What is the real secret behind the success of the new wave of mirrorless cameras? And the OMD in particular?

Everywhere I look, here in Austin and on the web, I see people snapping up micro four thirds cameras or writing about them and discussing them.  It started out quietly a couple of years ago with the Olympus EP1, EP2 and the Panasonic cameras and now, with the Olympus OMD it seems to be building at a feverish pace.

The OMD and the GH2 have gone a long way toward establishing the technical legitimacy of the format and its place in the modern pantheon of attractive cameras but what is it that really got the ball rolling, long before Olympus launched their 16 megapixel DSLR killer?  

I know that people like smaller and lighter cameras but various form factors have come and gone.  The G series from Canon was/is popular, but not like this.  It can't be the overall performance because while the chip in the new camera is great it's still not as good as the chips in a number of APS-C cameras and it's not about to challenge the overall technical prowess of the newer full 35mm frame cameras like the D800 or the Canon 5D mk3.  But the popularity was building quickly even before the OMD was announced.

I found an old Leica screwmount body (I think it's a 2f or 3f) sitting around the studio the other day and I moved it over to the case that holds the Pen stuff.  I pulled out a Pen EP3 body and put them side by side and gosh golly!!! The dimensions were too close for coincidence.  So here's my theory:  Just a Steve Jobs had a singular vision for Apple Products (the design of which turbo charges sales)  Oscar Barnack, the inventor of the Leica, had a singular vision for his first series of cameras.  His vision revolved around the idea that you could make a small camera that would be comfortable to carry and comfortable to shoot and you could, through careful technique, come close to the image quality that you would get with the larger film format cameras of the day.

Barnack's drive to make a small but potent camera came from necessity.  He was asthmatic and tired of trying to carry a large compendium bellows view camera and tripod with him on walks through the forests near his home.  Since he worked alone, unencumbered by committees and focus groups and the input from marketing hacks he hewed to his own vision and made a camera that fit his hand perfectly.  And by extension, the hands of millions of other users.  

Cameras got bigger when people (and committees and ad hacks) started demanding more attachments, more geegaws and more convenience items. More ways to sell you something new.  As we moved away from pure picture popping prowess we moved away from optimum haptics.  Optimum ergonomics.  Perfect designs for human use.  Yes, we got motor drives and we could use longer lenses and all that but the purity of the design slowly became more and more compromised and generations of photographers and consumers put up with it because they got silly stuff they never knew they needed  in return.

Once the camera companies hit their stride in the digital arena a curious thing happened.  When we hit a picture quality that was good enough for the masses lots of people started demanding less.  They/we were willing to give up a lot of stuff we'd been sold as part of the holy grail of photography.  A lot of people started to consider 12 megapixels good enough for most of the stuff they routinely used cameras for.  Once the camera hit this point Olympus realized that a new differentiator could be size. And design.  I suspect someone high up in their product development dept. had one of the old Leicas on the shelf and, having shot with probably every other conceivable camera in the market he came back to a nice, cherry Leica 111f and held it and decided it was absolutely perfect in conception and told/ordered his staff to shamelessly steal as much of the size and shape of the original Leicas as they could.  Not for nostalgia's sake but in deference to the genius of its original, human centric design.

In the next round of product development I think you'll see more concentration on rounding the corners of the bodies than in upgrading sensors.  When people looked at the new OMD in illustrations on the web or on the shelf many were put off by the apparent size or the design touches.  The selling of the camera has been a process of putting the camera into the hands of the customer and letting them feel the "just-right-ness" of the design.  What I hear from everyone is this, "I was on the fence till I held one in my hands...."

Another aspect of the OMD that makes me think that the Olympus powers that be ruthlessly and shamelessly have been copying from the original Leica rangefinder family is the noise that the shutter of the OMD makes when it goes off.  It's quiet, subdued and contains no piercing high frequency resonances.  If you shoot a screw mount Leica shutter and compare it you'll hear an uncanny similarity.  

