still gnawing on that

Some criticism of my "method" led me to go out and reshoot a test between the Pansonic 25f1.7 on my GH1 and the FD50f1.4 on my A7

Taken on its own the Panasonic yeilds good results:

and allows a very nice rendering of concentration on a subject with sufficient DoF control to make the background a visible background while creating the effect of focus on the subject.

To me that is precisely what a "shallow normal" is for ... normal shooting distances (not 30cm away shots of you SuperMarioBros pencil decoration model on your keyboard in the office and dribbling about shallow DoF ... my phone does that). Distances where (say) your friend could have been standing beside that fence post and you want the background to be observable as a background, but attention to your friend.

In this role the little Panasonic is a champion, indeed it or the Panasonic 20mm f1.7 are excellent choices but I digress.

It however becomes apparent when you compare it to larger formats (even with 1970's lenses like the FD50f1.4) that sharpness is not up to it. It first strikes you when you are attempting to use manual focus (in the above that was on the wire at the top of the post) magnification and it just doesn't look "sharp". Its like that old saying about Volvo not wanting you to drive a BMW in case you don't come back to Volvo.

So while for general picture taking I find the m43 perfectly suited, when I am specifically going out to shoot a landscape and both wanting and needing that extra detail, the Sony A7 just allows me to get that.

Method

Now all the following shots were on a tripod (of course I needed to change the camera, so alignment is not perfect). All shots were developed from RAW using DCRAW to equalize the parameters and avoid sharpening in-camera (or post processing) effects (which Adobe does by default if you don't watch out).

Results

For instance lets look at what the Panasonic 25mm got, and lets give it the beneift of being stopped down a bit (f2) to put it at its optimum sharpness.

it is in fact almost indistinguishable from the f1.7 shot (and a small amount of thought would confirm that 2/3rds of a stop won't really impact on DoF control but will on cleaning up a lens)

So in keeping with my 50% pixel view of an image reveals close to what you see with a fine print at maximum size:

So this is the central portion scaled to 50%

Now ... lets have a look at what we could get from the A7 to be "fair" I've scaled it down to the same width as the GH1 image first for the overview (which blogger will also scale a tiny bit more)

and now a central segment

They are fairly close, however my nod goes to the A7 as being a smidge sharper (and there has been no software sharpening done).

For any print except "at the maximum" this isn't even going to factor for anything more than the most carefully inspected print. I would comfortably say "99% of people just won't pick any difference even side to side.

Ok, but I've hamstrung the A7 by scaling it back to what the GH1 could yeild, and its important to keep in mind that we're talking about a big print here: 70 x 46 cm

But should one want for some reason to go out and plan a photograph that will be printed bigger then what difference does the 6000x4000 pixels (vs 4144 x 2768 of the GH1) make?

so a bit more again. Are you able to see the bit of lichen on the left side near the top of the post in the m43 shot? Not really, and the fine details in the lichen on the fence are missing too.

Perhaps with a better lens (than a 1977 model) I may do better, but perhaps not by much. Thus for the $50 I paid for the FD50f1.4 (and they sell for about $150 now, which is still less than a new AF lens by nearly a factor of ten times) its hard to get better value.

Discussion

So is this worth it to you? To me its totally worth it (I paid less for the used A7 than I would for a later model perhaps better m43 camera), bang for buck I get something which isn't far from the results I could get with my 4x5 camera. Sure, that's better (typically good for 10,000 x 8000 quality scanned pixels) but I'm having a hard time getting colour negative anymore and processing other than my own black and white is hard to come by, plus that camera works out at $15 per image and this is ... well digital.

I have not touched on the other advantages the A7 brings, such as

• good access to high quality legacy 35mm lenses (and used as they were designed, not halving the apparent contrast by the x2 crop)
• better high ISO results
• better bit depth at any given ISO

I know that someone will probably say "oh, but you could shoot the m43 camera at f1.7 and not at f4 ... well that's true ... but I could also shoot the FD50f1.4 at f1.7 and get a lovely result too ... so in summary here is that image for your consideration

as always I recommend viewing this on a good PC with a good screen and loading the images (center click on a windows machine) and viewing as big as Blogger will deliver.

