I used to shoot 5D's and 5DII's back then as well - portraits and weddings. Had the L-glass as well, loved that 85L 1.2. Loved the images - didn't love the weight. Went with M43 when the original E-M5 came out - revolutionary. Image stabilization in the body, nobody had ever even heard of the concept! Couldn't believe my eyes, handholding the 75mm lens for shots at 1/2 second - they were coming out tack sharp! Remember it like it was yesterday. And I think you're spot on with the lens weight. Sure you get Full frame bodies around 400-600g, but that doesn't mean a thing when the lenses are 2-4x the weight of m43 equivalents.
You hit the nail on the head there! It adds so much versatility being so much lighter. Sure, for some situations full frame is a must like low light fast action work but for almost everything else the weight just wind out every time!
I agree with everything you've said in this video. My first interchangeable lens camera was micro 4/3s but like a lot of people I was chasing the dream of full frame. Long story short I ended up with the Canon 6D which is a fantastic camera but the lenses were heavy and I was lugging so much extra kit around in order to take the pictures I wanted. 3 months back I got back to where I started and have been happily shooting micro4/3s again. It's reinvigorated my photography and even the stuff I thought I wouldn't be able to do like night shooting has been excellent...No regrets!
Thanks Stuart! Sounds like we ended up on a similar journey! Just love the hiking now whereas before it really wasn't fun lugging the kit around - and that was even before carrying the filming gear for RU-vid!
I could not agree with you more! Following a trip to Antartica at the end of last year where I was limited with what I could take, and following a personal situation I traded my Nikon D6, D850 and associated lenses including the 500mm f4E FL ED for the Olympus OM-1. I now have the Mk ii and the 150-400 f4.5. I can now get all my gear into one backpack. I’m off to photograph the puffins on Skomer next month and I know that even after a 5 hour stay on the island I can take my OM-1, the Mk ii and a couple of lenses with no issues. As you say the lenses are brilliant and the 90mm macro is superb.
It's definitely got an awful lot going for it that the general press and full frame manufacturers would rather you didn't know about hasn't it? Sounds like you're in for a fantastic trip too! Have to admit to being slightly jealous of your trip to Skomer - I'll get there one day!
@@LeighWPhotos Frankly in many ways I think MFT is better! My Nikon D6 was “only “ 20 megapixels and that took some beating. In reality, who needs the hunt for pixels? And with the modern DeNoise programmes shooting at high iso on MFT is really not a problem.
Partially agree, though I have just sold all my Olympus/OM kit and used the cash to expand my Sony FF kit. Married to an A7CR the weight of, say, the Sony 24mm f1.4 is a little greater than the OM1 and the 12mm Lumix f1.4, but the 61mpx Sony sensor is a joy to use. There's not much in the performance difference, but it's definitely there. On the downside, the Sony body costs £3k, the OM1 mk 2 costs £2k and has two card slots. OM stabilisation with the 12/100 f4 is sensational, but the A7CR matched with the Tamron 28-200 f2.8/5.6 gives better detail for little more weight, and the Tamron lens is "only" £7/800. For wildlife shooters, the M43 kit is far superior, avoiding the heavy weight of the FF lenses. Really, it depends on how you plan to use the kit.
Great points conveyed Leigh... each and every one is spot on 💯. The mft system is highly cost effective vs the capabilities it provides. Although, recent inflationary uplifts are diminishing this a little. The range , of lenses is very extensive too. Loving the content BTW. Appreciate your work alot... keep going Brother!
Thank you Tony! I'm hoping the system prices level out a little but it still offers a great shooting experience for the money and comparing it to the comparable full frame kit it's still very competitive even now!
