Olympus E-M5 II High-Res Review: 40 megapixels for $1,100 (vs D810)
It’s time for a new roundup of the most recent tests with the new E-M5II. Also important to know is that Iridient Developer 3 for Mac OS X now supports RAW images from the E-M5 Mark II, including the all new 40 megapixel high resolution mode (Thanks Brian for sharing this).
Olympus E-M5 Mark II – love and hate at first sight (EosHD).
Olympus E-M 5: Mk I vs Mk II (JLWilliams).
Olympus OM-D E-M5 II bought in store Unboxing (Frugalfilmmakers).
Olympus E-M5 II Shooter’s Report Part I (Imaging Resource).
E-M5II review at Mirrorlessreview.
Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II (Photoreview).
Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II Review at Steve Digicams.
Sample photos from the OM-D E-M5 Mark II at Reviewed.com.
A family affair – Olympus OM-D E-M1 vs. OM-D E-M5 Mark II (Mirrorlessons).
E-M5II store links:
E-M5II in Black at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto and GetOlympus.
E-M5II in Silver at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto and GetOlympus.
E-M5II In Europe at AmazonUK, Jessops, WexUK, Namencolor.
77 Responses
The lady made a real of blooper in that video where she attributed the blame for the chromatic aberration of the Panasonic 12-35mm f2.8 lens to Olympus and said that if Olympus wanted to get part of the market for high quality imaging, they needed to make better lenses, because “glass matters”.
Especially so as it was not CA but a product of the hi-res stacking a moving branch.
Go check out reviews of the X12-35 and 12-40PRO, they’re exceptional lenses, arguably better glass than the Canon used.
Agree, not well stated if she was making a point. It was a lame point to blame Olympus needing better glass and testing with Panasonic glass and pointing to yet another lens that she didn’t test with! Would she have the same result with the OLY 12-40 or same result with Sigma?
This was the comment hover on the video: “Yes, I’m using a Panasonic lens, but it has similar image quality to the Olympus 12-40 f2.8. Neither has the quality of the Sigma 24-105, Canon/Nikon 24-70s, etc. In the MFT world, if you want a good quality zoom, you need the Sigma 18-35 f1.8 and a speedbooster. There is no native option.”
Exactly~ What kind idiot would mount Pana 35-100 on Oly body for a proper review? Is this some kind of joke? Doesn’t she know Panasonic intentionally ignore some CA in their lens design and then auto correct in raw? On the other hand, Oly’s design has in lens CA correction. Just because something fit onto each other physically doesn’t mean they are designed to work together. This is why sometimes you get banding when mounting Pana 20mm f1.7 and PL 25mm f1.4 onto Oly body. Well, proper knowledge matters lol!
The banding seems to be a product of fluorescent lighting and Oly’s mechanical open electronic close shutter system (or is the other way round?; it is part electronic). The problem is not restricted to those two lenses (20 and 25) nor only to Panasonic lenses, it has been reported to a lesser extent with Olympus lenses and legacy lenses too; fluoro lighting is usually present as culprit; I suspect radio-interference either picked up in the lens motors or directly to sensor.
The Lumix lenses are in the Oly camera look-up, it does not correct for the shutter. Oly’s system lenses may have extended correction routines.The Panasonic sensor is better shielded being mounted on what is effectively a ground plate (its heat sink) and uses a different shutter system, the banding problem is pretty much unknown on Panny backs.
I have myself tried to provoke E-PL1 and E-PL7 to produce banding with the 20/F1.7 and the Leica 25/F1.4, and failed to do so. UK mains is 250VAC 50Hz and earthed (less emf/rf spat out) so we probably have less problematic lighting than those I’ve seen with banding.
FWIW the X12-35 doesn’t do CA, it’s as good or better than the 12-40/F2.8PRO, not much to choose between them; toss a coin.
Using you brain matters. Why didn’t they use the Zuiko 12-40/2.8 PRO or 40-150/2.8 PRO for the high res test?
Why not. The lens is not the problem. Their lacking knowledge is. and it is not the first time.
Oh my, how ignorant and uninformed can a reviewer get?
Blaming Oly for CA in a Pana lens, that is not corrected on an Oly body?