I always enjoy being out in the forest and hanging around (and walking to this place) makes testing as much fun as anything else ... besides one of these is going on my wall ;-)

GH-1 vs G85 (big generational change)

I've occasionally done a look at the successive generations of m43 cameras, seeing as I started with a G1 (nearly 10 years ago) and then moved to the GH-1 (about 8 years ago,which I've sat with ever since); where I've found that pretty much all the developments have been "interesting" but not enough to "tip me over the scales" and buy a new one.

To my observations the changes have been about conveniences; which would of course be worth having, but for me (who works in RAW and seldom uses the Out Of Camera JPEG file (which I classify as one of the conveniences)) the actual end results in images just don't warrant spending a grand on a new body.

I've looked at different generations twice on my blog:

1. GH1 vs EM5 (mk 1)
2. GH1 vs GH4

and both times found that when processing a RAW file there was little actually in it. Meaning that Panasonic just got the GH1 so right back then that every subsequent camera could more or less be a re-tune off all that research and development.

Today I had the opportunity to have a decent look at the output from the G80 / G85 (depending on the market you're in) and compare it directly with my GH1. I' ve decided to put the spec comparison graphs at the end instead of the beginning this time.

Summary: its a game changer for me.

The GH-1 runs out of ISO at 3200, but soon after my first image I knew that it wasn't worth going over 1600ISO for me (which to be honest fits in well with over 90% of what I do or even want to do). Accordingly I'd resolved to not upgrade my GH1 until either it died, or something substantial came along. Well to me it has.

The G80 is well capable of being used at ISO right up to 12800, with RAW results just way nicer to work with than JPG. Throw in the 5 axis stabilisation and its an incredible camera.

1600 ISO

Given this is my comfortable upper limit lets have a look at what the GH1 and G80 produce at that point. Interestingly they both have different views of what "incandecent" colour balance should look like, but that's nothing really problematic.

These are OOC JPG, and as you can see they're both fairly acceptable at this size. You can see a little more flare from the lamp as I clearly sat down in a slightly different position when I returned to the table with the different camera (using the same 45f1.8 lens)

So lets look at the results from the RAW, stepping right into 100% (pixel peeping) we can see a couple of things, shutter speed was 1/60th and the eye reflection shows that while the subject didn't move, the photographer did (shake) and you can see the drop in detail in the pores of the skin and the eyelashes

not to mention (if you open it up and view it full screen) the amount of (not horribly invasive) noise already present in the GH1 (right image).

So marks awarded to the G80 right there ... and its even clearer when you look at the hairs on his head (both the clarity and the colour channel noise).

this becomes patently obvious when we examine just the Red Channel (if you happen to be one blind to what colour noise looks like)

chalk and cheese right?

Worth noting is that on a single grey hair there you can see the artifact of a stepping pattern which is I believe exactly what you'd expect with the Anti Alias Filter removed (which the designers of this this camera have chosen to do) (if you don't understand what an Anti Alias Filter is please read this).

So to me this is a nice step in improvement and something I'd not seen in any previous sensors I'd tested.

Very encouraging, so now lets go beyond my comfort zone and look at the higher ISO

3200

3200 ISO is the limit that the GH1 goes to, but for some reason I failed, and didn't take a 3200 ISO with the G80, so we have to compare the 6400 ISO (which the GH1 doesn't even go to)

even at this magnification we can see the reasons I've always stayed below 3200 on the GH1, sensor noise is becoming clear and quite marked ... there would essentially be no hope of clearing that up.  As well there is some strange colour casts starting (which correction will exacerbate noise further).

