Category Archives: Micro Four-Thirds

Panasonic’s μFT cameras

Two bargains from Panasonic

Cheap lenses.

Aficionados of the MFT camera range from Panny (G1/G2/G10/GH1/GH2/GF1) can hardly complain about the prices of two of the most useful lens options – prices are from B&H in the US but doubtless can be matched elsewhere:

I have no special need for the first as the 14-45mm kit lens does it for me, and I wouldn’t use the fast aperture of this neat pancake lens, but I simply love the 45-200mm zoom for its OIS, low weight, small size and great performance.

I forget the prices of these when they were first announced, but suspect the above are much less.

The beauty of the promise of the MFT format is that it seems to me that the sensors will only get better, so these lenses will deliver better results from the next generation of bodies than they already do from the ones currently available.

The Panasonic 14mm lens

GF2 to follow?

The newly announced 14mm f/2.5 fixed focal length Panasonic lens (28mm full frame equivalent) looks like another little miracle from Japan.

The Panasonic 14mm f/2.5 lens.

It’s even smaller than the 20mm (40mm) f/1.7 and but one thought comes to mind. Can a GF2 compact body with a proper viewfinder along the lines of the Fuji FX100, be far behind?

Let’s hope so, as Panny can bring its manufacturing power to this niche – what I call the Street Snapper Set – and make the whole thing for well under $1,000. The lens itself will be available in November for just $400 in the US.

Here are the size comparison with the 17mm on the GF1 and a 35mm on the Leica:

Panasonic GF1 – 119 x 71 x 57mm – MFT sensor
Fuji FX100 – 127 x 75 x 54mm – APS-C sensor
Leica M9 – 139 x 80 x 73mm – full frame sensor plus your first born

So the Panny body+lens is much the same size as the Fuji, and likely much cheaper, though you trade the smaller MFT sensor in the GF1 for the APS-C sized one in the Fuji. MFT is fine for all but wall sized enlargements, as I can testify from personal experience, so what’s not to like if Panny finally makes a GF2 with a proper integrated viewfinder?

An awesome viewfinder

The G1 finder shines.

Just how good the electronic viewfinder in the mirrorless Panasonic G1 really is was brought home forcefully to me when I spent a couple of days snapping away on the central California coast earlier this week. I had with me both the Canon 5D and the G1 and was reminded time and again why I prefer the EVF in the G1 to the traditional mirror/prism construction of the 5D.

The EVF in the G1 is not perfect, true. In bright light it will wash out highlights immediately, but no matter how bright the light you will have no difficulty reading the display data – aperture, shutter speed, etc. But things get even better in poor light. In the image below, the light was exceedingly poor – look at the exposure data. Yet the EVF adapted the image to show it in daylight brightness – much as you see it here – and composition was a breeze. In this sort of lighting you can actually read the Canon 5D’s display data, which is nice, but the G1’s is every bit as clear plus you get to see what you are photographing which, for photographers, is a nice feature ….

Inside Mission Carmel, CA. G1, 9-18mm Olympus MFT lens at 18mm, 1/8, f/5.6, ISO 1600.

I was lucky to get away with it at 1/8th second hand held and even at ISO 1600 there is no shortage of detail.

The Mission Carmel was founded June 3, 1770 and includes a working K-8 school. It is about as spectacular an example of California Mission architecture as you will find and quite beautifully maintained. Recommended, regardless of your religious views, or lack thereof.

A bargain basement G1

Snap one up while you can.

The Panasonic G1 is discontinued but remaindered new samples are still out there at a bargain price.

G1 pricing at Amazon.

The replacement G2 is $770, so the equation is simple. If the following new features of the G2 are worth $270 to you, get the G2:

  • A touch screen to focus the camera
  • A movie mode

And, of course, the 14-42mm kit lens on the G2 is now widely reported as being inferior to the 14-45mm version on the G1, and I can most certainly testify to the quality of the latter.

The G10 (lower quality movie mode) at $540 is not really an alternative to the G1. It has an awful EVF (one key reason you buy a G1/2 is for the excellent eye level viewfinder), drops the swiveling rear LCD display (not like I care about that and nor should you – LCDs are not a useful framing tool) and has the same lower quality 14-42mm kit lens.

The G1 at $500 strikes me as a real bargain for real photographers tired of lugging around their heavy APS-C or full frame DSLRs. I have had no reliability issues after nearly 7,000 frames over the past year. If you just want a G1 back-up body, it is not sold in that configuration in the US but I would bet you can unload the spare kit lens for $200 to someone displeased with the latest version. So call it $300 for a spare body. Not bad at all.

