Some Thoughts on the M4/3 Format

Juvenile Cormorant (click to enlarge)
Olympus E-M1, Olympus 4/3 50-200mm f/2.8-3.5 SWD lens with Olympus EC-14 1.4X tele-converter @ 566mm (~e)
1/1600th sec. @ f/6.3; ISO 800; cropped to 5.8mp

First, let me say how much I like and enjoy my Olympus E-M1 as well as how much I like the M4/3 format.  (I only wish it were called "Mirrorless" 4/3 instead of Micro 4/3.  I believe Mirrorless is a much more accurate moniker.  Can we all work together to get it changed?)  That being said, I have been giving some thought to the future of the M4/3 format.  As much as I like it now, I ask myself will M4/3 be a viable format for me in the future?  Let me be clear that I have no plans at this time to get out of the M4/3 format or sell any of my M4/3 gear. 

Below are just my ramblings reflecting my internal mental debate.  Over the years, I have found that when I commit conflicting thoughts, a personal conundrum or an internal debate to paper, it clarifies the logical problem solving process for me. Hence, this post. In other words, I'm thinking out loud, so to speak.

Almost three years ago, I originally bought into the M4/3 format as an experiment.  My intention was to find a camera system that was smaller, lighter and less expensive but at the same time keep very high quality imaging potential.  When M4/3 was introduced, immediately, I thought it may fill the bill.  For the most part, my M4/3 gear has lived up to that.

I first purchased an Olympus E-M5 and I immediately fell in love with it despite its confusing menu.  It felt good, it was capable of high image quality and it fit the bill for size, bulk, price as well as lens selection.  All in all, the E-M5 is a wonderful camera and I would still recommend it to anyone who wants to jump into M4/3 at a low cost.  I would also not hesitate to recommend Panasonic M4/3 cameras as they are the equal of Olympus models.  Just a personal choice as to which you prefer.

Additionally, I really like Olympus' and Panasonic's lenses.  Small, lightweight, built well, high image quality potential and a selection that should please almost everyone.  I liked how the cameras and lenses all handled and operated as a system.  Not only did the cameras feel good, but the cameras and lenses as a system feel good together as well.

Getting back to image quality, I have to admit that I was really surprised and delighted when first examining M4/3 files.  I found a high level of quality—contrast, detail and color were very pleasing—from such a small sensor.  Immediately, I felt a surge of enthusiasm and found myself almost always picking up the M4/3 gear instead of my full frame Nikon gear when going out to photograph. I still feel that way.  There is something about the small size and ergonomics that enthuses me.  It is almost as though we are getting away with something we shouldn't.  By that I mean, "how can we make such great looking images with such a small camera and lenses?"  

(In the film days, it was the opposite.  If you wanted high quality images, you moved to medium format from 35mm, which meant larger, bulkier and more expensive and fewer lenses from which to select.)

The stock agency with which I have a contract felt the quality was certainly high enough for almost any commercial use and readily accepted the M4/3 image files for licensing. Feeling good about M4/3, I went on to buy more lenses, upgraded to the E-M1, added a Panasonic GX-1 as a backup body, and used the M4/3 system under every type of circumstance in which I photograph. So far, so good.

Over the past, almost, three years, I have written extensively and extolled the virtues of m4/3.  I stand by what I wrote and don't take any of it back.  I can't say enough about Olympus' Pro and prime lenses as well as Panasonic's terrific primes and zooms.  I own both brands and am completely happy with them.  Some of the lenses are as good as anything I have owned, no mater what the format.

Now, after experimenting for almost three years, I can say that I have found some instances in which M4/3 doesn't quite meet my requirements. It was inevitable and bound to happen.  That happens with most things.  You buy the car you always wanted and immediately feel its the best car on the road, but eventually the new wears off and you start to see some flaws. That doesn't mean the car is not a great car, it just means you are being a bit more objective over time and emotion is being left out of your evaluation process.  Same can happen with a home, audio equipment, a large television, and about anything else.  You research something, you make the hard decision, you spend your hard earned money, it arrives and you are really happy.  Over time, shortcomings or flaws reveal themselves that you didn't notice at first because of the emotional investment you made when you laid out your hard earned money for it.  Perfectly normal.  Happens all the time.  Nothing wrong with that.

Our internal evaluation process continues long after we make the purchase and use our property.  Subconsciously, that is what we do with our photographic gear as well. Every time we look at our images, we evaluate as to whether or not we are happy with the images and whether or not it was our own shortcoming or a limitation of the gear itself.