And then say that Oly better make better lenses, when the high grade Oly Zuikos are regarded some of the best glass in the industry. I don’t understand her statement about artifacts on the staue’s lips and eyelids either, as there are none. I think she confuses the artifacts from movement within the Oly highres shot with god knows what else… Pittyful conclusions in a very inadequate “review”. The indoor bit is way better though.
In the comments, it appears they found out the artifacts are probably a result of using Hi-Res mode while leaving the IS switched on.
The latest Ollie IS is intelligent (auto) you can leave it on whilst panning and on a tripod, it will just turn itself off.
IBIS gets disabled when HR mode is on. And IS-Auto works great on E-M5 II but needs to be disabled on tripod use on other OM-D models IF the tripod is really sturdy (no wind and no strap on camera, no floor movement, no huge speaker in bar shaking the floor and tripod by sound waves).
The X12-35 /is/ corrected on an Ollie body.
The lens is in the camera’s look-up table and all lenses’ data is provided by the “Joint Update Service” which provides cross-platform support as is expected for shared lens system. Older bodies only need to have a new lens updated whilst fitted to the camera for the data to be added to its database. Newest cameras already have the necessary data aboard.
But no it is a Panny/Leica lens, even so it is not chromatic aberration we were looking at but an artefact effect of stitching 8 pictures together of branches in a high wind. Doh!
In point of fact, the X12-35 tests as excellent for chromatic and other such things; it’s not just good, it is world-class.
No, the 12-35, along with the P25, is well know for chromatic aberrations on the E-M5 body. The only fair test would have been to use the O12-40.
Actually it gets worse – read the comments and in a couple of places Northrup states that there are no Pro grade zooms available for the M4/3 system.
I think he’s been looking at those rubbish DXO numbers as a source of his misinformation.
You’re dead right. In the YouTube video comments he laughably claims that the Olympus 12-40mm Pro isn’t that sharp as it only resolves 9mp on the E-M1.
Oh yeah..Well..dxo is baffling. Their sensorreview are based on tests with no glass in front of it (to keep it pure I guess) and their glasstest is setup under low light conditions favouring newer and bigger sensors, hugely affecting the lensscore. Complete nonsense
I don’t personally find the DXO lens tests to be particularly informative as regards real world photography.
Having run the primary standard for photon emission rate myself, I’ve ripped the DXO low-light test to shreds and the rest of the radiometrology community would agree with me too.
The DXO tests have a built in flaw that biases them strongly in favour of larger sensors, something of a big bad no-no with photon measuring instruments, you get bad results.
I have just done a bit of research on the measured performance of the 24-105mm f4 Sigma Tony crows about vs the Olympus 12-40mm f2.8. Lenstip actually measures resolution in lp/mm instead of against frame height – which of course favours larger sensors. The results are laughable:
At MTF50 – Lenstip measured the centre resolution of the Sigma at 44 lp/mm at f4 (24mm) while the Olympus 12-40mm f2.8 achieves 78 lp/mm at f2.8 (12mm)
At the edge, same focal lengths and apertures, the Sigma achieves 30 lp/mm while the Olympus resolves 69 lp/mm
Lenstip’s measurement of chromatic aberration in the Sigma at 24mm f4 is 0.17% while the for the Olympus at 12mm f2.8 it’s 0.041%
The Olympus outperforms the Sigma optically by a very wide margin. The Sigma only seems decent because of the far greater sensor size and pixel pitch it is projecting to. The fall-off in performance of the Sigma towards the corners is pronounced, dropping to only 62% of the centre performance at 24mm f4 while in the corner, the Olympus retains 81.5% of it’s performance at 12mm f2.8.
In pure optical performance independent of sensor size, the Olympus is in another class altogether.
It has to be, and it is easier to achieve that for smaller sensors (look at smart phones and their pixel densities). The metric relevant for the final output is “line pairs per image height”. Since you have a twice larger linear dimension for FF you need twice higher lp/mm to get to the same metric. Look here: http://www.strollswithmydog.com/equivalence-sharpness-spatial-resolution/. It didn’t make sense to construct lenses for sensors with a pixel density of m43 and a FF image circle so far.
