A load of old pixel shift. Why I just don't care for high-res modes
dpreview.com
dpreview.com
If, however, I was a photographer shooting still life in a studio, for example, product photography for a high end jewellery company, then this is exactly the sort of technology that will work, and will give a resolution boost that may be useful. With a tethered camera, and possibly spending hours getting the light and reflections just right, the extra time to get the shot is of no consequence. Older digital photographers in that market will have used medium format scanning backs, so it's pretty clear that they have patience and that ultimate image quality may trump convenience.
The comments about beyer sensors is interesting, and may be something that the casual photographer doesn't realise. Camera sensors have a patter of red/green/blue filters over each site on the sensor, so if the resolution of your camera is 16mp, you'll have 16 million sensor sites, but each will only give you the level of 1 channel (red, green or blue) and the camera will interpolate the colour resolution across the image. By shifting the sensor across exactly the width and height of 1 pixel site, the camera can capture the correct colour information at the same resolution as the output image, and hence give better colour rendition.
As someone who normally photographs people, and often converts to B&W, this lack of colour resolution isn't important to me, but there are other people where this might be a significant concern.
The folks running the shop are obviously huge camera geeks, and they were really psyched about that feature. To their credit, it's damn impressive that a camera that small, and a sensor that small, can produce a true 40MP image where every pixel actually captures a geometrically unique location on the focal plane.
As a key selling point over an E-M10 though? Nah. It's a marvel of engineering, but extremely limited in its practical value - a hallmark of "features for nerds." Sadly, in today's consumer landscape you kinda have to satisfy the spec sheet gawkers if you're going to sell a product. That's another reason features like this exist.
16MP on a sensor of that quality can still be blown up to enormous sizes without it looking crunchy. The real reason to spring for an E-M5 is the weather sealing and bigger viewfinder.
However, as you have probably found, 16mp is actually a very useful size - a good compromise between image size and resolution. I actually shoot a 16mp camera (Fuji X1) most of the time, even though I have much higher resolution cameras to hand.
I know some people that bought into the 4/3 system, and I personally bought into larger systems. At the time, maybe that made sense for me. But if the camera is smaller, you actually bring the damn camera with you and get a shot. The 4/3 is a beautiful compromise where the shots are probably going to be noticeably better than your phone, and you’re going to bring the camera a lot more often than the APS-C or full-frame cameras.
The resolution differences are on a square-root scale when you count megapixels. 24 MP has 22% better resolution than 16 MP — √(24/16). There’s a whole complicated story here involving aperture size, optical resolution, sensor efficiency and all sorts of other factors, which means that in the end, you don’t sacrifice as much image quality as you expect when switching to a smaller camera.
I owned an E-M10 for a while and ended up selling because it had nothing much to distinguish itself from my iPhone, and with all the computing power the phone photos were sharper and with better dynamic range. Portrait mode also evolved to do a pretty decent job for family pictures.
APS-C is at the sweet spot of enabling very small bodies and lenses, but still getting FF-like images with a fast lens and decent low-light performance. My current Fuji kit is actually lighter than the old MFT one and about the same size, while taking far better pictures.
F1.2 lenses are quite widely available for micro 4/3 systems, which is equivalent to f2.4 on full frame in terms of depth of field. Not enough to get you absolutely razor thin depth of field, but perfectly sufficient to blur the background.
Maybe I shouldn't have said 'hard to get', cause you certainly can get decent DoF like that, but it's a real physical limitation. You won't get it that easily with classic 28mm/35mm/50mm focal lengths. And there will never be a practical f0.6 lens.
Not saying you can't enjoy an MFT system. My 20mm/1.7 Lumix took great pictures. Truth is the original premise has not held. The best MFT setups are just as heavy as APS-C while having slightly worse specs due to the smaller sensor, and at the same time a higher price tag.
These are very real limitations and much more than "dismissed by armchair photographers in the early years".
Sure, take APS-C and get rid of the mirror and you get the same effect, but you still have physically larger lenses, significantly higher costs, and a whole lot of pixels that are doing literally nothing unless you're regularly making large prints.
Your whole comment reads like "what are ya, POOR?"
I don’t understand how you could take my comment that way. MFT gear is not cheap at all. APS-C these days can be physically similar in size, and cheaper while having better image quality. Hence why I think there is little reason to choose four thirds.
https://petapixel.com/2024/02/22/sigmas-full-frame-foveon-ca...
I don’t know what happened to the Sony images but they look soft even for a standard shot, don’t think they are representative of what the technology can do either. The Panasonic one has a lot more detail.
I wore the shutter out on that camera, it was awesome.
Light breeze comes through as you take a landscape shot? Welp, I guess that tree branch is going to look like a glitch in the matrix.
It's at its best indoors on a tripod. Architecture and still lifes are where the Olympus implementation really shines.