Big Mike's Digital Photography Blog

Thoughts on the unnamed Olympus Micro Four Thirds camera

There’s a photo at dpreview. Now that’s a really cool looking camera. I want one!

That downside is that there’s no viewfinder.

I wonder what that pancake lens on the camera is supposed to be? Hopefully it’s fast like the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7.

Thoughts on the Panasonic G1

Finally, someone has produced a new digital camera system with interchangeable lenses but without a reflex mirror. It’s about time! I couldn’t be happier. I believe that this type of camera is the future of digital photography.

I won’t miss phase detection autofocus. As I’ve written before, phase detection autofocus is highly overrated. When you read the messages on DSLR forums, the most common complaint that people have about their DSLRs has to do with focusing problems. Phase detection autofocus requires everything to be calibrated perfectly otherwise the camera misfocuses. The manufacturers seem to have finally wised up—for example, the new Canon 5D Mk II camera features AF micro adjustment for up to 20 lenses. But it would still be a pain adjusting each lens, and there’s no guarantee that would fix all focus problems.

There’s one big reason why I will not be buying a Panasonic G1 right away. The lens is really slow. A major reason for schlepping around a bigger camera is to obtain better low light capability. Let’s suppose that the Panasonic G1 will do ISO 1600 as well as a small sensor camera like the Panasonic FX3 will do ISO 400. This means the G1 is a much better low light camera, right? Well, with a slow f/3.5 to f/5.6 lens, it’s not really a better low light camera. The FX3 has an f/2.0 to f/2.8 lens, so it’s about one and a half stops faster. You’re only getting about a 1/2 EV advantage with the G1.

The G1 will be a much more interesting camera when that f/1.7 20mm “pancake” lens is available. If that lens is affordable, and provides good quality, that might tempt me to buy a G1 just for that lens. Finally an affordable, small, camera with superior low light abilities! (But without zoom.)

The upcoming 7mm-14mm lens also looks interesting because normally extreme wide angle lenses are very expensive. Can Panasonic provide high quality wide angle at a low price and in a smaller size than a DSLR?

Thoughts on the Panasonic LX3

I haven’t checked the camera sites for a few months, and it looks like I missed out on a whole bunch of interesting new camera.

The Panasonic LX3 does look pretty interesting, on account of its f/2.0-f/2.8 24mm-60mm lens. This makes it a lot more interesting for me than the Cannon G10 which I blogged about yesterday.

The LX3 would be a really great companion for my Canon G9. Between those two cameras, I’d be able to cover 24mm to 210mm. The LX3 seems ideal for street photography because of its wide angle and stealth characteristics. I tried doing street photography with my Olympus E-500 and the 11-22mm lens (equivalent to 22-44mm), but the loud shutter noise seemed too obvious to me. One person noticed that I was taking his photo.

The Canon G10 is perhaps the better general purpose camera because most people will find the 60mm maximum focal length on the LX3 rather limiting, but the way I see it, the entire LX3 is less expensive and smaller than a wide angle lens for a DSLR.

The downside of the LX3 is that it doesn’t come with a viewfinder. You have to pay $200 extra for an add-on viewfinder, which seems like a lot of money to spend considering what a short lifespan digital cameras seem to have. The LX3 isn’t like an old Leica that you could buy in 1960 and still use in 1990.

The advertising literature says it does ISO 3200, but that sounds like a joke. I saw an ISO 400 photo on the internet, and I judged it to be usable but barely—not quite as good as the Canon G9 at ISO 400. I also found the G9 to be not usable above ISO 400. However, with the LX3 lens having an aperture of less than f/2.8 and optical image stabilization, the LX3 low light usability isn’t really so far behind a DSLR with a slow kit lens.

Thoughts on the Canon G10

There’s a new Canon G10 camera, so sadly my G9 is no longer the latest and greatest. I doubt I will be buying the new G10, not because it’s not a worthy camera, but because I don’t even use the G9 much anymore. As you can tell by the lack of blog posts, I haven’t been interested in photography these days. This is because I’ve been busy programming a new online dating site, and there’s only so much free time for hobbies.

There seem to be two major differences between the G9 and the G10. The most significant is that the lens, instead of being 35mm to 210mm, is now 28mm to 140mm. People who were clamoring for more wide angle will be happy. There were times when using the G9 that I wished I had more wide angle. On the other hand, I have taken some cool photos at greater than 140mm. This photo was taken at 175mm.

I think the real purpose of changing the lens is to give owners of the G9 some reason to spend money on a G10. If it had the same lens, there wouldn’t be much of a reason to upgrade.

The other notable difference is that the number of megapixels has increased from 12.1 MP to 14.7MP. On internet message forums, there are anti-megapixel types who complain about cameras having too many megapixels and that the extra megapixels,ironically, decrease the image quality. However, in my famous camera comparison, I demonstrated that the 12MP Canon G9 definitely picks up a lot more detail than the an 8MP DSLR with a much bigger sensor. So although this camera definitely has some diffraction issues, as I demonstrated here and here, I am sure that the extra 2.6MP will result in some increased image detail if the new lens is a quality lens. The extra MP probably won’t make the G10 images any noisier than the G9 images, because improvements in noise tend to coincide with improvements in pixel density. Indeed, the G9 has the least noisy ISO 400 of any non-DSLR camera I’ve ever owned, even though it also has more megapixels than any camera I’ve ever owned.

Some minor differences include an extra manual dial on the top of the camera for exposure compensation—I’m not sure if this would make the G10 easier to use because now the ISO dial has moved to what looks like a less convenient spot. Another minor difference is that the G10 uses “Canon’s new DIGIC 4 image processor.” I have no idea what that means for actual photo quality.

Hot girl with Canon G7

A few months ago, I saw a hot girl with a Canon G7. She was wearing it around her neck. (I could identify it as a G7 because of the silver ring around the lens which is missing from the G9.)

Why is this notable? Normally, you expect geeky guys to use Canon G7/G9s and not hot girls.