And if you want to join the cadre of elite users, like me, you can get the blue bodied version for a modest $40 more!

Further, if you want to get lucky, it seems that an iPhone and a G1 are THE winning combination:

As usual, Windows users are SOL.

Panasonic 3D lens

The Stemar is back!

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Sold in very limited numbers in the mid-1950s, Leica’s Stemar lens was an elegant way of making stereo pictures with your rangefinder Leica.

The 33mm f/3.5 dual lens Stemar

The Stemar lens (the name derives from STEreo elMAR – meaning a simple four element design like the 50mm Elmar) would take two images, each 18x24mm on a standard 24x36mm film frame and came in a kit with a tailored lens hood, a 33mm clip-on viewfinder, a close up lens/prism, and a binocular viewer to permit 3D examination of the transparency image. There was also an even rarer attachment for your slide projector to project the twin images on a large screen. All are visible in the picture below.

Stemar outfit.

Given that it came in a Leica screw mount, easily adapted to the latest Leica M cameras, there’s no reason why it wouldn’t work every bit as well with the latest M7 Leica film camera or even the M9 full frame digital, though I’m not sure how you would create viewable transparencies with the latter; doubtless possible with some ingenuity.

As the picture shows, the lens was something of an ugly duckling, screws showing prominently on the front plate, the ugly protruding finger focus tab, the many gadgets needed to make it work, and definition cannot have been that great. The four element Elmar design works reasonably at 50mm and 65mm (the latter on the Visoflex SLR ‘mirror box’) and well at 90mm but is probably poor at 35mm. Leitz made a 35mm full frame Elmar pre-war and it was soon replaced with the excellent six element Summaron. Compare with the Panasonic lens, below and see what stylish modern design is all about.

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As with all low production Leica hardware, the Stemar has now acquired that awful epithet of ‘collectible’, meaning it’s doomed to a china cabinet and commands a $6,000 price tag at auction. I find this every bit as damnable as the $1mm Ferrari treated in like manner rather than thrashed on the backroads, which was the design intent.

Now a Stemar was not something I ever owned. Even a few years ago when it was actually affordable it would have been no use to me, as a childhood eye defect forever rendered me incapable of seeing in three dimensions. My brain – such as it is – cannot fuse the disparate images, with the happy result that I read with my right and drive with my left eye. It makes for interesting moments when trying to pour red wine in a white tablecloth restaurant, as I have no depth perception, and is the reason you will invariably find me delegating the task! I have experienced too many reddening tablecloths to want to repeat the experience, testimony to my having missed the glass completely ….

But I console myself that my infirmity has been all to the good. Like the blind man with an overly developed sense of hearing, this One Eyed Jack simply tries harder with what he has. While motorcycling near the cliff edge can be an unusually unnerving experience, I grit my teeth and try harder, consoling myself as the journey ends that I am a better and stronger person for the experience! Further, I get to save money and weight on binoculars, as a monocular is fine, the second optic being wasted on me.

But 3D is the coming thing. In one of those mail catalogs I simply cannot seem to unsubscribe from, the assorted big screen TVs for sale were dominated by one thing – labels screaming ‘3D’. Motion pictures are a hit in the format (or so my 8 year old assures me – I cannot go with him as I cannot actually see anything but a head-splitting mess on the screen) as Hollywood discovers the latest in moneymaking technology. More power to them. I get to save on the entry price to the 2D theater.

Many of those 3D TVs in the catalog come, of course, from Panasonic, which is a pioneer of the technology. So it’s hardly a surprise that they will shortly release a 3D lens – just like the Stemar but auto-everything – for the G-series of micro Four-Thirds camera bodies.

Panasonic’s modern Stemar.

I don’t know the focal length but would assume 16mm or so, as the Full Frame Equivalent of 33mm used in the Stemar is ideal for 3D images – anything much longer and the subject tends to lose the 3D effect. Or so I am assured by those with binocular vision. I think it’s a tremendously exciting development as the images taken with this optic will simply be ported to your Panny 3D TV set for viewing with those funky glasses, a far superior experience to the Stemar’s hand-held binocular viewer, I would guess. In that case, your ‘collectible priced’ Leica M9 may finally fulfill the potential, with its equally collectible Stemar, which the latter so under-delivered on over fifty years ago. The G-body + Panny 3D lens will run you some $12,000 less, by the way.

Just goes to show, doesn’t it? There really is not that much new under the sun.

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Here’s Panasonic’s press release on the subject; check the double asterisked note – you can bet Panny’s designers have a Stemar or two in their labs. The English may be stilted but the awareness of the predecessor design is clear:

And here’s the 1954 audience enjoying the predecessor anaglyph system – one lens red, one green: