It is not a secret that sooner or later Olympus will make a Micro Four Thirds camera that will be on par with the best Olympus Four Thirds camera (which currently is the [shoplink 17163 ebay]E-5[/shoplink]). But what will happen with Four Thirds lenses? They do not focus as fast on m43 camera as the new m43 lenses. The answer is coming from a new Olympus patent. It discloses an adapter that has built-in lenses. Those lenses will help Four Thirds lenses to have a much faster contrast autofocus. You can read a google translation of the Japanese patent at Egami (Click here).
It’s quite a complex design and It is up to our expert readers to understand the tiny technical details. My work now is to try to get some info about the Olympus PRO m43 camera that will replace the [shoplink 17163 ebay]E-5[/shoplink]…maybe next year? 😉
50 Responses
Such a adapter would be great, can’t wait to use my 11-22mm and 50-200mm lenses with fast autofocus on the pen.
Good to hear that olympus can move on from 4/3 system
It looks like a system to get over the slow to respond motors in 4/3 AF lenses – by incorporating a approximately 1:1 focal length adapter with internal focussing. This would probably only cover a small focus range – but this is really all that is needed for this purpose. In principle it could make existing 4/3 lenses almost as fast as MSC lenses on m43 systems. Whether this is worth it given the extra optical complexity/weight etc – and as there must be some degradation in performance, we shall see – if it actually gets produced.
Interesting – so in fact it should be able to focus MF lenses as well?
Whooa, now you talking 🙂 I want one 🙂
Maybe, like the Nikon TC16a, with this I did use the MF Nikon lenses at my F-801 aud it worked pretty good! But, there is no MF 4/3 lens 🙁
No but OM lenses and Konica Hexar lenses (and maybe others) can easily be adapted to 4/3. There are some very exotic OM lenses such as the 90/2 and 100/2, or the 24/3.5 shift lens… giving those lenses AF capability is a very interesting concept.
I think the main goal is to allow PDAF on the ZD lenses though. Using the ZD 50/2 with light-speed AF could be really delicious.
As far as I can understand from the article the penalties would be about 1/10th of a stop less light reaching the sensor and 5% increase in effective FL – not so bad.
> slow to respond motors in 4/3 AF lenses
USM of Olympus aka SWD like in 12-60mm is anything else than slow.
Problem is incompatibility between focusing system designed to directly move focus to correct distance and contrast AF’s need for iterative focusing by gradually moving focus (+need to determine right focusing direction first) because of its incapability to directly tell how much and to which direction focus must be moved.
With good sensor read out speed+focus algorithm processing speed like in GH2 12-60mm focuses at quite decent speed but focus doing multiple consecutive fast jumps (instead of smooth constant focus move of C-AF lenses) before settling surely wears focusing system faster.
Probably only worth it for owners of the top pro tele lenses, like the 150/2.0, 300/2.8, 90-250/2.8.
no it will be good for all all lenses – but it must be the best optical quality known to man! – or else it kinda defetes the point of placing a £7000 in front of it!
Very interesting. If (CDAF) focusing is assigned to the adapter then such a system can focus ANY lens, including manual lenses.
Exactly, that’s what I was thinking too.
But I kinda worried about battery consumption so to get this going the camera must be a pro (ie with E-3 batt for example)
Power consumption should be less than what is required to focus a large lens.
+100
Oh YEH—- OF CORSE!!!!
I think i just wet myself…..
This will cause me to buy an E-P3. Finally. I love my E-30, but I want the 12mm F2.0 and I want to use all of my lenses, but don’t want to sacrifice on focus speed.
Finally, with this adapter, there’s no reason to hang on to the E-30.
Well I’d rather see a Olympus E-50, to upgrade my E-3. The E-5 is a bit to expensive to my taste.
But the adapter could make my current lenses workable on the E-P3.
That’s what I was thinking as well. If this patent becomes an actual product, it’s unlikely that the E-50 would be a necessary iteration as those customers could go to E-P3. Unfortunately, because there are so many lens elements, internal reflection will cause some loss in image quality. That can’t be completely avoided, though it will be mitigated to some degree by good coatings. If this adapter costs 400 dollars, though, it’s no deal, because the E-P3 doesn’t cost that much less than the E-5 if the E-P3 needs a 400 dollar adapter to match the E-5’s focus performance on standard 4/3 glass.