Even the use of the VF-2 finder in the accessory shoes of the EP2's and EP3's harkens back to a day in cameras when you needed a separate finder to use any but the normal 50mm focal length with the cameras.  When you bought a wide angle or a telephoto lens for your screw mount Leica you also bought a separate viewfinder that sat in the accessory shoe and showed you your angle of view.  The Pen series, preceding the OMD, is a modern day adaptation of that concept.

Many otherwise rational adults are buying cameras now based on how they feel and sound.  But is that irrational?  There is always a mind/body/camera connection that artists take into consideration when they adapt and embrace certain tools with which to give birth to their singular vision.  They can't turn off the feelings of attraction or repulsion of their tools just because someone tells them some aspect of performance is better or worse.  Only disengaged or casual shooters can do that.  And it's different for everyone.  The feel of a camera in the hand is unique to each person.You generally know you've found the feel in one day.  

I'm sure some people think I'm making the connection between the old screwmount Leicas and the new Olympus (and other m4:3) cameras to damn Olympus for brazen design theft but nothing could be further from the truth.  What I really want to say is that Oscar Barnack had it just right, everybody fucked things up and now Olympus is reaching back to that original genius to give people what they really wanted all along:  A comfortable companion for mobile shooting.  An almost instinctual tool for capturing what you see.

I played with another OMD this week.  They are pretty darn amazing.  Not a breakthrough like the original fathers of all 35mm style cameras (Leica SM)  but a beautiful and very useful homage.

Hello Camera Designers:  No more "jellybean" cameras please.  Now that we can miniaturize nearly everything can we get some more cameras that feel just right?  Even if they don't have the biggest whatevers?

Now, if Olympus could only fix their menu.  Of course Leica shooters never had to worry about that...

Pure retro on my Panasonic and Olympus Cameras. The manual, Pen FT Lens test EXTRAVAGANZA.

I'll start with a little bit of background.  In the 1960's Olympus starting making cameras that used a half frame of 35mm film instead of the full frame.  They called these "half frame" cameras.  Most of the cameras were little compacts that were very light weight and easy to use.  People who made small prints bought them to save money.  And, even back then, people were trying to shove cameras into their pockets...

The half frame is really the same size as a "full frame" frame of 35mm movie film.  Honest.  What we consider full frame is actually "double frame."  But I don't want to head down that rabbit hole right now. Having enjoyed a certain amount of success in the market the designers and dreamers at Olympus thought that there would be demand for a more sophisticated camera system that would keep the half frame film size but include some really cool things like a rotary, titanium shutter that syncs at all speeds, interchangeable lenses that are really, really good, and a mirrored reflex finder.  Which made the camera a genuine "SLR."  This was known as the Pen F system.  

The camera was used by plenty of photojournalists who embraced the camera for the same reasons people are flocking to mirrorless cameras in the present:  They were smaller, more discreet, easier to carry and very capable.  In fact, one of the most famous photographers in the 20th century, Eugene Smith, appeared in ads for the Pen F's and shot with them on assignments.  My favorite ad for the Pens is one in which Olympus showed how the whole system can fit in a shoe box.

But the reason the system had legs and sold reasonably well was the lenses.  That's something Olympus has always done well.  I won't go in for the standard hyperbole and suggest that they made lenses that are just as good as the current Leica M lenses but they were damn good and the half frame lenses were specifically designed for the smaller rectangle of film that the smaller cameras shot so they were optimized for higher resolution than the typical 35mm lenses of the day.  It makes sense, the frames would have to be enlarged to a much greater degree in order to make the standard, black and white 8x10 inch prints that were the lingua Franca of the day.

