Category Archives: Micro Four-Thirds

Panasonic’s μFT cameras

Panasonic Leica 15mm f/1.7 MFT lens

Micro Four-Thirds

An interesting addition.

It’s not available in the US yet, though B&H already lists it:

The real comparison here for street snappers is the stellar Olympus 17mm f/1.8, which I have been using for a few months now. Regular readers will have noticed that the predominant gear byline for most of my recent street snaps published here is “Panny GX7, 17mm Zuiko” and the reasons are the same I noted in my original review. The fastest AF focus ever, unbelievable flare reistance into the sun, lovely color rendering and excellent optical quality at any aperture. The 17mm Zuiko is very much my “where have you been all my life?” lens.

So this new Panny-Leica optic has its work cut out in the competitive landscape. Fair, it’s a tad wider at 30mm FFE compared with 34mm FFE for the Oly and, truth be told, my brain is hard wired for 35mm after decades with a Leica M2 or M3 and a 35mm Summaron or Summicron attached.

But the point here is that it is heart warming to see so many lenses and makers in the MFT system – Panasonic, Olympus, Leica, Voigtländer with others like Bower/Rokinon joining the frey. And it’s ridiculous to argue that the $600 asked for the new 15mm optic is high. Have you priced Leica’s MF Summicron for the M body recently?

I was going to run a piece in late 2013 on the Panasonic GX7/Olympus Zuiko 17mm f/1.8 as the greatest street snapper combination yet, but decided to hold off until I had more experience with the outfit. Unless there is something very special indeed about the new Leica optic, expect to see that piece run in December, 2014.

Meanwhile, the hegemony enjoyed by Canon and Nikon in pro DSLR ‘flapping mirror/vast bulk and weight’ applications addresses an ever narrowing field of specialization. If you need very shallow depth of field and routinely print larger than 18″ x 24″, there’s still good reason to go with the big boys. But for everyone else, MFT solves. APS-C seems increasingly pointless to me – most of the bulk of FF and none of the pluses of MFT.

Conflicted advice? Hardly. I use a Nikon D3x/D2x and a host of legacy MF lenses, mainly because it’s fun and the investment is amortized. But light and jolly this gear is most certainly not.

A tale of two sensors

Hardware, Micro Four-Thirds, Nikon bodies

‘Good enough’ is better than good enough.

A clear thinking friend of mine has a simple philosophy when it comes to consumer durable purchases, and he calls it the ‘good enough’ concept. If it’s good enough, forget spending the extra for the top of the line model, the one with the bells and whistles. The marginal return is …. marginal, the incremental cost ruinous and the depreciation far higher. (This reminds me of Lord Chesterfield on the subject of sex: “The pleasure momentary, one’s position ridiculous and the cost? Damnable.”)

And I’m here to declare that Micro Four-Thirds is more than ‘good enough’. My standard for comparison? The full frame sensor in my Nikon D3x, the MFT one being that in my Panny GX7. For all of you who prefer wasting your money see my my product review of the Leica M240. Be assured that I not only do not own two of these, I don’t even own one. Nor will that change.

Some recent sensor history. Panny started with a 12mp design in the ground breaking G1, upping it later to 16mp which my G3 enjoyed. The practical change was that whereas 13″ x 19″ nosey prints were easy with the G1, the easy size grew to 18″ x 24″ with the G3 and later bodies. Nosey? It’s when your viewer sticks his schnozzer in the print and you have to get the cotton balls out to clean the surface. In the GX7 they tweaked the software a bit and got the marketing boys to do some writing, but to all intents it’s much the same as the one in the G3 and others, which is to say very good indeed.


The fabulous Panasonic GX7 – the best street snapper ever made.

Nikon delegates sensor manufacture to Sony, claiming credit for the design (eh?) and perhaps the best full frame sensor they made for the money was the one in the D3/D700. The D3x doubled the pixels to 24mp, trading the increased resolution for more noise at higher ISOs, especially noticeable in the dark bits of the image. The D4’s sensor improved a bit more on the low pixel count one in the superb D700 and the one in the D800 blew everyone out of the water where they remain to this day. But that’s pixel peeper stuff. In the real world of large prints, it’s irrelevant.