The image from the G80 though is looking a bit "gritty" or "sandy" but is clean enough even if colour vibrance is falling off (something has to give right). Looking in close (50% this time) we see that skin tones are pretty reasonable with the GH1, but its just lost it with noise ...

and the G80 is actually a full stop higher ISO at 6400 ISO ... like wow

Again, looking at the red channel we see clearly that sensor noise is the real source of problems here, but the G80 is just amazingly showing nothing more than just noise which is rather akin to Grain ... so sensor pattern types of noise are amazingly well controlled here.

Lets push this further

25600 ISO

Well I mean this results in (our dim room) me having a shutter speed of 1/500th of a second ... shit it wasn't long ago that such was daylight exposures ... yet this is what we got:

Simply amazing ... and having a closer look:

Grain is becoming more apparent, but we've gone up 4 stops ... so yes, in the same light we've gone from 1/100th of a sec exposure to 1/500th of a second ... that's amazing.

Further this grain is amenable to noise reduction with even simple post processing NR like Nix

Lets compare that to the GH1 at 3200 again

So certainly its losing colour saturation (which fits what we know from the measurements) but with a little more tweaking (just some saturation and local area contrast masking) amazingly this shows you can still get a usable image from the G80 in what would really be impossible portrait lighting just a few years ago.

So to me this a big generational change, not just a small fiddle.

Wow

Specs - and what they reveal to support or even predict this

Despite the contention that exists on forum about DxO measurements of lenses (which I happen to find meets my personal observations) their methodology for sensor assessment is pretty robust. So here is the comparison between actual measured ISO and the camera setting ISO for my GH1, the GH4 and the G80/85

So looking at this graph we see that while the GH4 on its setting appears to goe to a higher ISO it progressively actually only goes to 12800 with 25600 being just a pat on the head to make you feel better (and makes worse images along the way).

Interestingly when the GH1 is set to 1600 (and gives an actually higher ISO of 2154) and the G80 is set to 2 stops higher 6400 ISO (and actually gives a lower effective ISO of 4408) they are infact of shutter speed given only one stop apart (not two) and have similar dynamic ranges (which can be seen in my images above if you go back and look.

I encourage you load the DxO comparison (which I've snapshotted above) and go through the test results carefully.

As I've discussed previously the GH1 is actually performing equivalently at a setting of 1600ISO (when you look at obtained shutter speed) to other cameras (such as the Olympus OM-D E-M5) when set to 6500 (and by that to when its set to 5000 it will give similar shutter speeds to the GH1 when its set to 1600). Meaning that there has been no significant sensor improvement between cameras which are six years apart in release date (2009 and 2015).

However as we've seen the G80/85 camera (and from what I've seen but not presented here the G9 too (and probably the GH5)) indeed does.

I encourage you to have a read of those linked in articles.

bottom line

I feel that the G80/85 is a worthy upgrade for anyone who does a lot of low light shooting, you can actually get usable images from light where the GH1 (or indeed most other m43 cameras) would struggle. Combined with some of your own image processing of the RAW files you can get quite decent images, and in my view probably the equal (in terms of signal to noise and dynamic range) of most full frame cameras (if you are one of those poor bastards somehow in total ignorance and misapprehension lusting after one of them because it'll make you take better images).

Camera Sensor technology has Plateaued

I was looking at a mates G80 and thinking wow, this is nice ... although its funny how its just come back to exactly the same form factor as the GH1 (and G1) originally had.

Naturally the G80 offers 4K video and a plethora of other groovy stuff like IBIS which is just "fuckDatsGood" (beyond belief).

However as a stills guy I keep feeling that even since the 2009 release of the GH1 that fucking not much has happened except tweak the tuning parameters, squeeze more pixels in (without fucking things up) and way better JPG engines in the cameras.