What finally killed the Olympus half frame cameras?  In a word?  Color print film.  Why? Because the labs begged for automated printers and those printers were never designed to deal with the odd ball size of the negatives.  If people couldn't get film printed cheaply they weren't really interested.  So what worked well in the days when people did their own lab work, and when labs handled each negative individually, didn't work as well in the age of automation.  Too bad because it's a great little system.  I should know, I have five of the Pen FT bodies and the collection of lenses in the first photo, plus some duplicates of my favorites in the Olympus equipment drawer.  The one guarded by angry black Mamba snakes...

When the new, digital Pens came out I realized that the shorter lens flange to sensor dimension would make mounting lots of different lenses on the bodies a pretty straightforward deal.  When I heard that adapters were already being made I jumped into the micro four thirds cameras mostly in order to breathe new, digital life into a collection of lenses that were interesting and, in some cases, a little exotic.  And I have not been disappointed.  But I'd never done the real test where you mount the lenses on the highest res digital camera you own and put that on a tripod with the self timer engaged and start looking at how the glass performs....wide open.  And stuff like that.  So I did.  And I found out some interesting stuff.

Two 1,000 bulb LED lights make for a quick and simple photo set up with lots of lumens for stopping down and using the slowest ISO on the GH2.  I think that's 160.  The black flag to the right is serving no purpose whatsoever.  It just happened to be there when I was setting up.

I chose to the Panasonic Lumix GH2 for  my tests because the sensor is acknowledged, at this juncture, to be the highest res of the m4/3 tribe.  It's also easy to use in a studio setting.  Set preview to constant and shoot in M and you'll see each change you make to aperture, shutter speed and ISO right on the screen.  Tap on the screen to increase magnification for fine focus...

Let me introduce you to the motley crew of lenses and say a little something about each one.  I feel like I'm introducing family.  Why am I in so little hurry to snap up the new primes coming to market?  Because I think I've already got cooler ones.  Take the 60mm 1.5, for example.  No other company makes anything nearly as cool for the smaller cameras.  Center sharpness is okay at full aperture and, like most lens designs of the time, you'll want to add some contrast to your files.  These lenses are not post processing free but when done well you can squeeze really good performance out of them.  When you hit f3.5 you are sharp from corner to corner and it's a very convincing sharpness.  Hell yes, I use it for theatre shots.  And portraits in dark and moody coffee shops and more.  It uses the same lens hood at the 50mm to 90mm zoom lens.  It's becoming rare and a bit costly but if you find a clean one you might want to put in on your camera and give it a spin.  If you shoot portraits I can pretty much guarantee that it's a struggle your credit card will win.

Reader Note:  you can click on any of the photos and they will come up much bigger in a separate window.  I uploaded files that are 1200 pixels on the long edge so you might want to depend on the text for my observations about their performance.

 above and just below:  the 60mm 1.5

In every system there's one lens that shows up everywhere.  Like the ubiquitous 50mm 1.8's for 35mm cameras.  Or the 18-55mm kit zooms for APS-C cameras.  In the Pen F hierarchy that lens would be the 38mm 1.8.  It's small, light, fast and well corrected.  This was my everyday shooter in the film days.  While most of the Pen F lenses are able to be used wide open they tend to mimic standard gauss designs in that the center is sharp at or near wide open and stopping the lens down brings greater and greater corner sharpness.  By f4 the lens is really good and by f8 it's as perfect as you could want it to be.

 Above:  think of the 38mm as the budget "system lens"

I think of the 70mm f2 as the equivalent of the standard 35mm 135mm lens.  In particular, I think of mine as the 135 f2 L series of the Pens.  It's not nearly as sharp as that much more modern lens, when used wide open but it sharpens up nicely one stop down and, by f4 is monster good.  If flares a little in contrajour light so I try to always use it with a hood or shade the front element with my hand...  It's a great "candid" shooter.

the 70mm.  half the weight of the chunky 60mm.