Why do I say this? Because I constantly print my images for display in the moveable feast which is the wall displays at the old manse. Coming on a round of spring changes, I have had ample opportunity to tweak and print images at 13″ x 19″ and, better, at 18″ x 24″ from both the D3x full frame body and the GX7 MFT one. In both cases I am using my favored focal length of 35mm FFE. The exceptional Sigma 35mm f/1.4 behemoth on the no less porky D3x, and the magnificent Olympus Zuiko 17mm f/1.8 on the GX7, with AF speed which leaves FF lenses in the dust. I suppose the weight and bulk ratio is some 3:1, yet I enjoy both.

Were cameras dogs (Leica’s M would instantly qualify for inclusion in the latter species, a frou frou toy breed, fragility redefined, constantly in need of attention), then the big pro-body Nikon would be a Golden Retriever. Immensely dependable, lumbering and stolid, it will never let you down, can take a battering from the kids and still emerge with an all-weather smile on its face. And it keeps going longer than you can. The GX7 could scarcely be more different. It’s the terrier of the camera world. Small, fast, high-strung, sharp as a tack, it demands a little more care and attention in the relationship but rewards out of all proportion to its diminutive size. And it burns out (its battery) pretty fast.

Those printed images? I rattled off a handful of 18″ x 24″ on the ever dependable HP DesignJet 90 dye printer the other day and, blow me down, I simply could not tell which were taken on the Nikon compared with the Panny. We are talking nosey examination of micro detail here. Which is another way of saying that the Panny is ‘good enough’, for the Nikon is way better than almost anyone needs. And my rule of thumb has long been if it can print at 18″ x 24″ it can print at any size you want, as the viewer is forced further back as size increases, mitigating resolution loss.

Ah! you say. But no way the MFT system can match the big, fast zooms available to Nikon and Canon snappers, the classic 24-70mm and 70-200 f/2.8 fixed maximum aperture zooms and the like. Think again. Have you seen what Panny and Olympus has been up to recently? How about Panny’s 12-35mm f/2.8 zoom?

Panasonic 12-35mm f/2.8.

Or their 35-100 f/2.8?

Panasonic 35-100mm f/2.8.

Olympus has hardly been asleep, either. In addition to their wonderful 17mm and 45mm f/1.8 Zuikos which I use, there are such exciting conceptions like these:


The Zuiko 12mm f/2.


The Zuiko 75mm f/1.8.

And don’t even think of asking about size, weight and price, because that’s a losing proposition for the Big Boys.

Finally, modern MFT ‘pro’ bodies like the Olympus EM1 can offer all the framing rates and weather resistance you need, once again at a fraction of the price. And so can the tiny GX7 though no one will take you seriously. Which is possibly the best feature of all.

Do yourself a favor. Put the fun back in your snapping and pick up something which says Panasonic or Olympus on the body and whose lens detaches.

Olympus 45mm F/1.8 MFT Zuiko – Part II

Micro Four-Thirds, Photographs

Some snaps.

In Part I I took a look at the ergonomics of this MFT lens and also linked to my RAW lens correction profile for use with Panasonic bodies.

Here are a few snaps from a first spin with the lens on my Panasonic GX7 body. Most were taken in Carmel, CA. All were processed with my lens correction profile applied and with LR5’s Sharpness slider at ’60’:

Apertures varied from f/1.8 through f/5.6. The last image had the sun in the frame partly behind a branch. There are no flare spots. For a lens so compact the performance is excellent. Not quite as natively sharp as the 17mm Olympus MFT f/1.8 but perfect for a traveling, very light outfit.

Olympus 45mm F/1.8 MFT Zuiko – Part I

Micro Four-Thirds

An outstanding short telephoto lens.