CAs and errors can be controlled easier for smaller formats. Zeiss has some nice documents explaining this. In fact, right now you can access all those documents on the zeiss blog directly, they opened their archives: http://blogs.zeiss.com/photo/en/?p=5737
No. Line pairs per image height will always favour the larger sensor. Using that metric to compare the optical performance of lenses from different platforms is not reasonable because it does not separate the optical characteristics from the sensor.
The problem is, that because of this fact (as you wrote, which was exactly my point by the way and illustrated in the link) FF lenses on average are always resolving less (they don’t need to resolve higher, since most were constructed with 12-24MP sensors in mind). A comparison of lp/mm makes only limited sense, since both are constructed with different goals in mind. Look at Tamron’s latest 15-30/2.8. Samsung designers tried to design this lens with 50MP FF sensors in mind (24MP APSC pixel density), as stated in an interview. They even were not sure whether the lens lives up to the sensor resolution. Not many FF lenses are capable of delivering here (resolution limited wide open due to CAs and stopped down by diffraction). For smaller formats like m43 to compete, they need to resolve higher. The Oly pro zooms certainly perform nice in this respect.
I think we were at cross purposes. Tony – I really should be reviewing
male grooming products instead of cameras – Northrup made some comments
about the M4/3 system:
“The point is that the Olympus 12-40 f2.8
has similar image quality, neither of which are any where near the Sigma
24-105, Canon/Nikon 24-70s, etc. In the MFT world, if you want a good
quality zoom, you need a speedbooster and the Sigma 18-35 f1.8, and
that’s clumsy and loses autofocus.”
…
Of the 12-40/2.8 he said:
“It’s not that sharp. It gets about 9 P-MPix on an E-M1, which is about
the same detail as the cheapo Canon and Nikon kit lenses.”
…
”
The image qualities are very similar, which is to say, not great. No
manufacturer has made pro-quality standard zooms for MFT–most people
who need that lens use the Sigma 18-35 f1.8 with a speed-booster.”
…
”
The artifacts are the camera’s fault, the CA is the lens’ fault… but
the Panasonic 12-40 has similar image qualities. There’s really not a
pro-grade standard zoom for the MFT system. Well, there are lenses that
are priced at pro levels… but that Olympus 75mm f1.8 (used for the
second test) is UNBELIEVABLY sharp!”
If you use LP/Ph metric, the 24-105mm f4 Sigma appears to outperform the 12-40mm f2.8
I don’t take this serious. It is always a bad idea to rely on a single score metric, incorporating a weighted average across all FL, center to corner etc. He should know better. The DXO score is tuned to a certain print size and viewing distance, as well as ISO and DOF. For usual print sizes a m43 image can be easily of similar quality without problems. He should additionally compare to 16MP FF. The 24-70/2.8 is only slightly better then (long end) but else comparable. I look at individual measurement curves only, to get an idea about the behaviour at different focal lengths.
At f5.6 (similar DOF) the Nikon is sharper. As this goes into the score, this explains a little bit. The 24-70 is known for strong CAs , however. The 75mm is a fine lens.
Not just usual, m4/3 get same quality when doing large (150x76cm) and very large prints (2×3 meters) and even billboards (5 x 3 meters and over)
The FF gets benefit ONLY when you go to 100% zoom range on COMPUTER screen. So meaning you go and you do HEAVY cropping and I mean VERY HEAVY cropping. That is when FF has benefits.
Otherwise m4/3 has always 1-2 stops light gathering benefit that results better image quality than either sensor for 135 format. And that benefit is huge as it can be so big benefits like using a flash two times more cycles, or two times further or capturing motion with two times faster shutter speed or even getting little better noise quality.
The m4/3 has all the benfits while FF doesn’t have those.
I think you misinterpret equivalence and crop factor and generalize a little too much.
Exactly, because there is this illusion that every print needs to be a same size. And people rate optics, while they actually talk about sensors and optics and final print size. Making the optics rating fallacy.
Seriously? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Did you hear that? It was this week loudest laugh from me!
Gesus… I don’t even know what to say for that. I spent over a minute to think something about that but I get nada…
Wow! LOL
I have said it several times. Tony Northrup is one of the worst reviewers on the net. Feels like a pompous Ken Rockwell. Nobody should pay ANY attention to his so-called reviews
+1000000000
Yep +1
> a pompous Ken Rockwell
The word you are looking for is “douchebag”.
yup, nobody likes him – he is so full of his own schit.
