Can someone tell me the pros and cons of this format compared to a full frame sensor? Can you use full frame lenses on it with an adapter?
Mike
Pros...
-A compact camera and lens package.
-A wide selection of native lenses with some nice primes some of which are quite sharp wide open.
-A large number of lenses can be fitted via an adapter including full frame lenses but if they don't have an aperture ring you'll need an adapter that does. Note that you may lose some functions depending upon the lens and adapter used. I've used Minolta Rokkor and Olympus Zuiko primes on my MFT cameras. Note the x2 "crop factor."
-There are some lovely manual focus Voigtlander primes, I had the 25mm f0.95 and it was gorgeous.
-The use of an EVF helps greatly with manual focus with peaking and / or a magnified view.
-The in view histogram is lovely and helps in difficult situations or when exposing to the right.
-You can see the effect of changes to settings immediately in the EVF, WYSIWYG.
-You can get deeper DoF at the same aperture than with a 35mm equivalent DSLR. For example if shooting with MFT and a 25mm lens at f1.4 you'll get the DoF you'd get with a 35mm equivalent DSLR plus 50mm lens at f2.8. This can be an advantage as you can shoot with a faster shutter speed or lower ISO. Equivalence is a contentions issue
Cons...
-Some people don't like EVF's.
-Some whinge about battery life.
-You may have to work to get a shallow DoF look if that's what you crave.
-Shooting at the widest apertures may require ND's as several MFT cameras have a max shutter speed of 1/4000 sec and you can easily pass this on a sunny day if you are shooting at wider apertures for DoF reasons. Happily my GX7 will shoot at 1/8000 sec. My G1 is limited to 1/4000 sec.
-You probably won't get the ultimate quality you'd get from a larger format system. This may become more apparent the larger you print / the closer you view / the more you crop or at the higher ISO settings.
For me the benefits outweigh the cons. I can go out with a MFT camera and three primes (14, 20 or 25 and 45mm) and the package is a fraction of the size and weight of a 5D and three lenses. I have an A7 for when I want ultimate quality but when I'm happy with a slight compromise for a smaller package I take one of my MFT cameras.
