[escimo]

Originally Posted by Ledgem

Those sky shots are fantastic!

Thanks. A bit artyfarty to be honest but what did you expect...

I see, you were probably expecting the ability to select autofocus patterns? It's true that the E-P1 doesn't have that, and I don't think that other µ4/3 cameras do either.

I could probably live with touch to focus when I need to use something else than the center point but not having either of these options just pisses me off. Probably not enough though to make me upgrade my PEN though.
EM-5 does have touch to focus feature and I'm fairly sure I won't be able to speak myself out of buying it. Just can't see my self justifying buing a E-P3 as a second camera just because of the touch to focus option.

Are you familiar with the autofocus technologies in DSLRs and mirrorless cameras, and the differences between the two? With µ4/3 cameras (contrast-detect autofocus) the scene as "seen" by the sensor is analyzed and used for autofocus. The benefit of this is that it's pretty much "what you see is what you get" so there is no front- and back-focus. It also means that in theory, a focus point could be as large or as small as you wanted, and it could be placed anywhere in the scene. Panasonic's µ4/3 cameras, with their touch screens, allow you to do this. The E-P1 doesn't allow you to resize or freestyle autofocus points, which is an artificial limitation and a carry-over from their DSLRs. I think that they now allow autofocus block resizing, but I'm not positive about that.

I'm familiar with the basics of both AF systems. I'm a bit disappointed that the benefits of CD-AF weren't used until the latest models. Can't say that I'm a huge fan of touch to focus but it sort of works so I'll live with it. Haven't found all that much information on other AF functions on E-M5 so I'll just have to wait and see. Even my old Canon had freely movable AF point (not resizable though if I remeber correctly) in live view. You'd die of old age before it actually focused but still...

Noctilux? Or if you didn't go that crazy, the Noktor?

This system isn't great for bokeh, though... I have the 4/3 variant of the 25mm f/1.4 summilux. It's a fantastic lens and I love it to bits, but then I realize that it's basically the equivalent of a 50mm f/2.8 lens on a "full frame" camera... sigh.

Noctilux...
Straitjacket stuff on my budget and you could have put my bank manager to the same padded room with me if that would have been the case.
25mm f/0.95 Nokton will have to do although even that would probably call for change of medication... Then again I've been cheapskating on lens purchases and taking advantage of the possibility to borrow lenses from work so I suppose I'm allowed get a bit carried away every now and then.
I hardly ever took the 50mm of my Canon anyway despite of being a bit bothered by the focal length on the crop body. Would have wanted something like 35mm f/1.4 but never got around to getting one. Samyang's manual 35mm would have been cheap as chips. Anyway the Nokton should fix my fast prime normal lens cravings. And as for my misgivings on PEN's AF functionality... Not a problem.

True enough µ4/3 or 4/3 for that matter isn't really optimal for shallow depth of field photography but now that there are lenses with decent maximum aperture like 45mm f/1.8 Olympus (and a few with positively insane ones) the difference to a camera with 1.5 or 1.6 crop factor isn't really that big. The Nokton would be equivalent of roughly 32mm f/1.2 in terms of depth of field on 1.6 crop and that's pretty damn good.

Full frame (and medium format for that matter) is still in the class of it's own and even there the mad 50mm Noctilux on M9 is really in the class of its own. Had a chance to shoot a few photos with that combo and even though I'm not fond of M9 that was something else. Speaking of Leicas if the M10 indeed has B&W Sony sensor (without AA-filter) as rumored it might be the first Leica I might actually want. Price tag is going to be out of this world again naturally. But that would actually make for a very interesting camera. Noise performance and sharpness should be something else.

Because it's all CD-AF, autofocus speed is heavily dependent on algorithms, processor power, and lens architecture. The E-P1 is more or less standard-fare, but the latest cameras are now packing multiple processor units and other fancy things that result in the faster autofocus speeds. This has resulted in a slight boost in speed to the 4/3 lenses, as well, but it's still not comparable with their speeds on native 4/3 cameras.

As far as I understand it, the reason why has to do with commands given to the lens. With phase-detect autofocus, the autofocus sensors measure how "out of phase" the image is and give the lens a set distance to move (say, +8 or -6). The lens shifts, the system may re-measure the focus (or not), and then you're done. With contrast detection, the camera just sees what the image is and isn't sure exactly how much the lens position needs to shift. It seems as if the CD-AF commands to the lens are basically forward, backward, and stop. If you're using a lens that doesn't support CD-AF, it seems as if the camera just issues commands like +1, +1, +1 and such to emulate the CD-AF commands, which results in the speed loss.

I thought that might be the case with the standard 4/3 lenses. If the live view AF speed on Canons is somewhat comparable (seems to work that way) to how they work on your average µ4/3 camera I really see your point on AF speeds. Pity really since I'm beginning to be quite convinced that mirrorless is the way forward in the industry. EVFs are nowadays pretty damn impressive so there's really no real need to move mirrors around and if the CD-AF really can beat the phase detection in speed (I'd like to see some stats that aren't based on Olympus' own tests. ) nowadays there's really no reason in there either. Furthermore I think I heard CIPA was expecting the market share of mirrorless systems in Q1 this year to be for the first time larger than DSLRs in Japan and the rest of the world seems to be following suit. So it would really be pity if the camera manufacturers don't come up with some way to fix the lens compatibility. I'd put money on it that in 6-8 years there aren't any consumer/prosumer DSLRs available and a only few pro models.

Interesting times.