Re: Olympus and others. Greater mega pixel capacity expected soon? Skinny on E-3

.. <cbauwifl6@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Apr 14, 3:58 am, Wolfgang Weisselberg <ozcvgt...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

The D300 is not, exactly, a "smaller sensor", and the pixel pitch
is 5,5µm. The E-3 has a pixel pitch of less than 5µm, less than
80% of the possible pixel size of the D300 --- and the D300 has
22% *more* pixels. Larger ones!

As someone who already own an Olympus what, in your opinion, is going
to be noticed as a difference in my images and the images produced
with the D300?

Dear Fullstop,
If you don't do low light photography of any kind (birding
being a not-so-obvious example) nor do (quite) shallow DOF
photography (some types of portraits, for example), you'll not
see much differences, since it'll still be you behind the camera.
Otherwise, you will see differences as you reach the limits of
your technology:


You can crop a bit less --- or have a bit less resolution on
large posters. Quite irrelevant in most cases.

Your lenses need to be 10% better in absolute spatial resolution
(due to the smaller pixels) for a same pixel-by-pixel resolution,
or a bit more than 30% more resolution for full-picture size.
That means against a high-end lens on the D300 you need to pit
an even higher quality lens.
According to photozone.de, most lenses reach the sensor resolution
only in the center and only a stop or maybe 2 around f/5.6 (for
APS, that'd be f/8 for full frame), so your best resolution
against comparable equipment will probably suffer somewhat.
This will only be a problem where you have the resolution to see
the difference (i.e. 100% crops or larger posters seen close up).

If you keep your ISO setting below 400 or (maybe) 800, you'll
probably not see much of a difference --- but the D300 can
utilize higher ISO settings with the same or less noise. This
will affect every situation where light is in short enough
supply, be it 1/800s to freeze a bird lifting off in the shadow
or an evening in the pub (or even normal indoor photography)
without flash, especially if your objects move ... I happen to
run into such situations regularly, others do not.

The D300 has about a stop shallower DOF. That means:
- full frame camera: f/2.0
- D300 and other 1.5/1.6x: f/1.4
- 4/3rds: f/1.0

Now, there are 85mm f/1.2 and f/1.8 for Canon, 50mm (80mmKB) f/1.4
(and f/1.2 and even the old f/1.0), also for Canon, but what
is in the ~40mm(80mmKB) class for Olympus? 14-35mm f/2.0 and
35-100mm f/2.0 are the fastest lenses I could find on
Olympus' website for any focal length! So:

FF ~ APS ~ 4/3rds
85mm f/1.8 ~ 50mm f/1.2 ~ 40mm f/0.9
85mm f/4 ~ 50mm f/2.8 ~ 40mm f/2

As you can see, playing with shallow DOF is, at least in the
'portrait' length of ~80mm, doable with APS, but the small
sensor and the dearth of really fast lenses cost you lots of
shallow DOF potential. That is, of course, irrelevant, if
you plan on only shooting at f/8, oops, f/4.

You'll also find that the amount and breath of lenses offered
is quite low: there are very few fixed focal length lenses,
especially there seem to be no ultra-fast lenses (faster than f/2).
How that hurts or influences you only you can know.
(Note that I would worry if these f/x-5.6 lenses are already
beyond the best f-stop for resolution wide open (and may or may not
need stopping down) --- just as I would worry about an f/11-f/16
(cheapo-)tele for full frame.)

-Wolfgang
.

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