There are really two lenses that haven't jumped through the time travel portal with the same success as the longer focal lengths.  Those are the 20mm 3.5 and the 25mm 2.8.  The 20mm is widest Pen F lens that ever got made and it's really nothing to write home about until you stop it down to f5.6.  And alarmingly, at least with my copy, it tends to start flying apart with diffraction softening right at f11.  By the time you get to f16 you'll think you forgot to focus.  Which actually brings up something we need to talk about.  There's a lot of focus shifting, as you stop down, in some of these lenses (especially the zoom).  If you focus wide open and then stop down you may or may not have some safety with depth of field but you'll be way better off to stop down first and then focus.  Which is how the older lenses work on the mirrorless camera anyhow.  If you need a 20mm you might want to pass on one of these and head straight of the Panasonic.  The 20mm 1.7 Panasonic may be one of the most beloved optics of the entire family m43 system...

I've gotten detailed shots from the 20mm Pen F lens but I've had to boast contrast a lot to make them work.  And adding a bit of saturation won't hurt either...

 Above: the 20mm 3.5.  Not quite the sharpest of the flock.

Now.  Someone get me a drool bib.  This is one of my favorite lenses of all.  The fabulous 40mm 1.4.  I think of it as the high speed standard of the entire small camera universe.  There was faster and very rare 42mm 1.2 but it wasn't as well corrected as the 1.4 and weighed nearly twice as much.  I shot some flat stuff in the studio today which is represented below.  At 1.4 it's decent.  Not a lot of micro detail in the files.  But one stop down brings it to parity with just about anything out there.  At f2.8 it's sharper than the Canon 50mm 1.4 at 2.8 and even a little sharper, to my eye, than the Zeiss 50mm 1.4 at 2.8.  When you hit f4 it's like you put a macro lens on the front of your camera.  Sharp and contrasty over the whole frame.  Kinda like that Olympus 45mm 1.8 they've been shopping around.....only this puppy is a two thirds of a stop faster.  And it looks even better because it's black.

It's my photojournalist wannabe lens.  I love it for portraits and candids and street shooting and just about anything that requires a slightly longer prime optic.  The Panasonic camera seemed to swell with pride when I put this on the lens mount.

The crowning achievement of PenF lens design.  

Not because it's exotic but because it's nearly 

PERFECT.

Reader tip about lens adapters:  I have three different adapter rings that allow me to mount Pen F lenses on the m4/3 digital cameras.  All three of them will allow the lens to focus past infinity.  That means that the focusing scale on the lens barrel becomes meaningless.  And that reduced the lens's usability as a zone focusing "street shooter".  If I had the time I'd probably figure out the positions for hyperfocal distances and mark them on the lens barrel with a red dot but.....I'm too lazy.  Or I spend too much time writing.  At any rate you are now warned not to trust the infinity setting on any legacy lens mounted via an adapter.  Test before you set to infinity and go out for walk.  Even with the wide angles.  Especially with the wide angles...

And, Olympus knew how to do hoods.  Nice hoods with 

thumbscrews.  You tighten, they stay in place.

Which brings me to a lens that is an enigma to me. The 25mm.  For the longest time I thought this lens and the 20mm lens were not very good and not very sharp.  Today I changed my mind.  This is the first time I've put them on a tripod and then used live view to focus.  My focusing skills with the smaller format are a pale ghost of my medium format focusing skills and I think it's because the finders on the Pen F cameras are old tech, very dark and the DOF of the short focal length makes everything look like it's in focus in the viewfinder (when viewed tiny) while it's not sharp if blown up.  

Today I put this lens on the GH2 and focused at 8x magnification and shot test shots.  And I like them.  There's good detail everywhere.  It's not going to replace a fast focusing and bright lens like the Leica/Lumix 25mm 1.4 but it's very well done and, when stopped down to 5.6 it does a very nice job with subjects that give you enough time to check focus.  Sad about the lack of true infinity on the adapter rings because it's a focal length that would lend itself to zone focusing and shooting from the hip.

 the 25mm 2.8.  Beautifully made.

And now revealed to actually be sharp.

