Nikon User, Considering Olympus....quesion about focal length...

I'm a diehard (but dying easier) Nikon shooter, and live in a place where

absolutely no one can clean a sensor. Olympus intrigues me, I've seen some

absolutely incredible work from my friends who shoot Oly DSLR. I've spent about

a year looking at Oly, 4:3 makes sense to me (even though I'm grumbling that I'm

already USED to cropping some off the top and bottom of my vertical shots, hehe...).

 

BUT, the thing that has me spooked is the physical size of the sensor. The

smallest film I actually *like* is 35mm, and I really prefer 645, so I grouse

loudly about Nikon's APX sensor. The reason being that I often want really

shallow DOF, and shooting with shorter focal lengths with APX to deal with the

conditions often means a touch more DOF than I really want.

 

When I looked at the physical size of the 4/3 sensor, it seemed tiny. Really

tiny, and I started looking at the focal lengths that people are using with Oly

and realized that I'm guestimating that I'd be (and y'all are) using much

shorter focal lengths than I'd be using for the same shot with an APX sized sensor.

 

My question is: How do you deal with the situations where you need really

shallow DOF (a portrait, for example, where you just want eyes razor sharp, with

hair and body in foreground fading off to fuzz....

I'm interested to find out what people answer to this too.

 

I am an Oly OM diehard, but have kept away from 4/3 so far. The bodies & lenses look to be very well made, but I want a larger, not smaller, sensor - for the same reason as you Christopher.

 

In the meantime, I've gone down the Canon 5D + OM Zuiko lenses via an adpater route, which is also quite fine. Even so, if Oly brought out a full frame camera, ideally which could accept OM lenses as well as any new lenses they built, then I'd be tempted (I know it won't be 4/3, and I know the 4/3 diehards will say they don't want such a thing, and I know Oly won't go broke just because I don't buy their cameras these day - I'm just saying what I want, that's all...)

Nikon missed my vote when I purchased an E1.I still have & use my Nikon film equipment.There is a depth of field chart somewhere on the net that shows both the APS & 4/3 sensors DOF; there is not so much difference.If you can live with an APS sensor you should be able to live with the 4/3 sensor. Your choice of lens is going to be as important as your choice of sensor! The Olympus digital 50mm F2 macro lens has a good reputation for portraiture as well as macro.

Ummm...you mean do a web search for a DOF chart for 4/3?? Hehe...ermm...homer simpson moment here, DOH!!! I'll do that. I'll post the results or if anyone beats me to it, I'd love to see it.

"My question is: How do you deal with the situations where you need really shallow DOF (a portrait, for example, where you just want eyes razor sharp, with hair and body in foreground fading off to fuzz...."

 

It just is not the horrible problem you might imagine. You get the background farther back,just as you would with any lens,using a wider

f stop.

My headscratcher before I bought an E camera,Christopher, was not the absolute size of the sensor,but the reduced visual aspect of the image on the focus screen and through the viewfinder.

 

Surprisingly,one adapts to that too,if it is bright enough. (Yeah,I would choose a Hasselblad H-1 with a bunch of lenses,wouldn't everyone.) As to the format aspect,you either like it or don't. I shot square and still cropped. If 4:3is not right for you, "gommenasai, as they say in Norwegian:-))stay with Nikon and learn sensor housekeeping:-). (I mean no personal affront, since everyone seems to say it is such a simple ritual,no biggee etc). Me,I don't clean no stinking sensors...!

I am waiting for a longer FL lens,because I like to do portraits and I follow your argument on that score. One has to adjust when you downsize. However,shooting birds OTOH is a great thing. Think of having a 100 to 400mm lens of quality. Sports shooters love the double crop factor.

 

I ramble. But it is hard to nail a " how to deal with" question,except to offer the obvious way of background/f stop control.

 

 

That said,perhaps you really are a candidate for the Canon 5D after all.

Best, GS

The crop factor is 2, so the 14-54mm lens we all love on our E-1s is like a 28-108mm in

35mm terms.

 

As others have said, there isn't all that much difference between APS sized sensors and 4/3.

The 50/2 lens is a real beauty and at f/2.8 does what you describe, see example!<div></div>

Blue cast to the white shirt, pink cast to the skin: Beautiful?

