It's very likely that you're ignoring an entire species of camera when you're
browsing for new street photography cameras, probably because you're too busy
calculating the finance options on a Leica Q2. But did you know that
you could save a lot of money and have a lot more fun with
a much smaller sensor? If you saw my previous video
on this Olympus OMD Em Ten, then you know this thing was very affordable
and and produces some lovely images. But this isn't the first micro FourThirds
camera I've played with, and it's not going to be the last.
If you go on Ebay right now, or into a used camera shop, or
even on MPB, you will find mountains of Micro Four Thirds camera bodies,
lenses, and even some Micro Four Thirds compact cameras. And for the price that
you would pay for a full frame camera body or APSC camera body, you
can get a Micro Four Thirds body plus one or two lenses. That's without
even looking at a full frame or APSC Four setup. And then the amount
of kit that you could get for Micro Four Thirds pricing. And this is
true both for photo centric and more hybrid video cameras as well. If you
start looking at some of the Lumix lineup, even the earlier G H series
or some of the GX series, there are lots of 4K capable with in
body stabilisation cameras. A lot of these sensors do solve top out at 60
megapixels to 20 megapixels. And that is probably one of the biggest problems
you're going to see if you are someone that cares about resolution. I
know I probably sound like I'm about to sell all of my cameras, my
car, my house. If I owned a house, I'm going to buy all the
Micro Four Thirds gear I can. But the thing is, you don't really need
to. It's also cheap, especially on the used market. You can buy a camera
body with as many lenses you need without having to sell a thing.
I'm not enjoying this. I am taking my A Seven C out of the
cage for probably the second or third time in two years that I've owned
this camera. I had a lot of comments on.
The previous video about how this isn't an accurate size representation with the
cage.
On which I understand it's tiny. You know, if it's too small, if you've
got the pinky Em Ten is good because two fingers can go underneath it,
whereas the A seven C is somewhere between a larger grip and a smaller
grip, so only one finger goes underneath it's. Much more pokey, but with the
small rigged on adding that grip, that creates an actual decent full handed grip.
I have been doing some tests shooting with the Em Ten and the A
seven C side by side, just to see how much performance you get from
a much more expensive fullframe camera compared to this affordable micro Four
first camera.
One of the main things I've noticed about shooting with the Em Ten is
that the autofocus is probably my least favourite part of the speed of operating
this camera. There is just a little bit of pulsing when you're focusing. I'm
not sure if you can see that, but it does pulse just a little
bit. And it's hard to tell sometimes if you're waiting for a moment to
happen, whether or not it's actually going to focus in time. So let's just
get this bird here pulsing a tiny bit. There's always this little bit of
shudder. So, for example, earlier on this shot, I'll show you right now, I
actually took this shot a few more times. I'll show you before, it actually
didn't focus in time at all. Even though I waited there, I'd focus on
the background. For some reason, those pulses, every time I hit the shutter,
managed to completely defocus the image just touching on the 45 millimetre lens.
Again, there is something so good about having something on a wrist strap like
this and then being able to just have it loosely gripped in your hands
and then be able to grab a nice, tighter field of view. Something
that you just can't get in the full frame camera showing you side by
side. Now I'll show you the Sony 50 mil there. It's such a similar
size of lens, but being able to get that reach just makes it such
an interesting camera to be able to use, to be honest. Of the bunch,
Sony have some of the more compact full frame lenses. And even when you
compare it to some lenses from Fuji, some of the zoom lenses you get
on Sony are smaller than some zoom lenses on Fuji, despite the centre being
larger. Probably the main winning feature when you actually get this camera in
your hand, compared to one of those older micro four thirds cameras, is just
the speed of the auto focus and the speed of the shutter response. So,
in contrast to what I was saying about the Em Ten and how the
auto focus performs, getting a bit pulsing and loses focus at the exact run
point, that does not happen on this camera. The AF tracking and the overall
speed and responsiveness of the shutter in comparison make it such an easy win
for street photography.
It goes without saying that a seven C is much newer and a more
advanced camera. And this means that the autofocus speed and performance is
astounding compared to the Em Ten. But that shouldn't be a surprise. This camera
is nearly nine years old and wasn't even a flagship at its time of
release. But for the same size setup I'm carrying with the A seven C
and the 50 mil, look at the size of the setup for this Olympus
and the 45 mil. If we're being realistic, these problems with speed and
performance when compared to a more modern full frame should be expected, but they're
clearly outweighed by the small sensor being able to give us these longer
focal lengths in a much more compact size of a lens. Why would I
possibly care about the speed?
If you buy into the Micro Four Third system today, there are definitely
going to be advantages. But there are also some disadvantages. It's kind of hard
to explain the advantage. The main advantage is that today you can go
online and to use sites like MPB, like Ebay, and there is a mountain
of used bodies and used lenses available. That is the good thing.
With the future, development of the Micro fours mount could be limited alongside the
Canon EF mount. It is one of the longest standing lens mounts actually
out there, and similar to the EF mount, in which Canon has now moved
on to the RF mount and ultimately down the line will abandon the EF
mount development. Micro Four Thirds mount has had two leading developers, both being
Olympus and Lumix. And even though Olympus or Om system today are still loyal
to Micro Four Thirds, lumix has started to move on to the L mount
with Leica. With Lumix now becoming best mates with Leica and potentially leaving
Olympus in the corner playing with Micro Four Thirds sensors on their own, of
course, sorry. Olympus are now om system. They continue to double down on the
Micro Four Thirds sensor with no clear indicators that they're pioneering any
sort of APSC size or full frame sensors.
Now that Lumix has partnered up with Leica on the L mount, it can
be assumed that it's only a matter of time before they completely leave
development of Micro Four Thirds and focus on this full frame mount. But it's
odd that Olympus or Om system today still don't have a development for larger
sensors from Micro Four Thirds. Whether that's going to be APSC or.
Full frame, you can tell.
The seagulls here have a lot of opinions about it. The way I see
it at the moment, this M Ten does something quite special that I think
might get overlooked. We actually have the original 35 millimetre film M Ten at
home. I think Olympus has done something really special in keeping their vintage
aesthetic alive in these smaller cameras, but that doesn't mean they couldn't move
this up to a larger sensor. Sticking with Micro Four Thirds is okay, but
if they went to a full frame but still compact vintage design, they
could really have a lot of success. Lumix have gone on record as saying
that they plan to support Micro Four Thirds mount for the foreseeable future,
planning to release new bodies alongside their S Series L mount lenses. We've
already had the GH Five, MK Two, and the GH Six in the last
year, but then we've also had the new S 52, which has definitely made
a big headway for their L mount right now. Micro Four Thirds camera
releases are becoming fewer and further between. But that doesn't mean they're
going to stop completely.
But there is no guarantee that is going to last forever. I don't think
Canon at any point thought the EOS M mount was going to be so
short lived. But it was. Hang on, who's been bidding on all these cameras
and lenses on my Ebay? I got bids on like four Olympus cameras, like
three looming cameras. Who's been playing on my phone?
If you are interested in seeing a direct comparison between this compact
fullframe camera.
And one of the most compact microphore.
First cameras you can buy, cheque out this video up here. I also, if
you've liked the way I've edited the photos and you've seen this video, cheque
out the link to my presets in the description below.