Overview of Olympus cameras

Following up my overview of Panasonic cameras, here is a presentation of the Olympus cameras, with a summary of their main features and differences.

While Panasonic released the very first Micro Four Thirds camera, the Lumix G1, back in 2008, it was Olympus who first made a real impact with their retro styled E-P1. Olympus have always drawn on their legacy by calling their compact M4/3 cameras "PENs", referring to the Olympus Pen half frame cameras from the 1960's and onwards. Also, their SLR styled cameras are called "OM-D", referring to the compact, reliable and successful series of film based Olympus OM SLR cameras from the 1970's.

These two lines of cameras make up their current offerings:

Camera	Olympus OM-D E-M1	Olympus OM-D E-M5	Olympus PEN E-P5	Olympus PEN E-PL5	Olympus PEN E-PM2
Price	$1500	$1000	$1000	$600	$400
Announced	Sep 10th, 2013	Feb 8th, 2012	May 10th, 2013	Sep 17th, 2012	Sep 17th, 2012
Dimensions	130 × 97 × 63mm	122 × 89 × 43mm	122 × 69 × 37mm	111 × 64 × 38mm	110 × 64 × 34mm
Weight	497g	425g	420g	325g	269g
Style	SLR	SLR	Compact	Compact	Compact
EVF	Yes	Yes	Optional	Optional	Optional
Tilt LCD	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
PDAF	Yes	No	No	No	No
Focus peaking	Yes	No	Yes	No	No
Built in flash	No	No	Yes	No	No
In a nutshell	Weatherproof, pro ergonomics, 4/3 lens compatability	Weatherproof, retro design	Enthusiast friendly, but expensive	Compact, useful features	Very compact, more stripped of features
Body

Is the Leica 25mm a portrait lens?

Portrait lenses have traditionally had a focal length of around 85mm on the classic 135 film format. On a Four Thirds sensor, that corresponds to about 42mm, which explains why most kit zoom lenses stop at 42mm.

In addition to the focal length, though, the portrait lenses typically also have a fast aperture, at least f/1.8. The Olympus 45mm f/1.8 comes very close, and is in fact the first real portrait lens for Micro Four Thirds. It is a very good lens, and at an affordable price.

However, some may want an even faster aperture, for better background blur and bokeh. So it may be tempting to turn to the Leica 25mm f/1.4. After all, it is currently the fastest (in terms of aperture) autofocus capable Micro Four Thirds lens.

Olympus 45mm f/1.8 and Leica 25mm f/1.4

To test how these lenses perform as portrait lenses, I have tried to photograph a static face, a statue. The statue has natural proportions, i.e., the size of the head is the same as for a genuine human. I focused on the eyes, which is the common thing to do for portraits. Here they are:

Olympus 45mm f/1.8 at f/1.8, focus distance about 1m, 3 feet	Leica 25mm f/1.4 at f/1.4, focus distance about 0.6m, 2 feet

To better see the differences, I have superimposed both images into one animated GIF:

What we see here is that at 25mm, and at a closer focus distance, the face becomes distorted: The chin and nose looks bigger, and the eyebrows look a bit asymmetric.

Review: Porsche Design Mikado Pen

This article deviates from what I normally write, since it is not primarily about photography. However, I have included some details about photography here as well. For example, methods for product photography, and the effects of diffraction. If you are mostly interested in photo, you could skip to these section at the end of the article.

It is quite common to see owners of high value brand names to licence them out to other manufacturers. From photography, one of the most common examples is Leica. They are allowing Panasonic to produce cameras and lenses with the Leica brand name. This helps Panasonic sell more photographic equipment, while allowing Leica to capitalize on their brand name. Everybody wins. See the Panasonic Leica 25mm f/1.4 below as an example of Leica branding of premium Panasonic lenses:



In the premium car world, we see the same with many high end brands. For example, Ferrari is licensing their name to toys, electronic products, clothes and more. This surely generates a lot of short term profit for them, but risks lessening the perceived value of their brand.

Porsche is doing the same with their Porsche Design series. However, unlike Ferrari, they are mostly putting out high quality premium items. One example is their pen series, which is produced by Faber-Castell.

Overview of Panasonic cameras

It was Panasonic who released the very first Micro Four Thirds camera, the Lumix G1, back in 2008. While it was a very ergonomic camera with photography oriented functions and one of the best kit zoom lenses in its class, it never made much impact. It was not until Olympus released the retro looking E-P1 that the format took off.

Since this time, they have released a number of cameras. Here is an overview of the current models.