Now you may or may not agree with DxO Mark's measurements, but they are a ball park to start from. Myself I've compared my GH1 do a mates OM-D EM5 Mk1  as well as the Mk2 and found that I couldn't see much of any difference in RAW, but the JPG engines were ahead (but then as I prefer to just shoot RAW and process on Computer they are neck and neck.
The following examination of DxO measurement data seems to support this.
I compared these three cameras. Lets keep in mind that the GH1 was released in about July 2009.

those coloured blobs match in with the graphs, first lets looks at what ISO you get when you dial in a number

so the GH1 actually gives you a higher shutter speed (by virtue of its under-rated setting) for the same camera set ISO (because the actual ISO is higher than you think).


Ok, next dynamic range:

GX8@measured 109 ISO (dial setting 100) = 12.52 EV
GH1@measured 137 ISO (dial setting 100) = 11.63 EV

well for sure the newer cameras are doing better at 100ISO, but man it sure becomes closer at ISO 800 (where I do often work to get shutter speed) ...and none of those differences are likely ball breaking differences in real shooting.

Tonal range

Talk about your linear relationship. If this isn't showing that way back in 2009 sensors were at the edge of the plateau I don't know what does.

So to me, this supports my view that camera sensors plateaued, nearly 10 years ago.

Something to think about when justifying that camera upgrade ... and I can still get used GH1's in good condition for under US$180 pretty much every day of the week over at KEH.

Food for thought if you're a broke student looking to get into a system.

Generations - GH1 vs E-M5

Every now and then I wonder about my choices in life (and my camera gear choices too), so with a recent visit to the UK to see a friend I took the opportunity to compare his Olympus OM-D E-M5 with my Panasonic GH1.

Quick Summary

Depending on where you stand the outcomes of my exploration show that either:

• not much change (almost none) don't upgrade just for better images {or if you have nothing now and want to dip your toe into micro4/3 then buy a used GH1 for peanuts}
• bucket loads of image quality development and the E-M5 is a truly great camera

To make sence of these opposite views a perspective that matters is which side of the RAW vs JPG divide you stand on.

I prefer to use RAW and then have the capacity to work with the digital version of a negative as I wish. I can't think of a renoun photographer from the film days who preferred to use Polaroid (unless they were after an effect). To me RAW offers the capacity to (at least) recover from oopsies (like forgetting to change white balance) as well as allowing me to bring forward my images captured years ago into the future as higher quality post-processing comes around. Were I to use JPGs (as I did for many years before RAW was even available) then my images would essentially be stuck in the past quality standards.

My phone now does for many images where I just want a quick and snappy shot (and is often better than my Point and Shoot camera)[or is that PoS camera?].

What I did and found

One of the things camera makers have been doing for a while is iteratively smartening up their JPG engines and dailing in more parameters into that processing such as knowledge of the lens (to fix its design shortcomings) aperture and focal length. Compared to just a few years ago the differences of 'out of the camera' images are chalk and cheese.

It also happened that I wanted to see what my Pentax 110 70mm f2.8 (legacy) lens looked like on the OM-D (to see if any difference was observable). This as it turns out is also a helpful lens to use as the camera has no knowledge of it and therefore can't do anything dreadfully cunning (but still does amazingly good things to the JPGs).

So lets look at overviews:
JPG from the GH1

JPG from the OM-D

Clearly no two cameras (by make and model) produce exactly the same images all other things being equal, however even at these sizes its perhaps clear to you that the OM-D image has an edge. If we zoom in a fair amount (not 100% pixels, but 50%) its even clearer. GH1 on the left OM-D on the right.

The OM-D image just leaps off the screen as being sharper and more contrasty, better handling of colour and tone and captures the elusive small bits of RED often missed by cameras (look for the red new growth leaves towards the stems of the plants). The Panasonic GH1 by contrast looks murky and flat. You may also notice a small variance in feature size, this is because the OM-D is 16Mpixels and the GH1 12MPixels. It is at least to me bugger all difference.