This is one of those razor handle products- they need to sell it practically at cost so that the micro four thirds bodies will sell, and there aren’t enough 4/3 users to justify a loss on the adapter.
Hmmm…
I’d say better than nothing but I’d still prefer the IR-AF solution we discussed here in the run-up to the launch of the three new PENs.
Maybe 4 new Pens or even 5. It seems Olympus may have adopted a refresh each year approach. So they need to add an enthusiast one based on the P3 replacing the built in flash with a view finder, and later a Pro, IMO I think they are along way off for a real Pro.
This will cause me to buy an E-P3. Finally. I love my E-30, but I want the 12mm F2.0 and I want to use all of my lenses, but don’t want to sacrifice on focus speed.
Finally, with this adapter, there’s no reason to hang on to the E-30.
___
As long as you don’t need a properly working C-AF, that is. Purchased my E-P Lite 3 last week, but I certainly will keep my E-5 sand the 50-200 SWD for my dog action.
Don’t think an µFT camera will enable me to capture pictures like these…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/63427925@N00/sets/72157626321748071/
…in the near future.
That seemed by far the more elegant solution. One can speculate however that Panny would never do such a sensor with modified pixels – too few units for the cost.
With this solution OLy can make the adapter in-house, but it will cost like an expensive lens . for a system that has become an expensive legacy one.
please talk more about the possibility of focusing manual focus lenses
how could this be possible? the lens is at infinity and then the camera defocus it? could be used with canon FD mount? does fd mount work in 4/3 cameras?
i have a canon fd 50mm f1.4 that is good at f2!
would buy it … that 12-60 lens… needs something like this
50-200 lens is also good to have or anyother manual focus lens.
would it work with zooms? or only parfocal zooms?
“please talk more about the possibility of focusing manual focus lenses”
The translation isn’t great, but the manual focus lenses still need to be adjusted manually to aproximately being in focus & the AF of the adapter will complete it, fast & accurately. That’s how I understand it anyhow.
Pentax had an AF 1.7x adapter when the shift from A lenses to AF lenes. So it has been done and works well. With this adapter you focused with the manual lens to the ball park and the adapter touched up the focus.
So this could be the same. Or it may have enough play that it could do all the focusing. Hopefully Olypus will keep it un wired, so it will Auto focus all manual lenses. That would beat the focus peaking feature that Sony offered.
It looks like it will add some glass surfaces between the lens and the sensor. This cannot possibly be good for the image quality. More glass layers usually imply some image degradation. In the best case, this image degradation is too small to be significant for most photos.
M43Photo@ Yes, i think also this.
I have an idea.
How about an E-7?
Nah first a E-50 ;), then the E7.
Make that mirrorless with m4/3 mount and EVF because 4/3 mount isn’t forwards compatible.
Olympus can’t challenge Canikon by playing Canikon’s game with same old Canikon’s rules so they should look to future. That’s why Sony is moving away from moving SLR mirror design which limits continuous frame rate and forces limited features/size of viewfinder.
Oh yes! Yet another milk cow with ancient sensor inside, please!
Now that’s talking I like to hear. Or even better – what about 3 tier 4/3 mirror bodies with unheard of feature set (Olympus can do it) and new or improved sensor. Or at least some other body, which takes 4/3 lenses natively (SLT design comes to my mind).
Hey Admin – What about super 4/3 mentioned few months ago – you promised more info?
Or, how about an E-m5…
Take E-5.
Replace mount with m4/3rds mount.
Remove mirror.
Add high-resolution, fast-refresh-rate electronic viewfinder.
Add e-p3 processor(s).
Sell it.
I think people forget that Olympus 4/3rds & m4/3rds aren’t just another arbitrary sensor format. That format allows for a 2x crop over full-frame which means much smaller, lighter zoom lenses. Olympus needs to keep marketing such features.
