3 ms·

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 nic

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.
- ricardobeat 3y ago
  That wasn't the case for a long time, and good lenses are extremely expensive, in the 1000+ euro range. Laowa / 7Artisans etc were not a thing until a few years ago. Plus bokeh quality is subjective and not just about blurring the background. Not saying you can't enjoy an MFT system. My 20mm/1.7 Lumix took great pictures. Truth is the original premise has not held. The best MFT setups are just as heavy as APS-C while having slightly worse specs due to the smaller sensor, and at the same time a higher price tag. These are very real limitations and much more than "dismissed by armchair photographers in the early years".
ryukoposting 3y ago
Bokeh and depth are entirely a product of the properties of the lens. Among the great things about m4/3 is the tiny sensor, and tiny distance between the lens and the sensor, which together facilitate a low barrier to entry for high-quality fast glass. Sure, take APS-C and get rid of the mirror and you get the same effect, but you still have physically larger lenses, significantly higher costs, and a whole lot of pixels that are doing literally nothing unless you're regularly making large prints. Your whole comment reads like "what are ya, POOR?"
- ricardobeat 3y ago
  There are few MFT lenses providing great bokeh, they cost thousands of euros. I don’t understand how you could take my comment that way. MFT gear is not cheap at all. APS-C these days can be physically similar in size, and cheaper while having better image quality. Hence why I think there is little reason to choose four thirds.

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.
ricardobeat 3y ago
That wasn't the case for a long time, and good lenses are extremely expensive, in the 1000+ euro range. Laowa / 7Artisans etc were not a thing until a few years ago. Plus bokeh quality is subjective and not just about blurring the background. Not saying you can't enjoy an MFT system. My 20mm/1.7 Lumix took great pictures. Truth is the original premise has not held. The best MFT setups are just as heavy as APS-C while having slightly worse specs due to the smaller sensor, and at the same time a higher price tag. These are very real limitations and much more than "dismissed by armchair photographers in the early years".

ryukoposting 3y ago

Bokeh and depth are entirely a product of the properties of the lens. Among the great things about m4/3 is the tiny sensor, and tiny distance between the lens and the sensor, which together facilitate a low barrier to entry for high-quality fast glass. Sure, take APS-C and get rid of the mirror and you get the same effect, but you still have physically larger lenses, significantly higher costs, and a whole lot of pixels that are doing literally nothing unless you're regularly making large prints. Your whole comment reads like "what are ya, POOR?"

ricardobeat 3y ago
There are few MFT lenses providing great bokeh, they cost thousands of euros. I don’t understand how you could take my comment that way. MFT gear is not cheap at all. APS-C these days can be physically similar in size, and cheaper while having better image quality. Hence why I think there is little reason to choose four thirds.