 16 MP — √(24/16). There’s a whole complicated story here involving aperture size, optical resolution, sensor efficiency and all sorts of other factors, which means that in the end, you don’t sacrifice as much image quality as you expect when switching to a smaller camera.
- jeffbee 3y ago
  It's a funny thing about the small bodies. My Olympus is too small to handle. I use both the optional grips to make it a decent size.
  - semi-extrinsic 3y ago
    I made a heftier grip for my E-M5 just using black Sugru. Textured it a bit so it looks damn near stock, it's held up well for six years now.
  - ryukoposting 3y ago
    My other regularly-used cameras are an SRT-102 and an RB67. The smallness is refreshing.
ricardobeat 3y ago
It was never about resolution. 4/3s was dismissed because it’s very hard to get nice depth / bokeh, poor ISO, and great lenses were rare. It works great for niches like wildlife, news, street photography, not so for others. I owned an E-M10 for a while and ended up selling because it had nothing much to distinguish itself from my iPhone, and with all the computing power the phone photos were sharper and with better dynamic range. Portrait mode also evolved to do a pretty decent job for family pictures. APS-C is at the sweet spot of enabling very small bodies and lenses, but still getting FF-like images with a fast lens and decent low-light performance. My current Fuji kit is actually lighter than the old MFT one and about the same size, while taking far better pictures.
- foldr 3y ago
  >very hard to get nice depth / bokeh F1.2 lenses are quite widely available for micro 4/3 systems, which is equivalent to f2.4 on full frame in terms of depth of field. Not enough to get you absolutely razor thin depth of field, but perfectly sufficient to blur the background.
  - semi-extrinsic 3y ago
    I have an old manual Nikon 50mm F1.2 with adapter on my E-M5. If you shoot portraits, you run into the "your eyes are in focus but not the tip of your nose" problem. Surely you don't need any shallower DoF than that.
    - jeffbee 3y ago
      F-mount lenses with a speed booster on a micro four thirds body is a seriously underrated setup.
    - ricardobeat 3y ago
      That's 100mm/f2.4 equivalent, of course you get razor thin DoF - even on a 100mm/f4 that's a handful cm at portrait distances. Maybe I shouldn't have said 'hard to get', cause you certainly can get decent DoF like that, but it's a real physical limitation. You won't get it that easily with classic 28mm/35mm/50mm focal lengths. And there will never be a practical f0.6 lens.
jeffbee 3y ago
I always imagined that after they added the voice coils for body stabilization, the high resolution shooting modes could be added at no cost, so they just added them.

moolcool 3y ago

I started shooting on a 12mp sensor after spending most of my time on 24mp (Sony A7 II to a Nikon D700) and I was surprised at how much detail was in the 12mp images. Unless you're cropping really heavily or printing really large, you really don't need the resolution most of the time.