So, if you have zero interest in RAW (and you are sure you will never have an interest in RAW) then that's it, the newer camera makes better images out of the box. No need to read more

however

.. if you don't want to have to use bracketing for white balance, bracketing for "film type" (isn't that a laugh of a name) and generally want to do more things with your image, lets follow the white rabbit a bit further.

The first thing I did was convert the images with DCRAW (to avoid any fancy processing just yet) and just did a plain convert using dcraw -w -T -g 2.4 12.92 to get an sRGB gamma and use the camera white balance. Suddenly the stunning differences vanished, in fact I was totally unable to get an image from the GH1 RAW file which was as shitty as the camera JPG (good one Panasonic)

The differences just vanished more or less immediately.

Panasonic on the right this time (just to keep you observing)...

Seems like there is really bugger all differences between the data captured by the cameras when presented this way. If anything I reckon the GH1 has a slightly better amount of actual data (when looking at the data dump) than the OM-D does.

I noted that the highlights of the leaves (for instance) were not as well handled in the plain RAW conversions, so its clear that more cunning processing is done in camera than just a straight demosiac.

So, from there I thought I'd try to do some cunning tricks myself in software and using a few filters and some adaptive masking, this is what I got when I applied that to the GH1 (on the left) vs the camera JPG from the OM-D.

Which now closes the gap between the OM-D camera JPG and the GH1 RAW. Personally I actually prefer the processed GH1 image, but then that could be the maker bias ;-)

Processing was quite simple actually, it was just run through Photomatix to add a wee bit of adaptive masking then sharpening mask was added twice (once at 0.9 pixel radius and again at 25 pixel radius). I now see better bokeh from my lens too! The white clover flowers in the background grass had nearly vanished in the OM-D image.

That image for comparison with the OM-D

I encourage you to open them in their own tabs (center button mouse click works in Firefox on a PC) ad see what you think.

For reference the OM-D image was processed in the same manner and got this:

Conclusion

If what moves you is images and you are unafraid to (or even tempted to) process the data yourself, then my view is that Panasonic got the hardware right back then nearly 5 years ago, and that Olympus has only just now caught up. If you have a GH1 (or newer Panasonic) I see no compelling case to upgrade camera to improve image quality unless you use JPG from the GH1 and are unwilling to learn about image processing. To me the OM-D does not make a worthwhile case for upgrade of my 4 year old camera which is a little tragic if you ask me. As an aside, this reminds me of the concept of software by subscription. Back in the 90's when I was doing my Software Engineering degree we were taught about the idea of don't sell software lease it. This allows the company to get a better income stream by forcing upgrades on the clients (delivered in subscription form). In some ways I see a parallel here in that by getting owners to purchase new cameras to get better images they are essentially combining the best of buy VS lease. So while the GH1 data output is so good it enables the user to take advantage of software to really tune their output the newer camera produces better OOC JPG's.

I see no significant developments in sensors (also covered recently in noise areas) and (as a commenter suggested) the only developments are in processing. Looking at the physics and electronics I see little real chances for sensor improvements and I think there will be few developments in processing to take us past here. The low hanging fruit has been picked and pretty much all the makers are now equal.

As to other issues, I was totally unimpressed by the operation of the Oly, and feel that the dolts who developed the camera should go buy an OM-1 and hold it and use it ... back in the 1970's Oly made great cameras which were easy to use and felt good. I still have and love my OM-1 ... I can't say I feel that way about the OM-D (but that's another blog post).

shallow portrait lenses 43rds vs Full Frame (part 2)

Way back in 2011 I wrote a post about comparing portrait length lenses on micro 4/3 vs full frame. I had always meant to do a part two of that article, but things got in the way of that (as my friends will attest).

