Toronto Photography Meetup Group

just a quick question, is this type of camera (m4/3) supposed to be what the nikon evil (electronic viewfinder interchangeable lenses) system is supposed to be like? ie. dslr sensor but no mirror/viewfinder system?

perhaps i will wait for that to come out...

yup; the only difference being M43 cameras exist.

...with no reliable rumors for the Nikon m43 equivalent either (if there is such a thing as a reliable rumor).

Truthfully, the only rumor I have heard (not that I have been listening too hard) is that Nikon may come out with a large sensored compact. I.e. smaller sensor than the m43, but much larger sensor than compact p&s cameras.

haha - in that case, while impulsively holding my money at the edge of my wallet, i will wait.

No, the Nikon system is not using a DSLR sensor if the leaked patents are correct the Sensor Nikon will be using has a 2.7x crop factor from 35mm, noticeably smaller than m43's sensor.

Now if they came make it as small as the LX3 I'll be very interested.

Look at the Sony NEX5, it's only marginally larger than the LX3 with the 16/2.8 mounted.

Look at the Sony NEX5, it's only marginally larger than the LX3 with the 16/2.8 mounted.[/quote]

Unfortunately as soon as you put a bigger lens on that thing it becomes a lens with a body that happens to be attached to it. Besides, if the sample photos on Dpreview is anything to go by, the combo of the NEX5 and 16mm is producing astonishingly soft images anything below f8. And this coming from someone who barely has the eye for photography yet.
I hope it just happens to be a bad lens problem or a firmware problem. It does no one favors if the NEX5 bombs because of bad images...(though low light shots looks good)

good sample on e-pl1 hd video on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5cvhCV83mc

Take a look at the new sample gallery of the 16, it's quite good even wide-open. The original samples were from the pre-production 16's, which were dogs in comparison to the updated 16's Sony's shopping around now.

Are you talking about the sample pictures that came up on dpreview a day or two ago? Or Sony's own samples? I have only looked at the dpreview ones which says it's production spec lens.

The new ones which went up yesterday at DPReview. A little light on the sharpening, but they're quite decent even wide open. There's no issue there that proper JPEG settings won't solve.

The lens looks better than the m43 17/2.8. Pretty damned good for a $200 lens overall.

whoa, $200? That's pretty sweet price. I wish m43 lenses had cheap lenses, to go with their expensive ones (Edit: Their kit lenses still seem a little expensive...for kit lenses that is. And a general jump from kit lens prices to over $1000CDN? hmm...)

Btw, http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/SonyNex5Nex3/ review for the NEX5/3 is up.
In basic turns,
As a p&s it's a good camera.
Interface sucks for PASM.
High ISO IQ is great, but you can't really get at them unless you go out of P&S mode, which means going into PASM mode...
Some of the other features such as sweep panorama, HDR etc. are also neat but would need to go into PASM mode.
Meaning, somewhere in the NEX's is a good camera but it's been bastardized by the interface.
Oh well.
At least the NEX proves you can make a good small camera out of large sensors.

There's several cheap m43 lenses. Only the primes, the 7-14, 14-140 and 9-18 are actually expensive.

The kit lenses and the 45-200 are very reasonably priced. The 17/2.8's a bit pricey but not too bad (overpriced for what is essentially a slow and average-performing wide/normal though)

Ok, I finally caved in and bought and E-PL1 (black of course). I already bought the Panny 20mm F/1.7 a couple of weeks back. I did test it out a bit with the charge on the battery (but it's charging now) and I definitely will be using this camera a lot

One quick question, what are you all using for camera straps? I'm not a fan of the strap that it came with.

I tried a few things, but have for the moment settled on the stock strap that came with my E-P1, though I added a couple of quick-release snap clips salvaged off an old vintage strap that was otherwise falling apart. This lets me ditch the neck strap and switch to wrist strap (I got a Gordy's from http://www.gordyscamerastraps.com/ ) quickly, as I also attached a snap clip onto its o-ring.

I'd like to get an old-school leather strap with neck pad, and see nice ones on ebay, but am in in rush right now.

I'm using the stock strap but I ran both ends of it through a spiral key ring, then attached that to the left side strap loop. This leaves the shutter side completely free.

