I'm conflicted. Looking to upgrade from an OMD-EM5. OM1 would be logical, and it's a great camera. But, I do find the m4/3 images a bit "flat" / two dimensional.
Most people don't really shoot everything wide open, unless they're using a f4 zoom, but I see your point. Then again, the rush to full frame out of focus backgrounds is kind of funky looking.
I shot this with medium format around F 5.6 and didn't focus to try to throw everything into a non de script blur but the subject into a blur, but to put attention where I wanted the viewer to look.
I actually always wished I had shot this stopped down more to show more detail in the rock formations of the background.
Since this was 645 with an 80mm, I would assume with m43 with a 35 it would be around 2.4 or something close.
OVF's with 35mm dslrs throw you. They all look two stops down from wide open and I've tested this a lot doing background plates.
EVF's show you more of wysiwyg, but there is this thought of if the background is ugly throw it out of focus and in reality if the background is ugly then that usually means some of the image is uninteresting.
I'm not pushing stopping down, (though I do) because I think every lens ever made should be f.85 out of the box, because options are options.
Then again when you look at some of the beautiful photographs of the past from Ernst Haas http://www.ernst-haas.com/ (I could make a much longer list than one photographer) he probably shot everything at f5.6 to 8 on his twin lens (I don't know, just guessing) and like most film photographers never dropped to f4 except under low light, because he filled his frame with beautiful composition and interesting images.
You see it all the time now, in commerce and art, a persons face and the background is a blur of blown out white blobs and that's not interesting, it's just stuff.
I'm buying the voight f.95 lenses for m43 and not for out of focus blur or the actual speed, but because the lenses have pretty rendering with the olympus and panasonics.
I think the fuji is a good camera, but limiting. There is nothing it really does that a full frame dslr won't and in the long run it's not less expensive than a 5d2 and obviously video doesn't concern you but I can't use the same lens set for stills and video with the fuji as I can m43. I wish I could because I might have gone the fuji way.
maybe I look at cameras different but I don't believe in buying something that does what I currently have. The olympus em-1/5 to me does some things other cameras don't. They cover the full frame with autofocus points (if you desire), and you can use the vf-4 finder and shoot waist level. Waist level is such a different look than eyes level, no matter how much you twist your body to get lower.
The main thing they do is raw or jpeg, they get rid of the red ear syndrome. Dslrs and most cmos seem to have this ability to see changes in skin tones as red, especially in areas like ears, or in shadows or the worst backlight coming through the lightness of someone's ears.
Olympus does something unique with their settings, i don't know what it is but I do know it's unique and the rest to me seem like they are always kind of candy colored.
Still your right, sometimes bigger is better, bigger frame, faster lenses, etc. etc., but I find the difference between m43 and an aps c sensor to be minimum.
IMO
BC