Is the Olympus OM-D a crop sensor

Technically it's not cropped as it is designed specifically for the lenses but in performance terms compared to 'full frame' it behaves as said as a 2x crop.
The sensor is slightly smaller (not as big a difference to APS as people seem to make out) but the pixels are closer together. This has the tendency to increase noise in shadow areas but the new sensors cope pretty well with this, especially if you expose to the right.
The depth of field will be less shallow using the same aperture. This can often be overcome but if it is something you use lots (as it seems to have become the norm) then you may want to avoid or just learn how to overcome it.
The lenses for 4/3 are concentric and are sharp even wide open so you gain some there.
 
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For future reference on this sort of info, typing "Olympus OM D Sensor" into Google, or any combination of that or like that, will get you what you want.

What you say you looked everywhere it is worth including Google in that everywhere :)
 
TordFuglstad said:
It is crop. Every sensor that isn't fullframe(35mm) is known as a crop frame sensor.
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Really?
So is a 35mm known as a crop sensor compared to medium format?
"Crop" came about because the sensor didn't cover the full image circle from the lens - the image was in effect a crop of the image available from the lens.
As 4/3 lenses were designed for a 4/3 sensor they are by definition not a crop.
 
Almost_Invisible said:
Really?
So is a 35mm known as a crop sensor compared to medium format?
"Crop" came about because the sensor didn't cover the full image circle from the lens - the image was in effect a crop of the image available from the lens.
As 4/3 lenses were designed for a 4/3 sensor they are by definition not a crop.
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It's no insult for it to be called a crop sensor, and by the common definition it is a crop sensor.

Full frame is universally accepted as the old 35mm film size, anything smaller is referred to as crop, APS-C is either 1.5 or 1.6 crop, APS-H is 1.3 crop and 4/3rds is 2.0 crop.

Edit to add

As 4/3 lenses were designed for a 4/3 sensor they are by definition not a crop.
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By that definition, a Canon APS-C body isn't a crop either if it is used with EF-S lenses as they are also specifically designed for the APS-C sensor.
 
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Dave1 said:
It's no insult for it to be called a crop sensor, and by the common definition it is a crop sensor.
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I wouldn't take it as an insult if it wasn't so commonly used as an insult.
I did try and highlight and address some of the shortcomings of the smaller sensor but it seems people are still obsessed with the physical size of the sensor rather than the camera's performance as a whole.

Maybe the OP should take a look at some of the reviews of the OM-D and not fixate on the sensor size? There is probably a good reason why full frame users are buying them after all?

No offence taken by any particular post btw, just wanting to put a viewpoint across.
 
Almost_Invisible said:
I wouldn't take it as an insult if it wasn't so commonly used as an insult.
I did try and highlight and address some of the shortcomings of the smaller sensor but it seems people are still obsessed with the physical size of the sensor rather than the camera's performance as a whole.

Maybe the OP should take a look at some of the reviews of the OM-D and not fixate on the sensor size? There is probably a good reason why full frame users are buying them after all?

No offence taken by any particular post btw, just wanting to put a viewpoint across.
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I use full frame now,but adgree about photographer getting obsessed with senor size or m/p count.

I also use and Nikon V1 as well,great little camera :)
 
Almost_Invisible said:
Really?
So is a 35mm known as a crop sensor compared to medium format?
"Crop" came about because the sensor didn't cover the full image circle from the lens - the image was in effect a crop of the image available from the lens.
As 4/3 lenses were designed for a 4/3 sensor they are by definition not a crop.
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Technically you are absolutely correct, but less technically minded people find 4/3 easier to deal with if it is regarded as a crop compared to the 135 format. Nowadays I find it easier just to accept that it is almost universally regarded as a cropped sensor format, in much the same way as Dysons are still regarded as being hoovers. :)
 
goldenlight said:
Technically you are absolutely correct, but less technically minded people find 4/3 easier to deal with if it is regarded as a crop compared to the 135 format. Nowadays I find it easier just to accept that it is almost universally regarded as a cropped sensor format, in much the same way as Dysons are still regarded as being hoovers. :)
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But, Dysons are vacuum cleaners,not Hoovers.:exit::whistle:
 
towershot said:
But, Dysons are vacuum cleaners,not Hoovers.:exit::whistle:
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Exactly, but people still call them hoovers. My wife always aks me to "push the hoover round" even though we've had a Dyson for years. It doesn't matter, I know what she means and I know I'd better do it or else!