Which brings me to the longest half frame lens in my collection, the 150mm f4.  If you play the equivalent game this optic gives you the same angle of view on m4/3 as a 300mm on a full frame film or digital camera.  This is another lens that never really satisfied me until I put it on the EP2.  With the benefit of adjustable (by focal length) image stabilization I was able to hold it still enough for distance shots to discover that it is really well corrected and sharp.  One reader of a previous post about this lens pointed out what might be veiling glare but I think it's really just the lower contrast of a design from the late 1960's when a lower contrast lens with good sharpness was actually a benefit to people who shot black and white film in contrasty situations.  You could always add contrast in the darkroom with graded papers or multi-grade papers but you couldn't bring back blown highlights or blocked shadows.  

It was an epiphany to actually put the lens on a tripod and do the two second self time as a release mechanism.  The magnification works against hand holding.  Especially on the GH2 which doesn't have IS in the body.  If used correctly I find the lens to be quite good wide open and at its best when used at 5.6.  With a judicious boost of contrast and a moderate dose of saturation in your favorite post processing program you'll have snappy photos with some nice compression.  And it works well as a long lens for video.  As long as you're on the sticks....  A big benefit, vis-a-vis full frame, is that it's 1/3 the size and weight of the bigger format's equivalent.

 Go long.  And pack light.

I like the 300 f4.  Especially now that I know

the sharpness issues were really just 

my lazy technique.

Back in the late 1960's zoom lenses were really just a novelty and most of them (with the exception of the Nikkor 80-200 f4.5) were unsharp and unsatisfying.  But this lens from Olympus is pretty good.  Not nearly as good as the single focal length lenses above but head and shoulders above most of the dreck that was available way back then.  I wasn't old enough to shoot back then but I used the older zooms when I was on a budget in the earlier times of my amateur career as a photographer.

The focal length is not long, is corresponds to about 100mm to 180mm's but it seems just right for a guy who likes to do classical portraiture.  While it's not stunningly sharp at 3.5 it's pretty nice by the time you get to f5.6.  And.....it's a constant aperture zoom.  Nothing changes as you change focal lengths.  It's not a true parafocal zoom.  It does shift focus as you zoom which means you'll want to refocus every time you shift focal lengths.  If you press it into service for video you'll find that it shifts the image a lot as you focus.  The way to use this lens is to line up your shot and lock in your parameters, then shoot your scene and move on.  I wouldn't try to follow focus with this one.

An early telephoto zoom that acquits itself nicely at 

f5.6.  And it's less than a quarter the volume of

a Canon 70-200mm L lens.  This one I could

carry all day long....

While I'm not going to review it because I never really use it I also have a 2x converter for the system.

I haven't been able to suspend my belief that 

older teleconverters suck so I've only tried this

once, on the 150 and handheld.  If it's not sharp or

if it is sharp, how would I know?  I'll try it sooner or later

and let you know.

 40mm wide open.

 40mm at f4

60mm wide open.

60mm at f3.5

 70mm wide open

70mm at f4

20.

24.

38.

40.

60.

70.

50 on the zoom.

60 on the zoom

70 on the zoom

90 on the zoom wide open

90 on the zoom at 5.6

150mm.

20

60

70

90 on the zoom

150.

Physical Construction:  The Olympus Pen F lenses are made in the way we've come to expect products from the height of the industrial age to have been made.  Knurled metal barrel that are designed to offer just the right friction for your fingers, with areas of small indents alternating with big scallops to provide the sense that you'll always have a great grip.  The lenses are small but dense and feel as though they are made to last a photographer's lifetime.  And the proof is in the pudding.  Several of the lenses I have trace their origin back to around 1968.  And they were well used.  But the focusing rings are still smooth and sure in operation, the spring back for the auto aperture is still free of drag and the mounting rings look brand new.  Even the stop down button and the locking buttons are made of well crafted and robust metal.  If there is plastic anywhere on any of the lenses I've not been able to find it.

