Why are M4/3 lenses so slow?

Exact said:
This may have been asked / answered before, but I couldn't see it.

Why are M4/3 lenses so slow? f4 and f4.5-5.6 is way to slow for indoor shooting and it seems like you have to buy third party adapters to use anything remotely fast, with the exception of the 20mm f1.7 (which in reality is 40mm).
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The reason, IMHO, is because the m43 system, until recently, has mostly been targeted at "consumer" market, with development undertaken by respective divisions at both Panasonic and Olympus. Olympus considers Four-Thirds the professional line. The SHG series are quite fast zooms (f/2), with some primes in telephoto range. Panasonic Broadcast, the professional division, does not produce any "standalone" lenses to my knowledge, but opts for Canon or Fujinon optics. Therefore the adapter approach is not all that extraordinary and gives you access, if such is your requirement and budget, to quite excellent and fast glass, like Zeiss Ultra Prime Lenses.
 
I've had this same worry about the AF100. I really can't wait to use a camera like this instead of the DSLR route, but I'm so happy with Canon's lenses! I love the 17-55 f2.8 (constant) with IS- I have excellent manual primes too that I used on my Letus but I am using the canon 17-55 the most by far because of the type of shooting I do. I've got the Tokina 11-16 and that has come in handy on my T2i.
I have a Gh1 also and I never use it. I sold the kit lens because I found unusable. Canon's selection is just great in comparison. I kept the Gh1 and my 20mm f1.7 and my adapter for my manual primes, because those do look good on that camera and I liked the option of the small form factor for traveling. But if I were going to go for the AF100, and I really really want to if it makes sense, I'd love to have at least a normal range zoom that is fast, constant aperture, where the settings can be changed through the camera. I'm surprised by how expensive the m4/3 zooms are without being fast at all. I like how small the 20mm is but I actually HATE that lens for pulling focus in any reasonable way.

I'm happy to get away from the DSLR workflow- but one thing that comes to mind (a separate issue) is that I will keep at least one DSLR for those circumstances when I need to fly under the radar and/or not make any subjects nervous. DSLRs are great for that. But man, I can't wait for XLR inputs!!!
 
Exact said:
What if you are INSIDE ? What if you need a wide angle shot of a ROOM?

When did Ansel Adams shoot wedding receptions? I don't recall reading about that in ANY of his books I have ;)
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mmmmm...I think he committed suicide before he could shoot any wedding receptions, He did that right after the shooting the ceremony.

(only joking- a bad joke i know)

I get ya, I would love a super fast wide angle too, the 11-16 tokina is quite nice and at a 22mm FF equivalent, it might fit your need until a killer fast wide angle comes along at a cheap enough price for your to bite the bullet.

I swear we could all could shoot everything on a 50mm and be happy, Just have to knock down some walls I guess when shooting INT ; )
 
to technically answer the question, it is a matter of bending light.
it seems easy to build fast lens between 30 and 80mm because light is going relatively straight to the lens, so not much beding (and glass) is required.
So you find easily 50mm 1.4 or 80mm 2.8 lenses for cheap.
then if you go out of that range (wide or tele) , you need to bend light more (for wide angle) or make lens bigger (for tele) and this is tricky to get a decent picture at the end (chromatic aberration, vignetting, haze,etc..).
And unfortunately, bigger the sensor, and more difficult to produce a decent & cheap lens.
So dot not expect to find fast lens for cheap soon.
 
Exact said:
I'm trying to figure out how we could replace the HMC-150 with AF-100 to get a more film and less video look (shallow DOF - within reason) but I keep coming back to the slow lens problem.
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Short answer: check out the 14mm f2.5

Long answer (with lots of assumptions/approximations): the 1/3" sensor(s) in the HMC-150 have a 35mm photography frame crop factor of a little over 7, so the shortest/widest focal length on the HMC-150 is roughly 28mm, and that is basically the same as the m4/3 14mm. Also note that if we triple the sensitivity on the HMC-150 (to account for 3CCD vs (1) Bayer CMOS) it still works out that f2.0 on the HMC-150 would be roughly equivalent to f2.5 on m4/3 (and somewhere between f4.0-5.6 on a 35mm photography frame. i.e. 5DII).

As to the whole crop factor thing, there's a post of mine in the AF100 glass thread that some folks said they found helpful.