So a Dyson is a hoover in much the same way as Four Thirds is a cropped sensor system. It doesn't really matter, we know what is meant! :)
 
iced_jacob said:
The reason they are called crop is because a lot of photographers trace back to their 35mm cameras
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But I came to digital from exclusively using Medium Format film cameras for about 10 years, so to me "Full Frame" (135) is a cropped sensor! To me, a 50mm lens still sounds like a wide angle, but with 4/3 I have to relate to it being a telephoto. :puke:
 
goldenlight said:
But I came to digital from exclusively using Medium Format film cameras for about 10 years, so to me "Full Frame" (135) is a cropped sensor! To me, a 50mm lens still sounds like a wide angle, but with 4/3 I have to relate to it being a telephoto. :puke:
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But it isn't what you (or I) want to call it or decide what it is or isn't. The industry standard of "full frame" goes back decades. The original PEN of the 1950's was known as a "half frame" camera, not because it was half of a MF frame, but because it was half of 35mm "full frame".

The reasoning might be flawed, but you'll need a time machine if you want to change the definition to something else ;)
 
Musicman said:
Well, 135 was known as miniature format well into the 1950s.
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It was never an official name.

35mm as the standard goes back into the 1800's, with it being made stills standard in 1909, and a "full frame" and "half frame" camera was launched as early as 1913.
http://cameraquest.com/simplex.htm


With the advent of flexible film, Thomas Alva Edison quickly set out on his invention, the Kinetoscope, which was first shown at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences on 9 May 1893. The Kinetoscope was a film loop system intended for one-person viewing. Edison, along with assistant W. K. L. Dickson, followed that up with the Kinetophone, which combined the Kinetoscope with Edison's cylinder phonograph. Beginning in March 1892, Eastman and then, from April 1893 into 1896, New York's Blair Camera Co. supplied Edison with film stock. At first Blair would supply only 40mm (1-9/16 in) film stock that would be trimmed and perforated at the Edison lab to create 1-⅜ inch (34.925mm) gauge filmstrips, then at some point in 1894 or 1895, Blair began sending stock to Edison that was cut exactly to specification. Edison's aperture defined a single frame of film at 4 perforations high.

Edison claimed exclusive patent rights to his design of 35mm motion picture film, with four sprocket holes per frame, forcing his only major filmmaking competitor, American Mutoscope & Biograph, to use a 68mm film that used friction feed, not sprocket holes, to move the film through the camera.

A court judgment in March 1902 invalidated Edison's claim, allowing any producer or distributor to use the Edison 35mm film design without license. Filmmakers were already doing so in Britain and Europe, where Edison had failed to file patents.

At the time, film stock was usually supplied unperforated and punched by the filmmaker to their standards with perforation equipment. A variation developed by the Lumière Brothers which used a single circular perforation on each side of the frame towards the middle of the horizontal axis.

It was Edison's format, however, that became first the dominant standard and then the "official" standard of the newly formed Motion Picture Patents Company, a trust established by Edison, which agreed in 1909 to what would become the standard: 35mm gauge, with Edison perforations and a 1.33 aspect ratio.

The standard gauge made it possible for films to be shown in every country of the world… It provided a uniform, reliable and predictable format for production, distribution and exhibition of movies, facilitating the rapid spread and acceptance of the movies as a world-wide device for entertainment and communication.

The film format was introduced into still photography as early as 1913 (the Tourist Multiple) but first became popular with the launch of the Leica camera, created by Oskar Barnack in 1925

Just as the format was recognized as a standard in 1909, still film cameras were developed that took advantage of the 35mm format and allowed a large number of exposures for each length of film loaded into the camera. The frame size was increased to 24×36mm.

Although the first design was patented as early as 1908, the first commercial 35mm camera was the 1913 Tourist Multiple, for movie and still photography, soon followed by the Simplex providing selection between full and half frame format.

Oskar Barnack built his prototype Ur-Leica in 1913 and had it patented, but Ernst Leitz did not decide to produce it before 1924. The first Leica camera to be fully standardised was the Leica Standard of 1932.
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.
 
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Dave1 said:
It was never an official name.
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Not quite sure what you mean by "official", short of an ISO standard.

Certainly the term "miniature" was used by both Leica and Contax with reference to their 35mm cameras in their publicity material in the 1930s, which is about as official as it gets.