There's a load of crap out there picked up from fluencers. In film-photography school, "we" talked about "linear enlargement or magnification" because "linear" relates linearly to human vision. That's why "we" measure resolution in "linePairs per millimetre - resolution per unit of length, not are. We also express display resolution that way: Pixels Per Inch (PPI) or printer resolution in Dots Per Inch (DPI). If you want "two times better" then you need 2x linear improvement. This applies both to resolution and formats. For sensor resolution, this means if you want to double your current X*Y=MP resolution sensor then you need 2X*2Y=4MP. So doubling 20MP means you need 80MP - ceteris paribus (everything else staying the same). This applies to formats similarly. Unfortunately, digital has removed this awareness because area units are important in predicting image (file) sizes, and requirements to processing power, storage capacity, and I/O bandwidth. At this level, 80MP is 4 times as stressing as 20MP. Here we have explained why people are surprised "how good a 6MP camera from the past still is", or disappointed how much they gained from 24MP to 36MP. In the film era, I did not go to 8"*10" (where a single shot has an in- camera frame size of almost Letter or A4 size) for resolution or sharpness, but for saturation and gradation. Film has "grains" that do the light-sensitive stuff and the colour stuff in colour film. But there's empty space between the grains and when you enlarge, not only do the grains become visible but the empty space between them becomes more visible, thus diluting saturation and impacting gradation. That's different today. "Digital" assumes zero empty space between pixels and when we enlarge beyond 100%, a single pixel gets broken up into new pixels. Then we may print at a higher DPI resolution even, and in their turn, the broken down pixels get broken down again into dots. With AI that's intelligent rather than artificial, we get believable detail and gradation, and we always retain saturation. Indeed, smaller formats and lower resolutions are not as bad as fluencers and their believers assume, tell each other. But. Ceteris paribus - (1) often gets violated. And as I described above, (2) extrapolation (invention) of detail when we blow images up in digital put up a smokescreen in fair comparisons. With processing power getting smaller, lighter, cheaper, less energy hungry, and AI better because of this effect and better software, the impact of (2) will keep differences between formats and resolutions small (and be an unknown factor in (1) ). The third factor in comparisons is that humans have a hard time seeing sharpness differences between things of which they have no preconceived expectations of the detail that should be in the image. The most difficult in this is not detail resolution but gradation resolution and gradation overall. The biggest (1) violation in comparisons between smaller and larger formats is when we compare a full frame camera with OLPF to a small camera without OLPF. What that is, its deeper pros and cons, if you don;t know, ask me. A very good impression of the impact of having the OLPF or not in the camera can be gotten from DxO Mark. The next must all be done in full frame for ceteris paribus reasons. In there, find the sharpest lens with Nikon F-mount. Compare its sharpness when mounted on a Nikon D800 (36MP, with OLPF) to its sharpness on a Nikon D800E (36MP, OLPF Eliminated). Shocking? Now for the impact of MP, with that same lens, compare it mounted on the D800 again to now mounted on a D600/610/750 (24MP with OLPF). Here you can see my point in action, above, saying that 2X*2Y=4MP is twice as good, linearly, as X*Y=MP. You can confirm this again by comparing that same lens on the Nikon D800E (36MP, no OLPF) to it mounted on the D850 (45MP, no OLPF). How does this relate to smal format to full frame comparisons? Simply in that small format cameras, generally, have no OLPF. When you compare a Nikon D500 (20MP, no OLPF) to a D610 (24MP, with OLPF), then you violate "ceteris paribus" and may conclude that the D500 gives sharper images. Of course, as APS-C (called DX by Nikon) is 2 times the area, it linearly is only SQRT(2) larger - 41%. My stills standard is full frame and I am not going to move away from that. For several reasons. Is it overrated? I might still shoot what's called in rounded up centimeters "6*9" on film, but have to say that digital is so good that I forget about it. Movie is another thing. We typically aren't inclined to pixel peep, maybe, and the motion pictures give our brain an illusion of more detail that gets derived fro subsequent frames. What's called "full frame" started as test device for cine film in an era where emulsions and processing needed testing. 24mm wide by 18mm high, running the film vertically through the camera - for shooting handheld run and gun takes, when 70mm was the standard. 35mm started as cine film with a format of Mr. Barnack at Leitz optical company decided to double on that size because it was too hard to assess the small frames, and in that run the film horizontally. So in the Interbellum, the Leitz Camera - Leica - was advertised as "double frame". "Full frame" - hah.
@@LeighWPhotos - If you skip all the splaining, and accept it, then remember the following: For the human brain, we need to compare "linear" units - linear=length - not area units. LinePairs per millimetre, Pixels per inch, Dots per Inch exist for that reason. This "linear" thing is why "we" still use a factor "linear enlargement" in communcations. MegaPixels are an area unit and the amount of data in a quantity of MP relates to all that, but not how humans see sharpness. If you want to double your current X*Y=MP resolution sensor then you need 2X*2Y=4MP. Doubling 20MP for the human brain means you need 80MP. But for the computer components in the camera, 80MP is 4 times as stressing as 20MP. As your point is about m4/3rd versus full frame, this linear thinking also applies to the format difference. Full frame is two times linear larger, but four times the area. How we experience image quality is ALSO influenced by how well we can decide if something is sharp - we often cannot. This helps small formats. Next to detail resolution or sharpness two other factors influence human experience of image quality: Saturation - smaller formats need more enlargement for the same size and this waters saturation down, thus also impacting gradation. With film, this used to work against small formats, but "digital" helps small format a lot. Gradation - how subtle tonal changes of the same colour of towards another colour are depicted. In digital this is influenced by "bit depth" and smaller formats do this less well. But we can still use tools to improve or change gradation. In comparisons, people draw conclusions about having changed one thing - camera frame size - but often forget to identify other factors that also changed - thus invalidating their conclusions. One such overlooked detail is the "Optical Low Pass Filter" that was introduced, somewhere in the evolution of colour photography according to Mr. Bayer, as a way to help guessing the missing colours with each raw data element. Removal of the OLPF has a bigger impact than adding a bunch of MP. Yes, digital helps smaller formats a lot.