Camera	Lumix GH3	Lumix G6	Lumix GX7	Lumix GM1	Lumix GF6
Price	$1000	$600	$900	$750	$500
Announced	Sep 17th, 2012	April 24th, 2013	Aug 1st, 2013	Oct 17th, 2013	April 9th, 2013
Dimensions	133 × 93 × 82mm	122 × 85 × 71mm	123 × 71 v 55mm	99 × 55 × 30mm	111 × 65 × 38mm
Weight	550g	390g	402g	204g	323g
Style	SLR	Compact SLR	Rangefinder	Compact	Compact
EVF	Yes	Yes	Yes, tilting	No	No
Tilt LCD	Articulated	Articulated	Tilting	No	Tilting
Flash hotshoe	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Focus peaking	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
IBIS	No	No	Yes	No	No
In a nutshell	Weatherproof, pro ergonomics, the best video	Compact, value for money, good on features	Retro rangefinder style	Very compact, retry style	Compact, enthusiast friendly
Body

Lumix Leica DG Summilux 25mm f/1.4 Review Part 2

In the first instalment of my review, I talked about the basic stuff, like the focus speed, sharpness and bokeh. Here, I take a closer look at other aspects of the lens.

Focus breathing

The Leica 25mm f/1.4 features internal focusing, like most other autofocus Micro Four Thirds lenses. This makes the focus fast and virtually noiseless. However, there is a downside: The field of view changes as the focus is shifted. This gives rise to the focus breathing problem: As the focus moves, objects in the frame appear to change size, to be breathing.

Lumix Leica DG Summilux 25mm f/1.4 Review Part 1

Back in the 1960's, when SLR cameras started to become available to the general public, one could essentially only buy prime (non-zoom) lenses. The cheapest lenses were the ones which were short, but still long enough, in terms of focal length, to be constructed without a complicated retrofocal design.

The cameras generally had a register distance of around 45mm, which means that any lens shorter than this will be more expensive to make. Hence, a popular segment became lenses around 50mm. These could be made fast, i.e., with a large maximum aperture, fairly inexpensively. For this reason, many bought their camera with a 50mm lens lens, which became known as the normal lens. It was the kit lens half a decade ago.

Wide angle lenses would require a retrofocal design, which was expensive. And longer lenses would require larger lens elements, again keeping the price high. So the 50mm lens was the most common (normal) lens to use on SLR cameras, simply because it was inexpensive.

At that time, to have a zoom lens which covers a range of focal lengths would be an unbelievable luxury. Today, it is the other way around. It is the zoom lens which has become the normal lens, the lens people buy in kits with their camera. While the 50mm (equivalent) prime lens has become the luxury item.

That is the case with Panasonic Lumix G Micro 4/3 LEICA DG SUMMILUX 25mm f/1.4 Leica Aspherical Lens. With the 2x crop factor of the Four Thirds sensor size, this lens corresponds to 50mm on a traditional film SLR camera, in terms of field of view. It has been co-branded with Leica, to underline the luxury, premium value of the lens.



Lumix 20mm f/1.7, Lumix Leica 25mm f/1.4, and Sigma 30mm f/2.8 DN

Product news

At this time, there are some important trends in the camera industry:

• Mirrorless cameras replacing DSLR systems
• On-sensor PDAF detectors, for better autofocus with moving objects, and with legacy lenses
• Removing the low pass (anti-aliasing) filter, for better pixel-level sharpness

We see many of these trends in the recently announced cameras. Here is a summary, as I see it:

Olympus OM-D E-M1

From a Micro Four Thirds point of view, the big news is of course the Olympus OM-D E-M1. It cleverly supersedes both the Olympus OM-D E-M5 and the Olympus E-5 Four Thirds DSLR.



It does this by employing on-sensor PDAF (Phase difference autofocus) detectors. That way, it can focus even older Four Thirds lenses at a usable speed. Micro Four Thirds camera have previously not been able to focus non-CDAF optimized lenses fast, like for example the Olympus 50mm f/2 1:2 macro lens. Focusing this lens on the Panasonic GH2 camera takes around five seconds, see my test here.

Video AF comparison, Lumix 25mm f/1.4 vs 20mm f/1.7

The Lumix Leica DG 25mm f/1.4 and Lumix G 20mm f/1.7 pancake are quite similar. Both are fast normal lenses. Still, they are different:



On both lenses, I am using 46mm to 37mm step down rings as lens hoods. If you go down the same route, you will also need a 37mm front lens cap.

Beyond the size difference, the 25mm lens features internal focusing, while the 20mm lens has an old style focus mechanism, where the whole lens array moves back and forth. The internal focus achieves faster focus, and makes less noise. The Lumix 20mm lens on the other hand is known to focus slowly, and for making more noise.

In this article, I aim to see if the difference in focus mechanisms make the Lumix Leica DG 25mm f/1.4 better suited for continuous autofocus during video.

What fisheye for fireworks video?

When recording fireworks from a moderate distance, it pays to have a wide lens to capture the whole view. Generally, fisheye lenses tend to be the widest afforable lenses. In this article, I compare two fisheye lenses for video recording fireworks from a close distance.

The camera systems I used were:



Left: Sony NEX-3N with Yasuhara Madoka 180
Right: Panasonic GH3 with Samyang/Rokinon 7.5mm f/3.5