Kevin´s article on the EM-1

[Paulo Bizarro]

Just finished reading this piece, and I wish to thank Kevin for a nice write-up on a great camera system. I have migrated fully to m43 a few months back, no regrets. I think that m43 has matured nicely as a system, and is now capable of satisfying most photographers. Regarding lenses, I would like to put ina word for Voigtlander and their dedicated m43 lenses, the f0.95 ones.

I have recently started shooting with the 42.5mm lens from Voigtlander, and is nothing short of amazing. The EM-1 offers all sorts of auxiliary functions and ways of helping with manual focusing, which makes very easy to use a MF lens. Voigtlander have already announced a 10.5 f0.95 lens for 2015, so I am eagerly awaiting for that one.

[Earnster]

I wonder if Kevin is missing out on some of the stellar lenses that already exist for the M4/3 system. The 12, 17, 45 and 75 are all fast, small primes with amazing image quality. The 12-35 Pany is pretty good too.

I can see why he wants the flexibility of zooms, but some of those primes, my oh my!

[Kevin Raber]

Nope, I am not missing out on the primes. Have a number of primes both in 4/3 and micro 4/3.  Also, have a good number of primes for the Fuji.  In many cases though you'd be really hard pressed to tell the differences.  The zooms for both these cameras are so good. On the Olympus the 12-40 Pro lens is positively excellent I wouldn't think of using any primes there. The new 40-150mm Pro I hear is amazing too.  I'll let you know.  I'm using primes a lot less these days even on the full frame cameras.

Kevin Raber

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

I saw an interview with Hubert Nasse of Zeiss recently. He said that modern zooms often outperform primes in the centre of the zoom range, as there are more lens surfaces to fix aberrations than on primes. He also added that it depends on who is making that lens.

My take is that modern zooms are often pretty good. The very best primes are better, especially with large apertures, but they come at a price.

Best regards
Erik

Nope, I am not missing out on the primes. Have a number of primes both in 4/3 and micro 4/3.  Also, have a good number of primes for the Fuji.  In many cases though you'd be really hard pressed to tell the differences.  The zooms for both these cameras are so good. On the Olympus the 12-40 Pro lens is positively excellent I wouldn't think of using any primes there. The new 40-150mm Pro I hear is amazing too.  I'll let you know.  I'm using primes a lot less these days even on the full frame cameras.

Kevin Raber

[markd61]

The lenses I have used for my Panasonic GX-7 equal or outperform my L Canon lenses.
In particular I recently used both the 70-200 2.8 L IS and the Panasonic 35-100 2.8 side by side and was astonished at the difference in performance.

I was in a small room at a conference photographing VIPS (heads of state) and was told to minimize any noise. Using the 5DmkIII in silent mode was still obtrusive
as it was still quite loud in a room where all is silent except the speaker. The Panasonic in silent mode IS silent. I became virtually invisible to the group and was able to get a number of great images.

The Panasonic was razor sharp in EVERY exposure while the Canon was almost as good in about 80% but in the rest missed focus.
Contrast was high and flare very well controlled while the Canon was demonstrably inferior on both counts while it could be quite sharp.
Focus was faster than the Canon on a 5DmkIII even in low light.
Comparing them later I realized that the Panasonic images were leagues ahead in absolute quality of sharpness and contrast and the noise was negligible even though I was shooting at ISO 800-1600.
What I have seen of Panasonic's zooms makes me question why I would sign up for the inflexibility of a prime unless for some special need such as absolute speed or macro. My client enlarges my images to 24x36 for display and the Panasonic is the equal to the Canon in this application.
The biggest downside is my fear of being judged by clients for carrying a camera that looks smaller than their Rebels.