Agree with your title fully. I have a SONY A7II and still own it. In these years, I took it ourdoor to shoot less than 5 times. It is too heavy to carry by myself and its photo quality is not as good as Panasonic GX85 when both were well calibrated in manual white balance lock and reduced to 3840*2160 to view on 43" monitors.
It's definitely a case of using what's best for you isn't it? FF isn't the Messiah like the press and manufacturers try and make it out to be - there's a lot more to smaller systems that are snubbed because of the acceptance that bigger is better. I really don't miss lugging all that kit around that's for sure!
All modern cameras are good. The best thing is to pick a lens system. I chose EF lenses a while back. When I got my M6II camera, all I needed were a couple of Viltrox items. One is an adapter and the other is a speed booster.
I've only found two problems with the XF10, which I have had from new when they originally came out. The first is the AF, which is as you say, a bit hit and miss. I found putting it into the single point focus mode and using the focus and recompose method all my problems with that aspect went away. Not ideal for a modern design really but it's what I am used to from film days so that's fine by me. The second problem is the utterly silly lens cap which is attached to the lens via a ridiculously small filter thread, which means you can't find any filters to fit and if you lose the cap, good luck finding a replacement. You used to be able to buy stick on filter threads which enabled you to fit 46mm filters and caps, which is what I did, but I suspect they are very hard to find these days. Other than that it is a wonderful little camera which you can take with you anywhere. It produces the most accurate colours of all my cameras of different makes including Fujifilm, and I like to carry is as an alternative to a wide angle lens when out and about with another ILC fitted with a standard lens, as it no more trouble to carry than a wide angle and takes away the hassle of swapping lenses. Although it is not as nice or refined as the Ricoh G models, it does at least not suck dust onto the sensor like those expensive cameras. Unfortunately now the price of the XF10 has gone up to more than what I originally paid for mine new in 2018 (£475, compared to MPB selling them for between £494 and £654 nowdays).
I think in the online photography community, there's a lot of advocacy for hyper consumerism. Absolutely nothing is good enough but also these same people are in constant fear of AI after burying a certain sensor size or brand for influencer clout and treats. The only thing that matters to me is if the system you're using has a fully fleshed out lens lineup (MFT does) and if I can readily switch lenses without feeling like 10,000 lbs are on my back (also MFT). As for the body argument, I prefer something the size of an OM-1 or EM-1 Mark II so all my lenses balance well on it, which is something people who say "FF bodies are getting smaller" never bring up. Like, am I going to put a FF 150-600 on a compact body? Hell no lol, because that body is more suited for street photography. With a more balanced body, I'm not limited.
Hi Leigh. Interesting video, as always. Like you i kept hold of my FF body and glass, just to make sure i could get on with the em 1 mk3. My Nikon FF and glass was sold shortly after that, and I've never looked back. I now have the OM 1 mk 1 and would never go back to FF. Keep up the good work 👍
Or in my case... Do I miss MFT? nope, I now shoot FF Lumix with the S5 mkii and S1r MFT just isn't good enough for me. I shoot concerts and events as well as band portraits. MFT is a cracking system if shooting for yourself, and great for hiking, walking etc. But FF isn't the big heavy beast of a system it used to be, and also has most of the features of MFT including great ibis. Looking over at Lumix they are moving more into their FF S line and MFT is an afterthought, I know it's been said many times but I can't honestly see where the MFT system is going anymore. Fujifilm are smashing the APSC market and Sony, Nikon, Lumix and Canon are changing the FF landscape. Love your content and walking discussions, keep up the good work.
I still stand by the weight for me - it's what made the difference for my style of photography for sure! Yes for super low light you're going to get the benefit of FF, but I still couldn't do the wildlife shooting I do with full frame and spend a day laid up like I used to. It's just picking the system that's right for what you're doing I suppose.
Well said you. I purchased a 150 to 400 mm telephoto lens I’m so disappointed in it so much so that I’ve gone back to the 300 prime it just wasn’t sharp enough made it virtually impossible to crop. I’ve still got it if you wanna buy it you know it makes sense. 😪😪😪 PS I always use a tripod.
Great video, I recently switched to Panasonic LUMIX G9 M2 from Canon R6 M2 and to be honest, I am happy with my decision other than low light performance and a bit more contrast and life in the pictures
Thank you! I've not noticed much difference in the raw files from my 5D MK4 to the OM-1 but I've not had a look at the G9 MK2 so not sure what they're like. Might be something that needs a tweak in the settings somewhere to bring them to life perhaps?