So with the excuses out of the way I have felt moved to make the second part of that comparison because the topic still seems quite interesting to people. I see on a board that I follow that people are interested in comparisons between the Nocticron on a micro4/3 and a cheaper Full Frame system, which is more or less quite related to what I did back in 2011. To sum up the points I made back there I felt that the evidence I found supported:

• there is a essentially two stops difference between 4/3 and Full frame to get the same Depth of Field.
• that there were significant contrast differences between a 50mm @ f1.4 on a 4/3 and a 100mm @ f2.8 on a full frame
• that the Canon 5D Mk1 had a better detail than the GH1
• that there was better highlight and shadow details in the 5D than the GH1

To recap:

The image from the Olympus 100mm at 2.8


and then the 4/3 camera with the 50mm at 1.4

Stopping the 50mm f1.4 down to f2.8 we find it to be more or less equal to the contrast of the Olympus 100mm lens at f2.8.


but of course with much increased DoF (as expected).

Which brings me to observe that so far it is my experience that simmilar F-stop numbers produce similar contrast. Personally I find the 50mm @ f1.4 to be too milky and too soft. The close examinations in that article show that flare and reduction of contrast are the culprits.

However back in that article I wrote that it would be interesting to compare the new Oly 45 f1.8 ... let me quote:

Perhaps the new Olympus 45 f1.8 lens would solve these problems and yield a lens which would

• have the contrast I find in the Olympus 100 f2.8 on full frame,
• have at least similar (if not better) sharpness
• be more compact and light weight than the FD f1.4

The lens will set you back about $400 as it seems to be panning out, which is quite attractive. The initial discussion of the new Oly 45f1.8 indicated prices would be much higher, but if it does come in at $400 that will put it right on par with the typical 100mm f2 lens.




Since the Oly is a 45mm not a 50mm, you will need to get closer to the subject as there is a significant difference between 45mm and 50mm. It may work out near enough, but I suspect that you'll get a tighter DoF out of a 100mm lens on full fame than even the Oly45mm f1.8 simply because I got exactly that when comparing the 50 and the 100.


With both images I tried to focus on the back edge of the cap. Using the magnify zoom focus assist on the GH1 it was easy to get that spot. Looking carefully its clear that the 50mm lens on the 4/3 the focus zone is much deeper even at f1.4. By the distance from the ear to the eyelashes, they are starting to go out of focus on the 100mm at f2.8 but not on the 50mm at f1.4. This means also that you won't get that on the Olympus 45 f1.8 either.

The New Material

I have a couple of things I wanted to show, first is the differences in more detail between the two images in two ways:

1. same diameter aperture
2. same f-stop aperture

Recalling that F-Stop is a ratio of lens focal length over aperture diameter (so a 50mm lens with a 25mm diameter aperture would be a f2 lens).  Again I have an old post explaining that on my older server here. As Depth of Field is essentially related to diameter not strictly aperture having the same diameter aperture between 4/3 and Full Frame works out to be f1.4 on the 50mm on 4/3 and f2.8 on the 100mm on the Full Frame.

So at the same diameter

and next at the same aperture:

I notice two things seem related at different settings: 
Contrast at fstop and Depth of Field at aperture diameter.

I see that at the same F number the contrast levels are almost the same and yet the background Depth of Field is deeper (IE more focused). I'm not sure if this transfers to other lenses or if its just here.

Ok, the next thing I noticed in panning around the images was how much better (cleaner) the 5D image was to the GH1.

Noise

Back in that earlier article I observed that the 5D held shadows and highlights better than the GH1 did. I am sure that this is going to be the case across all the micro4/3 but would love to actually see results (not just fanboyism). In that comparison I used ACR to do my conversions, and still noticed some differences. The other day I used DCRAW to do the conversion because I wanted to see what was actually in the RAW files, not what cunning reconstructions that Adobe can do (which they do so well).

As you (should) know, both these cameras use a typical Bayer Array, which contains 2 times as many Green pixels as it does Red or Blue. There is no actual RGB pixel, this is constructed during 'demosiacing' from the R G and B pixels found in the Bayer array (as in figure to the left). There are of course various algorithms for this each with various advantages.

