Using older flash units

People who have previously used another camera system may have an old flash unit lying around. Chances are that you can still use them with your new Micro Four Thirds system.

Using a spare flash unit, rather than the built in on board flash, has many advantages. First of all, the dedicated flash unit usually has significantly more power, and can be used from a larger distance.

There is also the effect of having the flash further away from the lens, which means that you are less likely to get pictures with red eyes, and also makes the shadows somewhat nicer. Last, but not least, the external flash units can often be tilted, so that you can bounce the light off a white ceiling or wall. This will usually give much better lightning when taking pictures of people, as the light comes from a larger area, i.e., the ceiling or wall, and not from a single source.

Here are a couple of old flash units. Let's see how they can be used on the Panasonic Lumix GH1.

To the left is the Metz Mecablitz 36C-2, and to the right is the Nikon Speedlight SB-22s.

The Metz flash unit only has one connecting pin, and hence can only be triggered by the camera. No other communication is possible. The Nikon flash unit, on the other hand, has some more pins, and is capable of autofocus assist light and TTL. However, as this is a rather old flash, these functions can not be used on newer Nikon cameras, and certainly not on Micro Four Thirds cameras.

What can still be used, though, is the auto-function. The auto-function is a bit like TTL, except that the flash measures the light coming back from the subject, and cuts off the light when the exposure is sufficient. In TTL mode, the camera measures the amount of light coming back from the subject Through The Lens (TTL), and shuts off the flash at the correct exposure.

Since there is no communication between the flash and the camera, the flash does not know the ISO and aperture settings on the camera. So you need to give the flash directions manually. The picture shows the Metz flash rear panel, set in auto mode:
In this case, the ISO sensitivity is set to 100, the zoom is set to 85mm, which corresponds to 42mm on Micro Four Thirds. With this setting, the aperture can be set to f/8 (yellow), f/4 (green) or f/2 (red auto mode). Adjusting the ISO slider will give other aperture possibilities.

On the rear panel, you can also see that in this setting, with f/4, ISO 100 and 85mm zoom, the maximum range of the flash is approximately eight meters.

When using the flash in bounce mode, i.e., bouncing the light off a white surface, you generally want to have a wide angle flash zoom, and the effective range becomes smaller.

As for the Nikon flash, the rear panel settings are quite similar:
Again I have selected ISO 100, and with the selected auto mode, the usable aperture is f/2.8. The mode selector can be adjusted, to yield f/4, f/5.6 and f/8 as well, albeit with lower maximum distance as the aperture gets smaller.

Here is the Nikon flash in use, on Panasonic Lumix GH1:
The settings are: ISO 100, f/5.6, 1/160 second, manual exposure mode (M). The lens is the Panasonic Lumix G 45-200mm f/4-5.6 set at 45mm zoom.

I used this combination to take this picture, bouncing the flash off the white ceiling:
This picture showing the Pentax K10D camera with the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 lens, is not very interesting, but the exposure is good. Also, notice that the shadows are soft, due to bouncing the flash light off the white ceiling.

If you use this flash setup, and notice that the images consistently get too dark, then select a slightly larger aperture on the camera, as compared with what the flash rear panel says. And vice versa if the images consistently get too light.

Flash units can be used like this for virtually any camera, of course, as long as you can manually control the ISO, aperture and shutter. You will usually want to set the shutter fairly fast, e.g., 1/60 second, when using an external flash. This is to get a good balance of ambient and flash light in the picture. Normally, you will also need to set the white balance to "flash", to avoid the wrong colour balance.

Warning

Some older flash guns use a high voltage trigger, and could potentially damage the circuitry of the camera. Here is a list to check before using your old flash.

Panasonic GH1 exposure, nightscenes

I have noted that the Panasonic GH1 consistently gives too dark exposures in night scenes, or more generally, in scenes with high contrast, large difference between the light and dark parts of the image.

Here is an example scene, shot with two different cameras. Panasonic GH1 top, and Pentax K10D bottom.

Panasonic GH1

Pentax K10D

Both cameras were set in "P" mode, auto white balance, and multi segment exposure metering. The field of view was 200mm (film camera equivalent), with aperture f/6.7, ISO 400. The JPEG images were used straight from the camera, with rescaling and a little bit of sharpening.

As you can see straight away, the Pentax exposure is much more usable, even if the white balance could have been better. But in terms of white balance, this is a very trick situation anyway, with artificial lights.

Let's compare the JPEG histograms, taken from the Gimp image processing software:

Here it is very apparent that the Pentax has a more useful exposure. The Panasonic exposure appears to be designed to avoid blown highlights, while the Pentax exposure puts more weight on preserving details in the shadows.

Highlight details

Let's see how the highlights compare. Here are 100% crop from the same area in both pictures:

Panasonic GH1

Pentax K10D

As is apparent, Panasonic exposes less, and hence is able to preserve more details in the highlights. However, to achieve this, a lot of detail in the darker parts of the picture, which makes up the most of the area, is lost.