Mark
 
Thats why you just use Ansel Adams wide angle adapter its been the best way to do it for the past century, "take two steps back and... ah ha!"
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If only it were that easy. Super-wide lenses aren't about fitting more into the frame. They are about exaggerating distance and perspectives. Taking two steps back doesn't do that at all.
 
fast wide zooms should be way easier to build for micro 4/3 but i just don't think the bean counters at pani/olympus have deemed that the market would support a fast,wide zoom (or prime for that mater) as the f/4 lenses we are getting are generally fast enough for photography (flash anyone?)

its not till you get to shooting video that f/4 is not fast enough (especially for event work)

I think things are complicated by the fact that pani/Olympus must occupy the number 3/4 market position (or perhaps lower) behind canon and Nikon and they just cant charge what canon and nikon do for glass because moms and dads looking for a 1000 camera aren't about to pay twice that for a specialty lens. as the market share for m4/3 grows i hope we will see some more specialty glass and as the AF100 steals from the DSLR business i think we will se even more cool glass.

the GH2 shooting at 3200 also makes last years kit lens at f/4 equivalent of this years f/2.8 if you get my meaning.

i also think the design guys think that buyers want small lenses for small cameras. I look at one of my new favorites the Olympus 9-18 and it is crazy small. and slow at f/4. i would have loved for them to make the lens big enough to make it f/2 but it might have had to be bigger than the body of the camera, which wouldn't have bothered me in the least but regular people would probably thought that was weird.

i think we wil see some cool stuff in the next 6 months.

personally i feel vindicated by some of the M4/3 stuff these days as i stuck to my guns while the whole world seamed to go ape S@#% for the 5D/7D/T21

the windowed sensor gh2 is also going to make TV stlye fujinon and canon for 2/3 cameras very very useful i think. we will just have to wait to get some cameras in the field to se what works and what wont.
 
There is already two nice and fast zoom

14 - 35 f2 and 35 - 100 f2

but they are not optimised for video, so Jan,
why not a MK II version in 6 month?
 
samsara said:
and why not a 7-14 MM F/2.8 or 2 ? :thumbsup:
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There's one reason - price tag. All the existing Panasonic m43 lenses are designed around affordability. Consider that the 7-14 zoom costs less (substantially less) than a single-focal-length 18mm Zeiss ZF lens.

If you are willing to pay a higher price, lens designers can accomodate you. The Lumix 14-42 is slow at f/3.5-f5.6, but it's also only $200. The Olympus 14-35 covers most of the same range and is much faster at a constant f/2. However, it costs $1850.

There's nothing about the 4/3 format that means you can't make fast lenses; of course you can. You just have to be willing to pay for them.

And, actually, even then, you don't have to pay all that much. Cheap/fast/wide have always been expensive. My "full frame" ZF 18mm is only f/3.5, even though it was $1240; the 21mm is a half-stop faster at f/2.8, but is $1500. You can get a Panasonic 20mm/f1.7 for $328. That's 1.5 stops faster than the ZF 21mm, and two stops faster than the ZF 18mm. I'm not saying it's the same quality of lens, but I'm saying that there's nothing about full-frame lenses that makes them faster; you can easily get faster m43 lenses in equiv. focal lengths.

If you want to match the field of view, that's where it gets more comparable. Panasonic's got a new 14mm f/2.5 coming, for $399. And an 8mm fisheye f/3.5 for $799. The equivalent field of view on a "full frame" camera would be the Nikon 16mm, which is f/2.8 and $900.
 
Steve Kahn said:
It would't be. Have you tried this on a GH1?

I believe this lens had the field of view of a 20mm super wide angle lens and since it is a native micro four thirds mount, made by Panasonic, in fact, so there would be no crop factor.

The 2x crop factor is used when using SLR full frame lenses with an adapter on a micro four third body.
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I believe you are wrong on this one. 4/3 lenses have 2x crop factor, so a 20mm lens will be an equivalent of 40mm in 35mm terms.
To back up my statement here is the source: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...ix_DMC_GH1_Digital_Camera.html#specifications
 
The Olympus 14-54 2.8~3.5 and a 70-300 4~5.6 connected with a FT to mFT adapter is going to be my main lenses in the soon future.

Since I never worked with FF I tend to calculate crop factors related to APS-C which is more or less the size of S35 film.

So, the GH1 crop factor related to S35 is only 1.4x.
 
Pietro Impagliazzo said:
The Olympus 14-54 2.8~3.5 and a 70-300 4~5.6 connected with a FT to mFT adapter is going to be my main lenses in the soon future.

Since I never worked with FF I tend to calculate crop factors related to APS-C which is more or less the size of S35 film.

So, the GH1 crop factor related to S35 is only 1.4x.
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APS-C is not the size of S35 film, it's the size of regular 35mm movie film. And in relation to APS-C, the crop factor is 1.18x.
 
It's not the exact size... But APS-C is closer to S35 than FF35 is.

Oh, and for those having a hard time with fov:

35mmdigitalsensors.jpg


And in attachment a nice AoV calc made by David Rasberry from Scarletuser.
 

Attachments

Chart's wrong for the AF100. They're using the 17.3mm "stated" size in 4/3 literature, but the actual sensor is an oversized 19mm, so it's closer to the size of 35mm film than the chart shows.

It should be showing 19mm x 10.7mm, with an image diagonal of about 21.8, and an overall image size of 76% of the size of Super35, or 88% of the size of the 35mm cinema frame.
 
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