The vibe that I’m getting after going through the EosHD and JLWilliams reviews is there is some buyers remorse going on with the M5 mkII. I think this is perfectly understandable if you already have a m43s camera. If you were new to the system the mkII would be almost a no brainer as your first camera but since the sensor is the same old tech there is little reason for an existing customer to upgrade.
Wrong to blame the Lumix X12-35 f/2.8 for chromatic aberration when the wind is moving the branches about like that; that Panny/Leica X-lens tests as world-class excellent and is not known for these defects.
Besides, that is not chromatic aberration we see there but artefact of stitching the pictures together.
No idea why they did not use the Olympus 12-40 f/2.8 Pro which is a kit lens on the E-M5ii, it’s not that it’s better than the X12-35 because it is not, but that it matches the Olympus product for a realistic test.
As later noted, even the slightest vibration upsets the eight Hi-Res 40Mp shots.
Bad test.
Why on earth did they not do a normal (16Mp) shot with the E-M5ii as a control (as should be done with this type of experiment) ? The pixel density of the 4/3 sensor surpasses that of the D810 by a factor of two which means the resultant picture should be even smoother than 36Mp will allow on full frame.
Let the camera take shots in the manner it was intended to be used.
(edit for tpyos)
? If the AOV is the same for D810 and EM5, the higher pixel density doesn’t make the picture smoother. It just means that the lenses need to resolve more to achieve similar line pairs/picture height. As the D810 has more pixels it will resolve more detail, unless you use the HiRes mode. But it is unclear what the true resolution of this mode will be (it is practically moire and aliasing free, which increases the perceived sharpness). Some measurements show about 10%, but that depends on raw processing, sharpening etc.
There’s very clear chromatic aberration.
This girl should review lipsticks, or purses….
I don’t lile to be ad hominem, but I think they are both very much concerned with their looks. Bu their reviews in general are not bad I have to say.
They have a good theme and style to do their reviews. It is just the misinformation and biased opinions that gets better of them when they start comparing and rating things. “Oh, this isn’t as good as the “Full Frame”, I wish this would have “the full frame” dippa daa”.
Exactly lol! Reviews are horrible tbh. Cute grill and stuff, but come on camera reviews srsly?
Tony Northrup is an idiot, Canon & DSLR fanboy, mirrorless hater. just watch hes 25 min OMD-EM 5 MK II technical review he made without even holding that camera in hes hands, yet he blames terrible resolution, softness, lack of PDAF etc.
Spread the hate guys, he and hes grill deserve it for their stupidity.
Well well, lets not call him as Idiot, should we? At least we could have a such respect to him?
While I agree that he has presented us in his videos what a Canon and DSLR fanboy he is, and that he has serious bias against m4/3 etc. I just feel bad for his customers and followers.
And to spread the misinformation (fallacy even) he spreads, it is better not to go to name calling as then his customers and followers just strike back because they trust him, and no one wants to be a fool, so you defend your original choice to the end.
Just like Tony, praised Canon 7D Mk 2 to heavens and when his praised DX0 dropped that camera below Tony’s hated m4/3 cameras, instead admitting that he was wrong and 4/3 sensor is serious format against kino format, he tried to hold on his original claim that 7D Mk 2 is so much better and DX0 has made somekind mistake.
This is why there aren’t any nice girls on the internet. Grow up you misogynistic toad.
Not that I really care, I’m not in the market for a new camera, but if I was, Imaging Resource would be the the most trusted place to get my info, I also visit a few other trusted sites, but initially I’m looking for some hard data base before I proceed to actually using the camera. I have owned enough equipment to know that their reviews are always neutral and full of legitimate data. This Nortrup guy, well I will not say he is a fanboy, but he is an idiot with a good voice that often runs flawed tests with enough over-confidence that he convinces less knowledgeable people of his misinformed findings and creates enough controversy to drive traffic to his site from others who cannot believe what they just heard.
Northrup is the new Ken Rockwell
I actually enjoy reading Ken Rockwell sometimes i find him funny, sometimes not so, but overall he have lots of great stuff to discover on hes site. I enjoy hes gear reviews, photos he takes are good.