If you want the full use of the focal length of your lens then full frame 100% If you're not bothered about not getting the full length of the focal length of your lens then go for one of the crop sensors. Simple. Try using a fish-eye lens on a crop sensor camera and you'll see what I mean.
Definitely use the format that suits your photography, but for a small sacrifice at the edges of the technical abilities of the glass I'll pick the smaller system every time 👍
The weight and size of your kit is much more important than the “quality” of the photos taken 95% of the time. Imagine walking around on a bright sunny day with bulky full frame kit I’d conditions when a camera with a sensor 1/9 the size would produce images with no more visible noise…
APSC would seem like the nice middle ground between weight and quality. I can get my Fuji system down pretty small and get some great (subjectively speaking!) images.
It's a good system, especially what Fuji are doing with it. The mainstream manufacturers seem to be pushing you into full frame though with lens sharing and pushing that the FF is the next logical upgrade.
This is exactly how I felt when getting the EM1 mark ii. I still have Both Canon and Sony FF cameras and I can count one 1 hand the number of times I've actually needed it in the last year. Regarding the DR, I saw some of the numbers on Photons to Photos indicating that the High Res shot on the Olympus/OMsystem bodies actually increases the DR by around 2 stops so the only thing FF actually offers is a stop or 2 better ISO performance and with modern noise reduction, who cares lol. Great video mate🖖
its depend on subject you into, the picture (which is very great by the way)on your video dont require full frame. but there are situation neede huge format and most importantly with huge format people also can make same kind of pictures you took here but with m4/3 there are certainly some limitation in some situations. its just all about flexibility. by the way ill rather carrrying my light weight full-frame (like m10-r bp, m9, eos-r, zf) instead of OM-1. I think huge advantage of m4/3 is came from its portability came by its small sensor size. Dont get me wrong im also frequently use some m4/3 cameras like pen-f and e-p5 those are like my everyday camera :) But in my off duty day im carrying full-frame because like im saying it can do way much more than m4/3. anyway ill never gonna buy any OMDS products :)
Definitely there's some situations where you're going to need full frame, but for the work I do it's just not a requirement and my health definitely appreciates the change 👍
I'm 71 now and weight has suddenly become the most important camera and lens specification for me. But, I'm fighting it. All the new equipment I've purchased has been smaller and lighter. And I'm even thinking about selling some of my most loved heavier cameras and lenses. It's almost like a circle of life. I started out with fewer and smaller cameras and lenses and it's beginning to look like that's how I'll end up too.
That was definitely my primary reason for moving to the MFT system - the lenses are just so much smaller and lighter. In the end I decided it was worth more to look after my health and downsize, and I'm so glad I did!
From my first outing with it at the weekend it seems to be a handy upgrade for a few of the features - hoping to get some more play time over the next weekend though!
The overall system Price, Elitism, and marketing associated with Full Frame alone has kept me away from ever getting an FF camera. The obsession with having the best when what you have is plenty good enough. It never ends. FF has it's own niche for low light shooting and shallow DOF. MFT is for lower weight, lower cost, and more DOF. MFT is a much better hybrid of Photo and Video then FF too IMO.
Yes I have just upgraded my camera, but there were a few other factors involved in choosing that upgrade. Is it the "best" camera out there? Probably not, but it's the best for me and it means Tracy gets an upgrade to my old OM-1 Mk1 for her birthday too so it's a win win for me!
Compact ff lenses do exist. But most of them, if you really want to squeeze out the advantages of larger sensor, are massive. And thicc af. Sigma 24-70/2.8 has a 82mm filter diameter, while my 300/4 is 77. Try packing several such thick bois at the same time 😳
Only by megapixel count - and even now they get put down because they're only 20 or 25 mpx! Just exactly how many do you need as in 2005 if you had 15mpx you were creating billboard sized images without a care in the world!
People move to full frame because they honestly believe their photos will look better ON A SCREEN. A 20MP M4/3 sensor is almost double what you need to fill a 4K screen. Full frame only looks better if you're too lazy to frame carefully and want to crop out a small segment of a photo, or if you want print out billboard size. You can get short depth of field and superb quality by spending some money on serious lenses like the Olympus f1.2 range of PRO lenses, or best of all the 12-40mm PRO.
That is not the only reason people move to or use FF. You cannot generalize what most people’s motivations are. Nor are you the arbiter of their reason or belief. Just let people use what they use without all the FF, M4/3, APS-C is better blah blah. I have tried both FF, APS-C and M4/3. I preferred APS-C but, since there is not an APS-C I want in the mount I use I am on FF until it comes. I loved the size of my M4/3 but overall I preferred FF.
@@iamhassan9943 You literally said: "You cannot" and that I can't be an arbiter. Then you just said "I gave you mine" (permission) so, in general, you're the one with the flawed argument. You'll make another reply, but I won't waste any more time on your illogicality and illusions of authority.