If Panasonic and/or Olympus introduces focus peaking in their next generation of cameras I'll be in heaven and will probably put off buying the current, popular primes for a long time.

Recommendations.  Of the lenses I've listed, most, beside the 38mm's, are going to be too expensive to be practical purchases.  Both Panasonic and Olympus have better performing (and easier to focus) wide angle and wide/normal lenses than the 20mm and 25mm.  The sweet spot for me would be the 40mm 1.4, the 60mm 1.5 and the 70mm f2.  All are wonderful lenses that are competitive with just about anything you'll find today ( provided that the glass is in good shape and not fogged in the least).

If I had to choose just one it would be the 60mm 1.5.  It's physically beautiful on the camera and the view through the EVF, or even on the rear screen, of the GH2 is wonderful.  With one touch of a button I'm able to fine focus at 8x and, one stop down the lens doesn't miss a beat.  A far cry from the slow kit lenses that most of us suffer with.

Since I own the 40 and the 60 Pen F lenses I've put off buying the 45mm 1.8.  But I keep seeing images that impress me.  If I do buy one it will be because I have become to lazy to manually focus my 60.  But for now, I'll persevere.

So why do I write this when probably no more than a few handfuls of people have any interest in MF lenses for mirrorless cameras?  Because the Pen F lenses deserve some recognition.  They set a standard in their days that's taken forty years to be re-invented.  And that's very cool.

Thanks for reading.

Below, the full sized, 4000+ pixel test of the 60mm at f3.5.  Jpeg (8 quality) sharpened. click it and see.

Out for a walk with the EP2. Square lovers rejoice.

    A tree along the Austin hike and bike trail.  Just south of downtown.  EP2 with kit lens.

So, I mentioned that I really love the square.  The Olympus EP2 gives me back the square with elegance and ease.  I am satisfied with the camera.  I'll have to leave off my tests with portraits; it seems all the usual suspects actually had other things to do today.  Bereft of human models I took off on a walk around downtown.  I know it won't sound heroic to my friends in the frozen wastelands to the north but it was a chilly 31 degrees (f) when I left my car and started across the pedestrian bridge into downtown.

Here's a link to a small gallery of images from the morning:  morning with my square camera.

I set the new camera to mostly neutral settings.  Large SF Jpeg.  Color natural.  Aspect ratio: 6x6.  Single AF, etc. No more or less sharpening, contrast or saturation than the defaults.  I look through the viewfinder and see an wonderfully framed image with a bit of black on either side.  I can toggle through the "info" button until I get to screen with no numbers, letters or symbols on it and I'm free to compose unencumbered.

The camera is so small and discreet that everyone takes me for a tourist.  At times I feel like a tourist in my own life but I'm sure my mental health professional friends would label that as disassociative and worry.  Instead I'll say that I love cruising around the same downtown I've walked through almost weekly for 32 years.  I love to see what's new and who's hanging out at the coffee shops.  Lately we've seen some upscale stuff on the main drag from the state capital.  A Patagonia shop opened its doors.  There are three new restaurants.  A state office building is being rehabbed for commercial use. Downtown has two more steak houses.

I don't really know what to say about the camera.  I never had a missed focus.  If I needed exposure compensation it was usually on the order of +1/3 stop.  I tried out the ienhance setting in the colors menu and the tree above is from that group of frames.  I find the lens pretty sharp wide open.  The shutter, once locked in, is pretty fast.  In all you'd have to be a bit clumsy to mess up with this camera.

But for me, the ability to compose in the square with such a nice viewfinder is a treat over all else.  More to come after I get the studio thing figured out.  As you probably know, the finder sits in the hot shoe and the hot shoe is the only way to trigger any sort of flash.  Hello tungsten lights and HMI's.  More to report as I live with the camera.  Raw info:  272 shots with one battery, full time  EVF, and 31-38 degrees over the course of three hours.  Kit zoom lens.