Ken Rockwell isn’t as bad at all as some people say he is. But he does have own bias, like all we do. Ken Rockwell is just a one source among others. The best thing is that he writes about small details that most others don’t. As he isn’t in so horry to get review quickly out (then there is dpreview that takes one year to produce a half-baked review).
And then there is the Tony, who has serious biased view against everything that is not 35mm and so many things that isn’t Canon or something about DSLR.
I can’t anymore even look those listings for his videos as I feel so bad about the audience what look those and trust him.
Northrup has a perfect wealthy life….
The guy lost his cred for me, when after constantly using dxomark to justify his criticisms against other system, claiming dxomark was flawed when their findings on 7d2 didn’t match his personal bias. Don’t give him youtube views.
DxOMark’s measurements made me re-test the 7D II with different settings, and my revised findings were completely consistent with their measurements.
The only aspect of DxOMark that I continue to disagree with is the subjective algorithm they use to present an “overall score.” I suggest users disregard this summary and instead look at individual measurements.
Regardless, we have made mistakes and we will make mistakes in the future. We always acknowledge them and correct them.
hahahaha, steve’s digicams review says it has 4k multiple times…. Do you even review?
JLWilliams review comparing the Mark 1 and Mark 2 was excellent. He pointed to the differences in the battery compartment…how many noticed that? Also, his comments about the high pixel imaging were very interesting.
Yes…He is well-read and informative…but very opinionated..but that’s ok, cause he lets you know that it is “his” stance. We all have different needs and likes.
Funny…one of the reasons that I could not wait to sell my EM5 (for an EM1) was the squishy (uncertain), buttons. …tell me that that doesn’t effect your confident picture-taking abilities…but he just breezes over that and says no biggie. It was the most annoying issue with the camera to me. The new positive-feedback clicky buttons sound fantastic!
That video is ridiculous. I didn’t get past the “Olympus needs to produce better lenses, glass matters” comment. Obviously she knows nothing about what is available for M4/3.
Plus she makes the comment after she tells us that she is unhappy with a Panasonic lens that is on the camera. HUH?
The whole thing was half-baked, pretentious and just annoying!
LOL! Did she really say so? Really?! Seriously?
I don’t know why but sometimes I feel little bad for her, because of him. As she is a good spouse and keeps Tony’s side and regards his opinions and sayings. But that is exactly the problem often that people believe that in love you can’t think yourself and have a different opinion about serious things. That is as well the reason why in elections there is no one else allowed to enter to voting booth than the voter himself, because this way spouse or other family member can not force other to vote specific way.
I feel just so bad for that channel, they try to make the good show but then they are so stuck on the “Oh, it is a FULL FRAME dadadadadaa!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHYidejT3KY
So yes, lets start talking about the F##¤#” FULL FRAME!
My m4/3 camera use full frame all the time, because I only shoot 4:3 photos and not 3:2. I use full frame of my 4/3 sensor, THE FULL F¤#¤#” FRAME!
Here’s the problem she’s highlighting–there is no normal zoom that competes with the Sigma 24-105 f4 in sharpness, total light gathered, or chromatic aberration. There’s certainly nothing that approaches the full-frame 24-70s.
In the MFT world, getting that level of image quality requires using the Sigma 18-35 f1.8 APS-C lens and a speed-booster. Unfortunately, it’s not native MFT, so it ends up being clunky, expensive, and you lose autofocus.
We’ll be clearer about it in the full review, but we’re just saying, “Hey, someone, please give me a fast, sharp, normal zoom for MFT.” The current 12-35 and 12-40 just don’t compare well to the full-frame lenses at the same price point.
Yes they do.
Tell you what. I’m going to put a Tamaron standard zoom on my old canon Xsi and make statements about the defects of a canon 7d mk2 with 24-70. Is that OK with you?
Are you getting why this is so objectionable? Your wife is making comments on the quality of Olympus lenses while shooting with a Panasonic lens, and basing her argument on a caveat that is resolved with a basic understanding of the mft platform.
Sometimes you have to just admit the error and move on. She wasn’t implying any of the matters you describe.
Regardless, you are the only reviewer I have ever seen disparage the oly 12-40 in comparison to Canon glass. It’s almost as if you have a grudge to act on.
Hardly credible.