How do I deal with a situation requiring really narrow depth of field with my Olympus DSLRs? Simple - I use a FAST prime manual focus lens - It's very easy to adapt Nikkor, Pentax M42, Pentax K, Leica-R, Contax/Yashica, as well as Olympus OM primes to be used on on Olympus 4/3 mount cameras.

 

Among my favorite old fast primes that I use regularly on my Olympus E-1 and E-300 bodies are: Tamron 90mm f2.5 SP Macro, Pentax 50mm f1.4 SMC Takumar, Nikkor 85mm f2 AIS, and Nikkor 300mm f2.8 AI ED

Z: Once again, a comment completely irrelevant to the question about DOF on 4/3 cameras.

You really are the master of going off-topic.

 

That said: yes, the cool, slight cross-process look does, in my opinion, work better for this

image that the "correct" white balance. Different strokes for different folks...

You offer a poor example of what you think is a beautiful, photo, in my opinion, and your dependence on a bad sample, in a tiny jpeg format to try to demonstrate the qualities of the lens is folly.

I agree; but what the poster was wondering about was DOF only, in which case a small JPEG

suffices.

Thanks for the example, it actually shows what I was looking for. I hadn't thought about adapting older MF fast primes, that's a great idea. For grins and giggles I pulled out my digital body, film body, medium format body, attatched "normal" lenses to 'em, then spent a half hour peering through the viewfinders at f/2.8 (the fastest wide open that they all have in common). AND, surprise surprise, what I discovered is that they are all different critters. 35mm at f/1.8 woulda worked about as well as the 645 at f/2.0.

 

The 2x crop factor helps, that means the difference between 35mm and 4/3 is about the same as the difference between APX and 645 (roughly, kinda sorta).

 

Since I DO shoot both film and digital, the Oly is actually looking better and better for the things I shoot digitally. The reality is that I'm going *nutz* hunting and killing sensor dust bunnies (more like dust dinosaurs these days) on narrow aperture shots with the D70.

 

The other thing that will change is that I'm moving into a larger studio, and...ermm...now have a long dimension of 16m instead of 10, so longer lenses??

 

And, yeah....Zs comments were, as usual, less than useful.

Glad to help! :)

 

You might want to wait with jumping in until Photokina next month; see what Olympus has to say as traditionally they have announced a lot of new kit there.

 

I am not planning to trade in my E-1 any time soon and right now it is going at bargain basement prices, but Oly could come out with its successor in the next few months; likely a very interesting camera.

Christopher, FYI, Pentax M42-4/3, Nikon F-4/3, or Olympus OM-4/3 adapters can be easily found on ebay for under $50 each.

 

In my experience, a 50mm f1.4 or 50mm f1.8 lens makes a superb portrait lens on the 4/3 system. You can buy Olympus' 50mm f2 Macro, which is also a great portrait lens, and preserve all of the metering and autofocus capabilities, for under $400, but I have found no need for those features, and my older 50mm Pentax lens works great for these purposes (and no doubt the old Nikkors would as well). The tests I and others have done on some of these fine older primes indicate that they are typically just as sharp with the 4/3 sensor as the more current digital Zuiko lenses. At least on the 5MP and 8MP Olympus cameras, the better of these primes are fully capable of outresolving the sensor. The Nikon to 4/3 adapter works fine for F (pre-AI), AI, and AIS lenses, as all metering and shooting is done at the shooting aperture.

BTW, Christopher, I have a spare E-300 body in legitimate mint condition that I'd sell for $250. I originally bought 2 E-300s, but with the great deals going on for new E-1 bodies, which nowadays sell for under $500 on ebay, I picked up one of these, and now I only find myself using one of my E-300s as well as the E-1.

Do not make a mistake. Nikon surpasses Olympus at every item. Compare quality of pictures of the amateur D80 to ANY, and even pro Olympus. You will see a huge difference. Compare lens range and prices. (Nikkor 18-70 is very good and very affordable). Compare speed in continuous mode and buffer size. Understand? Want auto cleaning of sensor? See Sony A100

Not true. A $1500+ Nikon D200 body may surpass Olympuses, but a Nikon D70 or D50, which costs the same as an Olympus E-500 or E-1, (Say around 1/3 of that D200's cost) does not.

 

The Nikons have better autofocus, but I would argue that Olympus's wide angle zooms are superior to Nikons.

And BTW, I can't buy a Nikon D80 to compare it's images to anything. Any more than I can buy the next generation Olympus DSLRs that are going to be announced at Photokina.