Appendix

The lenses used were the Panasonic Lumix G HD 14-140mm f/4-5.8 @ 100mm, and the Pentax DA* 50-135mm f/2.8 @ 135mm. The camera was on tripod during both exposures. The exposures were around a couple of seconds, with image stabilization turned off. You can see that the Panasonic lens is much sharper, even if it is less stopped down. This is quite a feat for a 10x zoom. On the other hand, the Pentax lens is a faster lens, which implies other compromises in the design.

Pentax PK to Four Thirds adapter

Previously, I've looked at an adapter for Nikon F lenses. Let's continue with a Pentax K-mount lens adapter.

This ring is an adapter for using Pentax K lenses on a Four Thirds mount. It is a crude adapter ring, with no aperture stop down functionality, and no electrical contacts. The adapter adds 7mm of spacing. The packet reads "Olympus 4/3-PK". The adapter can be bought for around US$15 on various auction sites.

Naturally, this adapter is made for use with a Four Thirds mount, so it cannot be put directly on a Micro Four Thirds camera. You will need another adapter stacked between them. I used the Panasonic DMW-MA1 Four Thirds to Micro Four Thirds adapter, but the Olympus MMF1 would have done the same job, since they are functionally similar.

Here are both adapters laid out, with the Pentax 50mm f/1.4 lens behind them.

When stacked together, the adapters allow for mounting Pentax K lenses to a Micro Four Thirds camera. You can see this done in the picture below, with the Pentax 50mm f/1.4 mounted to a Panasonic Lumix GH1.

Note that Pentax K lenses with an aperture ring are most suited for this use. If there is no aperture ring on the lens, then it is impossible to use an aperture smaller than the max, which is f/1.4 in this case. That makes the lens difficult to use. Focusing must be done manually, of course.

There are also adapters for Pentax K lenses to be mounted directly on Micro Four Thirds cameras. They tend to be somewhat more expensive, since they are larger, and also because they were introduced more recently.

The two legacy adapters I have explored so far, Nikon F and Pentax K, represent merely scratching the surface. There are adapters that can be used to mount a wide variety of lenses to Micro Four Thirds cameras. From high end Leica M lenses, to crude surveillance camera lenses.

Market shares in Japan

Update: I have compiled newer statistics based on 2010, which supersede this material.

The Japan market shares are usually published every year. The figures comprise system camera units sold in Japan, mostly DSLRs, but the new Micro Four Thirds cameras are included as well. Only the 20 camera models with the largest sold volumes are included in the statistics. Other camera models, with less sales than these, are in the "Others" category.

I have concatenated the 2009 statistics (as at Dec 23rd) with the 2008 statistics, to be able to see the development better:



To make it easier to digest, I have split the figures into camera systems:



Before starting to comment on these figures, it is useful to note that the "Others" category is larger in 2009. This means that the volume of the smallest camera models has increased. We don't know how large the volume of various camera systems are here, but it is reasonable to guess that we would find some more Olympus, Sony and Nikon models in the 2009 "Others" category.

Canon has held their market share remarkably well. It is also worth noting that the full frame camera Canon 5D Mark II has a fairly high market share at 2.1%.

Nikon appears to have lost significant market shares, which must be very bad news for them. On the other hand, it is reasonable to guess that they have somewhat more volume in the "Others" category in 2009, with, e.g., the Nikon D300 and Nikon D700.

Sony must also be very disappointed, with less than 50% of the 2008 market shares. Again, though, they probably have more camera models in "Others" in 2009.

Pentax have succeeded with their strategy of launching entry models packed with features.

Olympus have only got one Four Thirds model in the 2009 list of the twenty most sold camera models, compared with three in the 2008 list. On the other hand, the E-P1 camera has been very popular, and made up for the lost Four Thirds units.

The Micro Four Thirds system has a total of 11.5% of the new sales in Japan in 2009, which I think is very remarkable. After all, the system was launched in 2008, and only two small players in the system camera market are behind it.

2007

For the fiscal year 2007 (actually only January through November), I could only find DSLR sales in summary form: Nikon 43.3%, Canon 39.9% and Pentax 6.3%, with the other producers being smaller.

2006

This table contains DSLR market shares in Japan by December 2006, for the largest ten camera models. I find it hard to believe that the D40 has already captured 15.5% of the total market in December 2006, since it was introduced the same month. However, this table might have been adjusted for the introduction time of each model.



Summary 2006-2009

All of this information can be summarized into one table, but please be aware that the numbers are not entirely comparable from year to year. Still, there is a trend to be seen.



2005-2009 from another source

BCNranking has published statistics for the three most sold brands within interchangeable lens cameras, meaning DSLRs and hybrid systems like Micro Four Thirds. This table shows the same trend as the other material:



We can see that while Canon has had a stable marked share the most recent years, they have actually had a significant decline when looking back five years. Also, Nikon had a good period around 2007, probably due to the launch of D40, but has not been able to sustain the growth.

Panasonic is the big surprise in 2009, with a third place due to the Micro Four Thirds bodies, probably mostly the G1, having been on the market for the whole 2009.