The current 12-40 Pro lens from Olympus doesn’t compare lens wise? What? I could understand if you mean a sensor-lens combo. But the lens?
Care to mention which lenses you are thinking beat the Olympus one in the same feature set/price? Thanks.
Duh, you did mention the Sigma lens… checking some data. Also, is the Sigma weather sealed?
According to SLR Gear, I am not seeing how that Sigma lens you mention even begins to compare to the Olympus MFT pro standard lens.
But maybe we are looking at different lenses.
Ok then:
Sharpness:
Oly: http://slrgear.com/reviews/zproducts/olympus12-40f28m/tloader.htm
Sigma: http://slrgear.com/reviews/zproducts/sigma24-105f4a/ff/tloader.htm
Canon: http://slrgear.com/reviews/zproducts/canon24-70f28l2/tloader.htm
Nikon: http://slrgear.com/reviews/zproducts/nikon24-70f28/tloader.htm
For “blur index” at slr gear the canon and oly are neck and neck, the nikon a little back, the sigma miles back.
Chromatic aberration:
Oly: http://www.lenstip.com/392.5-Lens_review-Olympus_M.Zuiko_Digital_12-40_mm_f_2.8_ED_PRO_Chromatic_and_spherical_aberration.html
Sigma: http://www.lenstip.com/389.5-Lens_review-Sigma_A_24-105_mm_f_4_DG_OS_HSM_Chromatic_and_spherical_aberration.html
Canon: http://www.lenstip.com/358.5-Lens_review-Canon_EF_24-70_mm_f_2.8L_II_USM_Chromatic_aberration.html
Nikon: http://www.lenstip.com/298.5-Lens_review-Nikon_Nikkor_AF-S_24-70_mm_f_2.8G_ED_Chromatic_aberration.html
Oly ahead, followed by Nikon, then Canon and Sigma miles behind.
Price (where I am):
Oly: http://pricespy.co.nz/product.php?p=2181544
Sigma: http://pricespy.co.nz/product.php?p=2289074
Canon: http://pricespy.co.nz/product.php?p=1117157
Nikon: http://pricespy.co.nz/product.php?p=223639
Sure ok, advantage to sigma here. But oly is only 25% behind, far ahead of Nikon, and Canon is 2x the price.
“total light gathered”:
Not sure wth you’re on about with this, nobody else talks about this like you do. I don’t think this idea you have about “total light gathered” being meaningful makes any sense to anyone but you. It’s certainly not something that any website out there benchmarks.
on a Panasonic lens. LOL!
Robin Wong comments on Andrew Reid EOSHD.com:
http://robinwong.blogspot.com.au/
Olympus 12-40 performs better than Pana 12-35 on Oly camera body and gives more accurate result. The review is just off.
Ahhhhhhh Mr and Mrs Upper Classes, aren’t we so well off A.K.A The Northrups…….zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
No thanks.
They actually are upper middle class, wanting to be lower upper class.
I can’t stand their videos anymore after Tony started to use DX0 as proof, “invented” a weird “reverse square inverse law” to backup own lies about FF. And then when DXO suddenly bashes their 7D Mark 2 review results, suddenly the DX0 wasn’t trustworthy but Tony was the correct one because the “reverse square inverse law” and etc etc.
When a man doing such a job does a mistake, he should be man enough to call the mistake and learn from it.
Only reason why m4/3 has worse NOISE quality, is because print magnifications are 2x larger than FF or 1.5x larger than APSC. Make a 1:1 magnification for both those two formats and suddenly ISO 200 looks same, ISO 1600 looks same and ISO 3200 looks same. AMAZING! 100% magnification on computer screen (or TV display) is always magnifying smaller sensor image more, making everything in m4/3 1.5-2x more apparent.
DxO is the best objective source for sensor and lens quality. Which source would you prefer I use? I’d love for their to be another quality source, but I’m not aware of any.
I’ve never said DxO wasn’t trustworthy. When their measurements of the 7D Mk II conflicted with my findings (released prior to their testing), I discovered the conflict was the result of Canon changing their noise reduction in their processing software (prior to Adobe’s release of their raw software). Upon reconfiguring the Canon software, my results were once again consistent with DxO. I released a follow-up video detailing that.
I’ve never heard of “reverse square inverse law”, and I have no idea why you’d attribute that to me.