 

If you compare the cameras that can actually be bought today, you will see that the $500-$700 Nikons are very comparable in performance to the Olympuses which are similarly priced. A Nikon D200 costs more than twice as much, so I should HOPE it would be a better camera.

Compare E-1 (less 6 MP, ) with D80 (amateur camera, 10.2 MP)you will see that E-1 is obsolete junk. If you want noisy pics and bad AF - take Olympuses.

NOTE: 4/3 is approx. 2 times less in SIZE and PIXEL COUNT than DX sensor (Nikon). Compare specs - you will see the same.

Thanks for that insight Ruslan, I will put mine on eBay now and pay Nikon $2200 for a D80 +

17-55/2.8. At over 2.5 times the curent price of the E-1, it better be a be better camera.

 

On top of that, it's the width and length of the sensor that counts, not the area. That makes

the E-1's sensor only 75% of DX, which is far from "2 times less in SIZE". But I like it that way

as it means I can buy a fast, high-quality standard zoom for less than half the price and less

than half the weight of the Nikon equivalent.

Ruslan, we can't compare the D80 to ANYTHING, as it's not available yet. On the other hand, I certainly think that the Nikon D200 is absolute junk compared to the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II. Which, admittedly costs an awful lot more, but that's just as sensible a comparison as the one you tried to make.

 

If you compare the Olympuses to cameras in the same price range that are actually available for purchase, you will find that the Nikons (the D70s and D50) have lower (6MP) resolution, and are otherwise very similar in capability to the Olympuses.

BTW, we are not comparing specs, we are comparing the photos that can be taken TODAY. You will find that the E-1 and E-500 take perfectly nice photos. On the other hand, I can't currently take ANY photo with a D80. Hence, it is vastly inferior to pretty much ANY camera that actually exists now. I realize that Ruslan wants to compare specs, and he is more than welcome to that exercise. However, as most of us are actually photographers, what WE care about is the photographs that we can take with the equipment. Admittedly, geeks like Ruslan cannot be bothered to actually shoot photos, when there are specs to be bragged about for announced but not yet for sale equipment.

Mind you Douglas, I have a "good feeling" about this D80 thingy. It costs twice as much with

that 17-55/2.8, but it's the same as I spent on my E-1; if I were starting from scratch now

with $2200 to spend, it'd be a serious contender.

 

Olympus had better come up with something good this Photokina; as good as the E-500 is in

it's class, without a (semi-?) pro body that people will find competitive, they won't win many

new customers.

 

And I still like my E-1! :)

I agree, the D80 sounds nice on paper - however, my one issue with the D80 SPEC is that the camera will not meter with my manual focus Nikkor lenses. But my point is simply this - digital camera specs are always marching forward - and it's utterly ridiculous to compare cameras across brands from different generations. Let's see what Olympus announces at Photokina, and see how THOSE cameras stack up to the D80, and the D200 at a price that's bound to drop in the face of the D80 and a handful of new competitors (and/or new pricing on existing high end models) from Sony, Canon, Olympus and others.

 

In any case, the D80 will surely cost more than an E-500 or E-1 costs now, so it ought to be better WHEN IT ARRIVES. But Olympus will also have newer, better performing cameras when THEY arrive. When one compares next year's Nikons to last year's Olympuses, they clearly have an agenda.

 

And the fact is, those existing 6-8 Megapixel DSLRs are NOT obsolete, as a 6-8 Megapixel camera remains capable of taking a higher resolution image than most people will ever use. Most people are much better off buying a $500 camera that MEETS their needs, rather than a $1200-$1500 camera that exceeds them. Of course, for those that need the added features, speed, and resolution of the more expensive cameras, it's great that they will have choices. But it's ridiculous to dismiss these less costly, but perfectly functional models simply because one can spend more to get more, irrespective of whether one needs it.

I did not have intension to offend E-1. Even, once upon a time, I wanted it. It is very sturdy and dustproof. I was intrigued. But it is not productive. Buffer size is small. Lenses are expensive, though the glass is superior (As Zuiko had always been). They are newcomers to pro-AF systems. And powered with its original Li-ion battery. (ONLY) How about shooting at distant areas without charging possibility? (AA-size?)I am not a specs-freak, I do test-drives for cameras. If it is not needed to fire 5 fps and print 30 by 45 sm, E-1 is OK.