Olympus owns the 4/3rds sensor market (which is already populated by a full-array of capable lenses). There are advantages to smaller sensors and the 4/3 standard just happens to have the best populated ecosystem.
Since compatibility is only one-way (4/3 -> m4/3), it makes sense to retire the 4/3 mount and look for good ways to adapt existing lenses.
This will cause me to by a Nikon. Honestly, does Oly expect me to stick my 14-35 f2 on an adapter that adds more air to glass surfaces and degrades my images just to stick it onto a Pen! WTF! If they don’t keep making a high end native 4/3 camera I’m selling my SHG glass.
We don’t know what they are doing. It could be the go the Sony route, and have a “pro” m43 with adapter that allows fast focusing, plus another regular Ex body. Wait and see.
I hope that’s what they do. Sony gets a lot of negativity, but with their current NEX-7 and their phase-detect adapter, they are starting to get my attention.
I hope this adapter makes it to the market, and performs like we all hope it will.
I have a few SHG lenses…they are amazing lenses. It would be a shame to lose them to planned obsolescence.
Very interesting patent. I wonder how many stops of light are lost- I guess 1/2 to 1?
It showed a f2.8 to f2.95 that is less the 1/4 of a stop; but it is a only patent submition, remember the OM to 4/3 converter patent that made the focal length 1/2 and added some stops; but never say the light of day.
1/4 of a stop from f/2.8 is f/3.2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-number
Having rechecked the math, it is actually closer to 1/8th of a stop. In most scenarios this would be negligible.
Compared to f/2.8, f/2.95 represents 1/10th of a stop light loss.
it is 1/10th of a stop
The way I think it will work is: The lens will achieve a ballpark focus (it will be a quick and single movement of the lens) then the adapter will nail the focus from there.
I don’t believe there is the room for full focus. I think it might be possible to use with MF lenses. But it would be a limited range depending on the lens used.
This would change the magnification of the lens. As you can see from the documents “0.98 to 1.1 times magnification”
This would be a very cool adapter to have. I also think it might be included in the replacement to the E-5. This might be the bridge linking 4/3 to u4/3.
If the lens has to achieve ballpark focus in the same old way then it’ll still be pretty slow. The 50-200 SWD hunts like crazy.
I’m really excited about this. I have some very nice “legacy” four thirds glass (what a crazy thing to call a 4 year old lens like the 50-200 swd…) that I keep thinking about selling, since it just doesn’t focus properly on micro four thirds’ bodies. I keep hoping for the NEX style focus adapter from Olympus, and this may be it.
Of course, if it’s priced like the NEX adapter, it’s still going to be hard to swallow.
Yes I think it will be expensive, and more importantly it will be part of the Pro package, so say two years.
At that point Oly will have a coherent system. The 4/3 lenses are big but they are telecentric and they are zooms.
m4/3 Oly instead is going a totally different way, small primes, not telecentric, firmware corrected.
By comparison Panny is specialising in video compatible zooms – it all makes good sense.
Admin, pity that you don’t have rumors about alternative sensors for Oly. It is still the big question mark for future developments.
Finally an E-50 might be an icing on the cake, for those who want a more traditional way to use the ‘legacy’ lenses. Seems a good plan.
Yes, but that telecentricity also puts light down straighter so that the microlenses on the sensor put it right down on the photosite. Non-telecentric lenses are less desirable for digital, as the photosites away from the center of the frame get less efficient illumination, and it shows up as vignetting.
its the opposite of that
First it pans the focussing element inside the adapter then based on that information moves the lens focussing system
I can see the point of this. However, I still think that a system to move the sensor small amounts in the direction of the incoming light at very high speed would be optically much simpler – since it leaves the lens to operate as it is designed to and also overall much cheaper. Of course it would only be an option for a new body – but I expect this will cost the good proportion of a body anyway…
Think about it. Having fast auto-focus in an adapter fits all previous micro four thirds bodies, a change to a new body for fast auto-focus does not.
It would be easier if Olympus didn’t make 43 cameras to begin with, only to abandon them to make m43 cameras. But logic and foresight have never been Olympus traits, as a pile of abandoned systems testify to this.