This has the basic effect however of making the Green channel much stronger (less noise) than any other channels. If you have not done this before I suggest you load any image into Photoshop and look at each of the colour channels. Of course if you have a foveon sensor camera, where you will not see such differences in RGB ...

This noise does make a difference on a print, especially if you print large. Some years ago (before blogs existed) I wrote a post on my observations of this here as well as some other observations on channel noise differences between JPG and RAW here. While the focus of those articles is not the same as here, there is some overlapping information of relevance.

So, starting again with the same diameter (to keep same DoF) and looking at the Red Channel from the images (converted as 16bit TIF) we see this:

And the levels of detail in the darkness of the red are dreadful on the GH1 while allso the hightlights are blown to saturation too.

Now, lets look at the images obtained with the same F-Number (and of course the shutter speed was slowed by 2 stops as the aperture was brought down too):

We now have a much happier comparison between the two images, although still the GH1 has a bit more noise than the 5D, its a lot better than it was at f1.4, which is curious.

To compare the other channels I have put together this pair of animated GIF files cycling through the images:
Colour - R - G - B

5D


GH1


So its pretty clear that the GH1 files do not have the same capacity to be free from noise or saturation as the 5D does. This of course will be noticeable as a grubby noise in the shadows when comparing the two, or a softness (as all current noise reduction algorithms I've seen produce).

I would love to make this comparison with a newer lens like the Olympus 45mm f1.8 to see if it does a better job of the contrast.

the JPG versions

I realise that some people are JPG only shooters, so I thought I should include the JPG's that came from the cameras. These were both with settings as "standard" as possible.

5D @f2.8

its red channel

which isn't too bad really.

Then to the GH1 @f1.4

its red channel

same mushy shadows as I obtained with RAW processing, perhaps worse.
So in my view, even the marvels of in-camera processing just make it clear that working in RAW has been a benefit to the Panasonic.

Thoughts

Does this mean I don't like my GH1? Not at all, its still exactly the camera I wanted it to be. Its light, it does great video and takes a host of lenses. I love it. All this means to me is that I'm more aware of the actual differences that will result in use between the cameras.

Does this mean I'll be ditching my 5D? Well no, while I hate it for being a fat slug it produces good images. Fat slug you say? Ok, lets look at a few images.

This is my 5D:

and from exactly the same location (the camera that took the pictures was on a tripod, it didn't move and it was using a manual focus lens which I also didn't move) my
EOS 630 film camera:

Did you notice how much more blob there is in front of the camera and how much more bulk there is behind the film plane (yellow line)? Yet the 630 gives me shit-hot fast AF, fast 5 frames per second motor drive (twice the speed of the 5D) and lasts about a year of shooting on a single battery (well ok, you need to feed it film too). Its lighter than the 5D and almost as convenient to carry as my GH1 is really.

I happen to like digital cameras but dislike DSLR cameras for their bulk. I hate how fat DSLR cameras are in comparison to 35mm film cameras.  Of course the new Sony a7 seems to have solved that problem.

Below is the crew of cameras used in making this post (obviously not taken with any of these cameras):

When going on holiday just walking around I'm far more likely to have my GH1 with me than a 5D. (In fact I'll probably take the 630 along because I prefer the way negative reacts when shooting in harsh light). However when I'm shooting an important event like a wedding I'll be sure to be taking along a Full Frame camera like the 5D.

Also the GH1 (by being a smaller 4/3 format) allows me to make better use of my telephoto lenses, or even own telephoto lenses which I could not make use of before (such as my FD200mm f4 which only weighs 440g and is really cheap as it won't fit on any DLSR).

In the end to answer the question I posed in the opening of the first post (you remember that one, back here), while its close, the cameras are not fully "fungible" ... each has distinct differences, each brings something different to the table.

To quote an old saying: if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So by having both full frame and 35mm (well and large format too) and understanding the differences, I can pick which tool is right for the job.

:-)