Leica


Oskar Barnack - Genius - medal - Leica Model G Leitz Xenon f:1.5 - 1937 by Nesster, on Flickr

Zeiss Ikon 1939 (even more emphatically)

www.flickr.com/photos/sovietcamera/3639791716/

The Miniature Camera Magazine, published from the mid-30s to the mid-1950s, was devoted to use of the 35mm format

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sovietcamera/6234227701

http://photography-matters.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/leica-iiic-first-ever-review.html


Post-war usage: The Miniature versus Larger Cameras, 1950

http://www.jouhar.com/SDJ/Miniature_v_Large_Feb50.pdf
 
Almost_Invisible said:
Technically it's not cropped as it is designed specifically for the lenses
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The lenses may no longer make an image circle which would cover a frame of 35mm film but the focal lengths are still based around 35mm frame size and as such sensor sizes such as m4/3 and APS-C will always be considered as a portion or crop, of a full 35mm frame.

It could be argued that most APS-C cameras can take a full frame lens on their native mount and as such the sensor is cropping the image circle produced but there is no full frame lens for m4/3 mount so no cropping occurs but that seems quite pedantic and since almost all lenses make a circular image and almost all cameras capture a square or rectangular image, the only way to make an image which isn't cropped would be to use a lens/body combo where the image circle which was completely captured by the sensor ie, use a m4/3 lens on a full frame sensor.

If glass was free and size/weight didn't matter then there probably wouldn't be such a thing as an EF-S or a DX lens but it's not and it does so lens form factor has been minimised and lenses designed for these smaller sensors now make smaller image circles (appropriate to the sensor they are to be used with) so now, the term 'crop sensor' only tells half the story and pretty inaccurately at that but as I said before, we still talk about focal lengths in 35mm equivalent terms so it's hard not to think about sensors in the same way too.
 
Musicman said:
Not quite sure what you mean by "official", short of an ISO standard.
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We are both digressing way off the original point of the "crop" argument and what constitutes "full frame" and the definitions around that for crops.

I was actually trying to make the point that a "half frame" camera was made as early as 1913 and marketed as such, and many "half frame" cameras were built and sold as such thought the 50's, 60's and 70's.

They were called "half frame" as they were half of a "full frame" of 35mm film.

Naturally, the progression to digital saw the sensor of the same size as 35mm being given the same "full frame" name.

MF and LF have never used/had any such term ascribed to them.
 
Good God Guys.

Right or wrong full frame, in the mind of the masses, has come to mean "35mm." The stuff what SLR's and the like use/used. Anything smaller is a "crop" and anything larger doesn't exist.
 
woof woof said:
Good God Guys.

Right or wrong full frame, in the mind of the masses, has come to mean "35mm." The stuff what SLR's and the like use/used. Anything smaller is a "crop" and anything larger doesn't exist.
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Thanks Alan, that's the same point I was trying to make (and getting pretty bogged down in semantics by the larger than 35mm brigade) :wacky:
 
Dave1 said:
I was actually trying to make the point that a "half frame" camera was made as early as 1913 and marketed as such, and many "half frame" cameras were built and sold as such thought the 50's, 60's and 70's.

They were called "half frame" as they were half of a "full frame" of 35mm film.

Naturally, the progression to digital saw the sensor of the same size as 35mm being given the same "full frame" name.

MF and LF have never used/had any such term ascribed to them.
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Actually, I agree with you on all of that.

The specific point that I was challenging was your assertion that 35mm was never known as 'miniature'. Half frame and Minox's 8x11mm were classified as 'sub-miniature'. Indeed, there's nothing inherently contradictory in 35m being both 'miniature' and 'full frame'.

As far as I can recall, talk of 'crop' ratios only began with digital imaging because people needed a frame of reference (excuse the pun) to understand how their existing lenses would perform on sensors smaller than 135 format - not an issue that had arisen commonly in the film era.

Amongst MF film bods, it's rare to hear anyone considering 645's 'crop ratio' vs 6x6, 6x7 or 6x9; they stand alone.

Where my point about 35mm is pertinent to the discussion is that these definitions and their use are fluid and subject to change over time. While it was common in the 1930s, there are few today who would consider 135 a miniature format and it's equally possible to entertain a world where m43 or Nikon's CX formats aren't a 'crop' but just inhabit their own space.

An anecdote - I was talking with a colleague about his purchasing a second lens for his 550D and was constantly referring to the 35mm equivalent focal lengths. "Why do you do that?" he asked, "Surely they are what they are?". He has a good point.
 
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Yes he has a point, but to be able to make simple comparisons it makes sense to convert using a constant. With the many different sensor sizes it would become very difficult to put in perspective what different lenses would give on different cameras.
 
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