I totally agree that image quality differences with varying sensor sizes are attributable to the print magnification, and if you print at the same magnification, you’ll get consistent results. I’ve always felt this way, and all of my videos are consistent with this. If you think I disagree with that, then you have misunderstood me.
I could tell MFT users, “You just need to make prints 1/4 the size of full-frame users.” That feels impractical, so my advice is to keep the total light gathered the same (by using a lower ISO), which provides similar results at the same print size. I live by this, and tend to use fast primes on my MFT cameras, rather than the slower zooms that are often acceptable on full-frame cameras.
So, we totally agree with each other on that. But regardless, even if we did disagree about how to compare image quality from different cameras, why would you let that stop you from seeing me test a new camera feature? Spoiler alert: for still life, the E-M5 II solidly beat the massive D810. I was really amazed.
Is it necessary to discuss our finances? How is that relevant or appropriate?
Tony, that’s all good and well. But your credibility is tarnished even further when your wife makes the ridiculous statement that Oly needs better lenses ..”glass matters”. You edited that vid I assume. Such statement can’t even be defended as subjective. It’s blatant ignorance of the product she held in her hand. And there you two are advising. Kind of laughable.
“DxO is the best objective source for sensor and lens quality.”
Not. Not unless they publish in full the test methodology, allowing others to verify the results.
Otherwise, the variance of the results from the cameras with identical sensors should have been an indication to everybody that DxO shouldn’t be really taken seriously.
+1 on your last two points.
MK.82 . . . Your comments are offensive.
I appreciate Tony Northrup’s analysis and insight. Tony adds valuable opinion to photography.
What f***Ing artefacts on the statue’s face? They aren’t artefacts – the EM5 II is actually resolving far more sharp detail than the Nikon. Her criticism of the tree branches is fair (although I don’t feel it looks that bad – just the kind of thing you’d see in any long exposure), but her comment about the glass – ugh!
Exactly!
The E-M5 resolves more from the statue and then she sais it is artifacts!
And then about the lens, Oly body doesn’t correct CA from Pana lens and vice versa!
“Firmware update for the camera body can be carried out using only the camera body.
To update the lens firmware, both camera body and lens are required.
The update procedure varies depending on the combination of the camera body and the lens. The following table describes the update procedure in each combination.”
That is the reason why there is the Joint Firmware Program. So you can use OLYMPUS body to update PANASONIC LENS. It isn’t there that Olympus body would get the knowledge of the panasonic lens CA to correct it!
That is the reason why you want to go and use Pana on Pana and oly on oly! Sorry! If you are pixel peeper then stick on the OEM own lenses! If you are professional, you can swap vice versa!
And what comes to “It is all about glass” yeah, sure it is. Olympus 12-40 is little better than panasonic 12-35 (side by side tests) but it is more falling negligent difference. But the 12-35mm isn’t corrected on olympus body for CA and airy disk. And m4/3 lenses both outresolve twice the any lens you throw on 35mm sensor or such.
When talking about optics, lets talk about optics and lets leave sensor out of the biased opinion. And even then oly and pana lenses beats any lens you really get from canon, nikon or sigma. Only few lens from Zeiss beats those but you are paying over ten fold prices and you are using primes instead zooms.
Just throwing the famous “it is all about glass” is like “don’t crop your image” or “don’t use feet zoom” and other similar BS round rules. It goes exactly to same place as “85mm is the only correct way to get portrait, it doesn’t distort your perspective!” (stupid, it is your distance from subject that change the perspective, not the focal length!).
So sure, it is about glass but you can’t get any better glass for your D810 for the price, for the features and for the quality. Period!
And landscape photographers not using a 1 second shutter speed? HAH!
Lots of us use long exposures! Because we are not pixel peepers or afraid of some motion blur!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HozwEuctx_U
Like look samples from them! They know how to make a review of the HR mode! They know the technical limit but still they know how to make landscape photographs WITH A MOVING SUBJECT!
Admin, I told you about Iridient 3.0 supporting the 64 MP raws from the EM5 MKII last week! What gives! 🙂
Artifacts on the statue? What?! At least not as shown in the video. @ Tony Northrup- care to have a web link with a 100% crop of the statue artifacts? I am not seeing any in the video, but I see more detail.