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Four thirds system? (1 Viewer)

peteh

Well-known member
Hello

I am saving up at the moment to get a 10d but have recently seen stuff about this new system from Olympus/Kodak.
The camera Olympus have brought out is the E-1 and from what I can tell the big hoohaa is that everything is designed ground up for digital. So the camera, lens etc are now much smaller than at the moment and they claim things are quicker, better etc etc.
The main interesting point to me is that there will be a standard lens mount across all the manufacturers.

With this in mind should I assume that Canon, Nikon etc etc are all developing Four thirds cameras and it would be a bad move to buy a 10d now as it will be incompatible with this new system?

Thanks
Pete.
 
Hi Pete,

I dont think it would be a bad move, lenses for 3/4 are limited and if you want a big fast lens for bird photography you could be in for a long wait.

I think it highly unlikely that the likes of Canon are going to drop their current lens fittings for many years, and if you already own a Canon SLR, then you will be able to save a fortune on buying new lenses.

I'm also not too keen on the 3/4 format, its too square for my liking especially for landscape work.

Paul
 
Though one or two other makers like Kodak and Fuji have signed-up to the system Olympus, being the main driving force, are the first to bring out a camera and a few lenses.

It's too early to tell yet how good the idea will be but at least the camera-test in 'Amateur Photographer' magazine gave the E1 the thumbs-up.

There are supposed to be more lenses and camera bodies (including a lower-priced model) due next year.

Lens focal length figures have to be doubled to give the 35mm equivalent - so the 'big' one, the 300mm F2.8, is like having a 600mm F2.8 in 35mm terms. In this respect it is most comparable with the 400mm F2.8 lenses in the Nikon and Canon ranges (except for the full-frame Canon 1DS).

Lenses have been designed specifically for digital sensors which work best when the light-rays from the back of the lens strike the sensor at, or close to right-angles. The biggest improvements over 35mm lenses being fitted to digital bodies would thus seem to be with wide-angle lenses rather than telephotos.

There wouldn't seem to be much point in anyone who already has Canon, Nikon or Pentax changing systems and for others 'wait and see' how it settles down would appear to be the prudent advice!

Intriguingly, there is a rumour, not fully confirmed, that an adaptor to take old Olympus OM-series lenses will be made for the new system. Whilst these will obviously be restricted to manual-focus only, at least it will help any OM owners to get started on the system without having to fork out a fortune from the off.
 
Hi Pete. I offer this from a purely amateur "hobbyist" perspective but I would suggest you stick with your plans for the Canon 10D. The Olympus sponsored four thirds system has been greeted with indifference by Canon & Nikon. Whilst this system is competitively priced it denies access to image-stabilised lenses which to me have revolutionised bird photography. These lenses help an indifferent unskilled amateur like me to produce passingly good images on a fairly frequent basis. I doubt that Canon or Nikon will commit to the 4/3 system in the near future. The 10D has a lens multiplication effect of 1.6x. Sigma are producing an 80-400 optically stabilised "apochromatic" type zoom lens which will sell for c£900 & becomes a 128>640 f5.6 zoom on the 10D ( about 3-400 pounds cheaper than Canon's equivalent zoom). I would suggest you take this path. The other alarming issue with digital SLR is just how quickly they are superceded by better/cheaper models. With this in mind I feel that the current 4/3 camera will be quickly left behind & is probably already so by current standards as its development as a novel format has necessarily resulted in it falling behind with respect to inbuilt noise filters, light sensitivity & speed of autofocus. I suspect that apart from slightly bigger/higher resolution sensors for consumer digital SLRs the other possible new development may be the production of motorised mobile sensors allowing an in-camera image stabilistaion function-I gather that a few new digital compacts already have the beginnings of such a system. .................. Buy the system closest to your current needs & at your current budget level ( I suspect that will be the 10D + suitable lens) & then don't ever look at a Photography magazine again for the next 6 years!! And most of all enjoy your bird photography. ;)
Cheers,
Steve
 
Cheers Steve.

I was indeed going for the 100-400 IS lens.
So I think I will take your advice and stick with the 10d.
Ta
Pete.
 
There are a number of very good reasons for going for the 10d as opposed to the 4/3rds system. The choice of already available lenses is one that has already been covered.
I will try to simplify this to make it easy (ish) to understand.
There also the issue of pixel density on image sensors (i.e. how many pixels per square millimetre on either CCD or CMOS chips), with small image sensors as on the 4/3rds system, the amount of pixels required to get an image that will print to a good size and give finer detail can only be increased by using smaller pixels at a greater density, however smaller pixels gather less light therefore need longer exposure, just the same as a smaller aperture needs a longer shutter speed, this would have to be overcome by making them more sensitive and consequently more susceptible to noise, rendering the image less sharp. This means that the chances of the 4/3rds system having a 10 – 12 megapixel sensor in the near future are very slim indeed, so having bought the lenses your choice of cameras when upgrading in the future will be limited.

The issue of sharpness on such high pixel density small sensors is also problematic due to the way in which light entering through a round aperture on the lens is not focussed as a point, but as a small disc (this is known as an Airy disc). This disc gets bigger when stopping down to smaller apertures, so although you increase depth of field, you decrease focus resolution because the Airy disc gets bigger than individual pixels.
Digiscoping with large sensor size DSLR’s suffers a similar problem also, insofar as the sensor in the camera has to be further away from the scope eyepiece so that the light through the scope and camera lens is more spread out in order to fill the size of the sensor, therefore less light is gathered by each pixel and the more projected Airy disc is proportionately bigger.

This problem does exist with film cameras also, but is less visibly apparent because film grain is randomly patterned and not evenly patterned in the way pixels are.


This is an apparent problem on a number of small compact digital cameras with small sensors, as it is not possible to stop down to apertures smaller than f11. The fact that Olympus are designing new lenses across the board for this format does suggest that they have the lens design technology to overcome or alleviate this problem.
At the moment though bigger sensors with lower pixel numbers per square millimetre will give much better quality images.

There are some schools of thought that consider the D60 and 10D sensor pixel density is too high. And tests suggest that the critical sharpness lessens as you stop down beyond f11.

http://www.photography-on-the.net/forum/viewtopic.php?TopicID=2975&page=0

Basically if this is a problem on the 10D it can only be a worse problem on a 4/3rds camera
 
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