I'm using a wrist strap from a Stylus Epic on my G1 after a neckstrap incident (G1 and my somewhat rare Nikkor-S.C 5cm f1.4 in Leica mount went for a spill after the strap caught on someone's bag, dented the filter ring on a 55 year old lens).

UNless you're using big & heavy glass, you don't need a lot of strap on the m43 cameras.

Hmm, here's my issue. Where the strap connects (as in on the right side of this picture) to the body near the shutter release, it is makes it difficult to press the shutter. I have to fold the strap down against the side of the body to hold the camera comfortably. I'll have to look for more of a narrow and pliable strap or just have a strap connection on the left side.

Taken in Orillia today.
E-PL1 with Canon FD 50mm 1.4

Agreed. I use a Gordy wrist strap:

Olympus 14-150 review out @ dpreview:

http://www.dpreview.com/lensreviews/oly ... 4-5p6_o20/


Vistek pricing:

http://www.vistek.ca/store/CameraLenses ... -lens.aspx

So I've been using my GF1 with 20mm pancake and 45-200 telephoto and I'm really enjoying this system. The quality of the photos are superb and I have no hesitation in leaving my Canon system at home when going out for family outings and street shooting.

The only limitations I have found thus far are:

1. On camera flash metering - the system doesn't seem to be very good at metering exposure with it's on camera flash. It's very inconsistent -- I get a lot of blown out and underexposed images with the flash. I've alleviated it somewhat by using spot metering but it's still troublesome.
2. Focus point determination. I tend to use one point focusing with the focus area set to it's minimum but it is still difficult for the camera to pinpoint where I want to focus. As a result when shooting difficult subjects (my daughter moving around) I will often get shots that are not focused on the intended subject.
3. System choosing a shutter speed that's too slow - resulting in camera shake. I've discussed this one before but I wish there was a firmware update allowing the user to set the minimum shutter speed for some of the creative camera modes.

But overall it's a great system .. loving it!!

Oh and one thing I would highly recommend is turning off continuous focusing for taking video. It will save you a lot of frustration.

With regard to 3 have you tried Shutter priority, Auto ISO and setting the default ISO to get the fstop range you want for the situation. In the same lighting a higher default ISO obviously gives a higher fstop. I am using a using an E-PL1, but I assume the panasonic has the same capability.

The four photos I recently posted in post candid shots were done this way, however I left the default ISO at the factory setting and only just now thought of changing it to get some control over fstop range. I did however test this before posting.

But yah a firmware update for this would be nice.

Yes, there are definitely workarounds such as using Shutter Priority mode or Manual mode or even dialing down exposure compensation in Aperture Priority mode but none are ideal.

The issue is really with auto iso or intelligent iso which really isn't that intelligent since the system should be smart enough to know that the shutter speed should be the reciprocal of at least 2x (crop factor) multiplied by any given focal length. In the case of the 20mm pancake lens it should be at 1/40 of a second and bumping up the iso but the system routinely uses 1/30 of a second which can be too slow since you don't have the benefit of bracing the camera as easily as a dslr.

Not a huge deal but rather a pet peeve but I would welcome a firmware update to give more control of this setting.

Oh, and this is only a problem for me in Aperture Priority mode which is normally where I am for family outings in low(ish) light conditions since I want to control depth of field and I don't have the time to fiddle with other settings (since my family has become less and less patient with me shooting them constantly ) When street shooting I'm normally in Manual mode where I can fiddle around a bit more.

I hear you, that is the the biggest thing I miss about moving from the G9 with the CHDK to the e-pl1.

Bought the Fotodiox Canon EF to m4/3 adapter for my E-PL1. It's actually pretty good quality. The Canon zoom lenses seem a bit tight, but the primes are a perfect fit.

Just the mount on camera:

The 35L mounted:

The 70-200L F/2.8 IS mounted.

Itsaphoto, can you confirm that when mounted on m43 bodies, you have absolutely no aperture control on EF lenses (notwithstanding the canon body dof button trick, which is more of a cludge)?

Correct. The adapters from Fotodiox are simply a mechanical mount.

Thanks. I knew that, but didn't want anyone reading this thread to get the wrong idea.