So enamored was I of the Olympus 17mm f/1.8 lens that I decided to add the 45mm f/1.8 optic. I paid $350.


The 45mm on the GX7, next to the 17mm.

This makes for a superb, light and compact outfit with the two classical film era focal lengths of 35mm and 90mm, FFE. For a street snapper, that little outfit is good for 99% of daily needs.

Rather than build an exposed bayonet for the lens hood (extra), Olympus decided to hide the bayonet under a weakly attached plastic, chromed ring:


Bayonet exposed.

This is so weakly held in place and the lens so ugly were it lost, that I immediately attached a piece of chrome flue tape to make sure it does not fall off, This is especially recommended if, like me, you do not use a lens hood. If the lens hood fits as poorly it will soon be lost. It seems Oly simply cannot resist adding some asinine feature to most of its products – take the collapsible barrel on the 9-18mm MFT zoom and the retractable focus collar on the 17mm/1.8. But the optics of all three are so good that these eccentricities are but minor annoyances.


Flue tape in place.

How light is the lens? At 4.1oz it’s a featherweight, almost identical in weight to the 4.2oz of the 17mm. The 45mm appears to use more plastic in its construction, but who cares when the optics are so good? Length is 2.3″ against 2.2″ for the 17mm – it’s tiny.

Focus is almost as fast as the instant focus in the 17mm. It’s as near silent as it gets. There is a slight ‘bounce’ around the sharpest focus point, missing from the 17mm and much more pronounced in the 9-18mm, but nothing that gets in the way of rapid execution.

Much as it makes sense to compare the 17mm with the Leica 35mm Asph Summicron, the 45mm is the equivalent of the 90mm f/2 Apo Summicron, one of the finest lenses I have owned. (I bought mine years ago for $900 and sold it for some $2,000 when the Leica Ms moved on. Today it remains available, now for $4,000, which is plain daft. All 18 ounces of it. I owned mine for some 5 years, which computes to a compound annual return of 17.3% for those into such things, confirming Leicas are for China cabinets, not for real world use.) What both Leica lenses lack is AF, of course, and both will leave a mighty hole in your savings, one dug deeper still once you add an M body to use these with. Definition-wise it’s tough to comment as my catalog only contains film snaps from the Leica optic, a medium far inferior for capturing detail than modern digital sensors. However, purely subjectively, the 90mm Apo Summicron is the better lens wide open, though add a touch of sharpening at f/1.8 for the Oly in Lightroom and there’s nothing in it. Well, OK, there is something in it – the $3,650 burning a hole in your pocket if you are an Oly man.

The Olympus lens shows very minor vignetting which disappears by f/4, and mild pincushion distortion at all apertures. Accordingly, I created a lens correction profile for use on Panasonic bodies with RAW files and you can download it here. Install the profile as I explain and its application becomes automatic when images are loaded into Lightroom (3, 4 or 5), so it’s a ‘set and forget’ thing. Definition at f/1.8 and f/2 benefits from a little sharpening in LR (I use ’80’) otherwise the default setting of ’40’ for the GX7 body is fine, until you get to f/22, at which point diffraction takes the edge off sharpness. Setting sharpness to ’80’ at f/22 once again does the trick.

In practical terms there’s absolutely no need to stop the lens down unless you need depth of field, and one of the signal appeals of the wide apertures this optic offers is the very absence of depth of field, with backgrounds rendered pleasantly out of focus.

I constantly read about how MFT camera X or compact camera Y is not pocketable. This, I confess, leaves me confused. What, pray, is the utility value of a camera when it is in your pocket? What is important in a light traveling kit is that a spare lens is pocketable. One on the body, one in your pocket. The two Olympus f/1.8 lenses, the 17mm and the 45mm, are so small that they will fit even in the pocket of a jeans wearer, unless he is a hipster opting for skin tight fit. That is pocketability.

In Part II I will publish some snaps taken with this lens using the Panasonic GX7.