M4/3 comes of age at Photokina...

woof woof said:
The OMD has no built in flash and that's important to me. There are also what appear to be some incompatibilities with existing lenses including the 20mm f1.7 which I have so the points against it begin to stack up. There are also reports of a "fan noise" and whilst some claim that they can't even hear it I'm sure it'll have me drop kicking the camera over a hedge in 3.2 seconds. So it's probably out.
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  • The supplied separate flash is tiny, and sits on my OM-D most of the time.
  • There's supposed to be banding with the Panasonic 20mm, but no other incompatibilities that I know of. I borrowed the 20mm and couldn't see any banding, but then I kept the ISO low and I'm not much of a pixel peeper.
  • There is a fan noise (though not in video mode). I can only hear it in a silent home office, and not out in real world.
 
Yup. Those things rule it out for me. Anyone of them would drive me mad.
 
You might like to look at the photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/66174868@N02/with/8005543391

There are some handheld JPEGs from the GH3 at ISO 200-12800 of the same subject. Standard JPEG processing as far as I can tell from the EXIF...

I'm not sure where I stand here as I tend to minimise ISO to maximise dynamic, tonal and colour range. A clean image at ISO 12800 that has very little dynamic/tonal/colour range is only just a bit more useful than a noisy image...

It appears the OM-D has better dynamic range than any of the current Panny sensors. I guess we'll just have to wait and see...
 
One thing that is irritating me about many of CSC's is that the maximum shutter speed is 1/4000 sec. Added to that the base ISO is often higher than 100. My gripe is that I like shooting with wide apertures even in good light and at 1/4000 second the max aperture I can often shoot with at ISO 100 is f2.8. Shooting wider means messing on with ND's and of course the chances of a set of lenses all having the same thread diameter is zero so that means multiple diameter ND's.

I'm still smarting that the GH3 is such a bit fat lump and not a MFT camera IMVHO. I ruled the Oly out for multiple reasons so I took a look at the Fuji EX1 spec and found that the base ISO is 200. So it looks like the Nex 6 is my favourite now, or more like the best of a bad bunch.

I'm so p'd off with the size of the GH3 and the limitations of the recent Panasonics and the alternatives from other manufacturers that I might just bin the whole idea of buying something new and go back to using my 5D more.
 
arad85 said:
It appears the OM-D has better dynamic range than any of the current Panny sensors. I guess we'll just have to wait and see...
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there seems to be rather a lot of supposition going around that the GH3 is using either the same or a variant of the sensor in the OM-D - & that would make it a Sony. Not very good face for Panasonic if true.
 
I suppose economics rule. From what I've read Panasonic are deep in the financial do-do, as are Sony. I read that they're cooperating on TV's so perhaps that cooperation has been extended to other products?
 
heidfirst said:
there seems to be rather a lot of supposition going around that the GH3 is using either the same or a variant of the sensor in the OM-D - & that would make it a Sony. Not very good face for Panasonic if true.
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Or the sensor in the OM-D is in fact a Panny sensor.....
 
rjbell said:
There was been a direct quote from the oly ceo saying it was a sony sensor. I think it was in my AP mag.
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I know but the quote wasn't "we use a Sony sensor...", it was more Japanese in it's formation. Whilst 90% of me thinks it is a Sony sensor, 10% of me thinks it isn't. It is still possible to be a case of so many people repeating the same rumour that it has become fact.

The "problem" I have is the specs suggest it is the same sensor (ISO, pixels, actual pixels etc..." but the marketing says it is a Panasonic sensor. For Panny to be competitive with the OM-D with this camera (due to price), they have to match/beat the performance of the OM-D. I'm not sure how well it would go down in Panasonic to use a Sony sensor, but I can't see how they would develop a sensor with the same performance (if it is the same performance) without it being the same sensor....
 
Two of my biggest concerns about m4/3 was macro and the flash system. Article below shows the new Olympus is brilliant and that flash works well. I still think the system is a yr off being as good as i would want, but thats not bad at all given the competition is still playing catch up to have a complete system.

And the article: http://blog.mingthein.com/2012/09/21/olympus-60-2-8-macro/#comments
 
arad85 said:
The "problem" I have is the specs suggest it is the same sensor (ISO, pixels, actual pixels etc..." but the marketing says it is a Panasonic sensor. For Panny to be competitive with the OM-D with this camera (due to price), they have to match/beat the performance of the OM-D. I'm not sure how well it would go down in Panasonic to use a Sony sensor, but I can't see how they would develop a sensor with the same performance (if it is the same performance) without it being the same sensor....
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Maybe they've had to get over corporate pride due to economics. In the past Panasonic sensors have been ho-hum, to put it kindly, when measured against the best of the rest and they'd need to up their game considerably to compete with the best of the competition. Developing a new competitive chip and putting it into production may have been beyond them or just not economically viable if a suitable chip was available on the market. Note also that Panny chips are on free sale should anyone want to buy them.

With the big established manufacturers being in such a difficult financial position it's likely that there'll be more cooperation, joint production, component sharing and closure of design and production in the future. Just Google Panasonic financial results 2012.
 
Isn't this the wrong website to start having "sensor wars"? Those are over in the DPReview forums...
 
Sensor war?

It's an interesting subject, no one has to start lobbing grenades.
 
woof woof said:
In the past Panasonic sensors have been ho-hum, to put it kindly, when measured against the best of the rest
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I'm not disputing this or anything else you say, but in doing a search on DxO last night I came across this comparison: http://www.dxomark.com/index.php/Ca...rand2)/Canon/(appareil3)/619|0/(brand3)/Canon

The G5 is within a hairs width of the current APS-C sensors from Canon (there is a stop more dynamic range at ISO 400 and above for the Canons but that's it).
 
Is a sensor war where you say my cameras sensor is better than you cameras sensor? I'll quite happily admit my Panny sensor isn't as good as the competition (although I don't have any hard facts that it is the case as DxO haven't run an OM-D and published the results!).

I'm just hoping the GH3 has a significantly better sensor than the G5 and as good (if not better) than the OM-D.
 
arad85 said:
I'm not disputing this or anything else you say, but in doing a search on DxO last night I came across this comparison: http://www.dxomark.com/index.php/Ca...rand2)/Canon/(appareil3)/619|0/(brand3)/Canon

The G5 is within a hairs width of the current APS-C sensors from Canon (there is a stop more dynamic range at ISO 400 and above for the Canons but that's it).
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I'm more interested in comparisons against cameras I'm thinking of buying and I'm not interested in buying a Canon. Against the Fuji XPro/Xe1 or Sony Nex (or Oly OM) I don't think the G5 represents the state of the art, especxially with regard to DR. Then there's the complaints that I personally have with the EVF technology that would rule the G5 out for me. Other makes may have the same or different EVF issues but I owe it to myselt to at least try them to see.
 
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arad85 said:
I'm just hoping the GH3 has a significantly better sensor than the G5 and as good (if not better) than the OM-D.
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Yes. I hope so to as one day that sensor may be put into a true MFT camera that I may think about buying :D
 
woof woof said:
I'm more interested in comparisons against cameras I'm thinking of buying and I'm not interested in buying a Canon.
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No... I was more pointing out that the not-quite-so-top-of-the-range Panny sensor is about as good as the sensor in the 7D - which many people aspire to own, and many will say is much better than m4/3 because it's a DSLR...

And that's without talking about the sensor in the OM-D.
 
Just out of interest and ref my rant about base ISO and max shutter speeds...

This morning I tried setting my G1 to ISO 200 and without ND's I was restricted to shooting at apertures from f4-5.6, and that's in northern England on what isn't exactly a dazzling day.

My frustration and annoyance mounts :razz:
 
arad85 said:
Is a sensor war where you say my cameras sensor is better than you cameras sensor? I'll quite happily admit my Panny sensor isn't as good as the competition (although I don't have any hard facts that it is the case as DxO haven't run an OM-D and published the results!).

I'm just hoping the GH3 has a significantly better sensor than the G5 and as good (if not better) than the OM-D.
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Is the gf5 there newest model? Won't it just have the same sensor as this?
 
Isn't the GF5 a 12mp? That'd make it a different sensor to both the G5 and GH3.
 
Maybe i don't know i thought they used the same sensor across the board. I spent all last night comparing iso images on and came up with some surprising results. One of them being the om-d performs as well as the d7000/d5100 at high iso's, its pretty amazing and panny will be very silly not to use it.

I might start a thread on my other discoveries! :)
 
Only Oly uses the same sensor across the range. Panny use different sensors in each model.
 
Llamaman said:
Only Oly uses the same sensor across the range. Panny use different sensors in each model.
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Indeed and they used to use the Panasonic 12MP sensor across the whole range. Now in the OMD and including the latest Pens at Photokina they are using the Sony 16MP sensor and a great improvement it is.:)
 
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