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Originally Posted by escimo
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.
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The Nokton, huh? I've read the reviews on it and I think you're going to have a lot of fun.
Some would say that shallow DoF is cheap and overused... personally, I like it. I don't care to have the background blown into one big color, but I like it when it looks almost like an undetailed painting. You can always close the aperture a bit, but you can't open it beyond the maximum! Some day I'd like to get a Nikon D700 or D800 for the DoF potential...
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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.
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There are methods out there, it's just a matter of implementing them. The best implementation IMO was patented by Fuji and is used in Nikon's V system: the phase detection sensors are placed directly on the imaging sensor. You give up a few pixels (but not a notable amount - nothing that would affect the marketed pixel count), but you don't need to add anything to the camera body itself. Then there's Sony's implementation with their SLT line of cameras, using a non-moving mirror to redirect a bit of light to the phase detect sensors. The downside is that the body still needs to be relatively thick and there is minor light loss to the sensor. Lastly, Panasonic had patented (but never implemented) a phase-detect solution that would exist in a lens adapter.
It's also possible that they'll just ignore and abandon their 4/3 lenses, reproduce them in µ4/3, and forget about phase detection all together. I don't know that such a thing would make financial sense, but it's up to them. I would think that the ideal system would utilize both PD-AF and CD-AF, relying on PD-AF for the initial fast calculation and then handing off to CD-AF near the end of the focus sequence. That would give the speed of PD-AF and the accuracy of CD-AF. CD-AF has become pretty fast (with certain lenses), but it seems to me that it begins to slow down dramatically as the lighting gets worse. PD-AF loses a bit of speed in poor light, too, but the difference isn't as apparent.