Recently I wrote a post where I concluded under which situations I would pick up my full frame gear before the M4/3 gear.  You can read about that here.  In fact, after using my full frame Nikon D810 and lenses exclusively for the last three months of 2014, I have reconsidered my options and decided that the Nikon gear will be my primary kit and the M4/3 gear as secondary.  That is just my choice and yours may differ depending upon your specific gear and your specific needs.  This is a change from the past couple of years but that Nikon D810 is, by a good margin and in several ways, the best camera I have ever owned—even after using 45 years worth of cameras!  It should be!  The sensor is about 400% larger than M4/3 and the focusing system is much more sophisticated.

I now feel a higher level of satisfaction from the images I make with the D810 than ones with the M4/3 gear.  They just have a "look" that I love.  Again, they should be better.  If they weren't I would sell the camera immediately!  

The D810 has even supplanted my all time favorite camera, my Pentax 6X7 system, which is saying a lot, since I carried that gear around for over 20 years.  This was not the case with my D700 or my D800E.  The D810 is turning out to be a very special camera for me. 

Back to M4/3...

Currently, I have four main areas of interest when it comes to the future of M4/3. Three of my interests have to do with the sensors available for the format.  The fourth is just a preference of mine.  This is where my internal debate raises its head.  My main interests in the future of M4/3 are a) photographing at ISOs 800 and above, b) increasing the number of pixels on the sensor, c) sensor dynamic range/diffraction and d) the sensor format ratio.

The primary question swirling in my head is, "Will the technology, in a reasonably short period of time, get to the point where 50% more pixels (to 24mp) can be added to that small sensor and, not only keep the current image quality but actually improve upon it, as well as reduce the digital noise I see (even at ISO 800) AND increase dynamic range?" 

Whew! That is a mouthful!  I seem to be asking for the moon here, but if you consider the leaps and bounds in technology over the past 10 digital years, my wishes may be reasonable. But, at this point, my answer is "I don't know".  If it can, how many years? Twenty-four megapixels on that small sensor almost seems as though it couldn't happen for a long but the digital industry has fooled us all in the past with huge leaps in size and quality.

Let's explore my four areas of interest as stated above.

Olympus E-M1, 50-200mm f/2.8-3.5 SWD lens @ 274mm (~e)
1/1600th @ f/11, ISO 800, handheld  (click to enlarge)

The first interest of mine revolves around photographing with higher ISOs (800 and above). I would put a maximum of 6400 or even 3200 to be reasonable.  Currently, I find the digital noise annoying "at times," and am hoping that in the future, Olympus and Panasonic can write better algorithms to lower generated noise at higher ISOs. In many cases, judicious application of noise reduction can reduce the objectionable noise while retaining fine detail.  At other times, it just won't work well. (Recently, I had a suggestion to try DXO Optics Pro's latest software version as their noise reducing engine, from what I have also read, is second to none. So this issue may, in the future, be moot).  The level digital noise is due to the sensor being small (just over 1/4 the size of full frame) and fully packed with over 16 million pixels.  Each pixel in a M4/3 camera's sensor has an area of only 13.99 µm.  Each pixel in a 16mp APS-C sized sensor, in comparison, is 22.66 µm. Even a full frame, 36mp camera, which everyone thought would not produce good image quality because the pixels were perceived to be way too small, has a pixel area of 23.72 µm, which is larger than either of the other two in this example. At this point, noise is a function of packing so many tiny (in comparison) pixels onto a rather small sensor. The larger the area of the pixel, the less noise at any given ISO.

That brings me to the second concern with the future of M4/3, increasing the number of pixels on M4/3 sensors.  

I have previously written that my "sweet spot" for a digital imaging sensor is about in the 24mp range.  I like that size for a few reasons.  First, I need the larger files for stock photography.  You may not need files as large but, for the most part, larger files are more attractive to stock photo buyers.  

Additionally, more detail can be recorded and subsequently extracted out of an image file from a sensor with more pixels.  Sometimes that detail is important to an image and sometimes it isn't.  When it is important to a certain image, and you can get the detail, it matters.  

Also, sometimes you just have to crop for a variety of reasons.  Sometimes you just can't get close enough, don't have a lens long enough, and you have to crop in to properly compose an image.  Sometimes converging verticals have to be straightened and in order to do so, you have leave enough image area on the sides so you can straighten the verticals which results in the sides of the image being cropped.  Sometimes you have to crop a lot and sometimes you have to crop a little.  In either case, even for those who say 16mp is plenty, how many pixels do you feel you can lose?  Is a resulting 8mp image enough for you?  How about 12?  Even two or three megapixels may be fine for looking at your images on the web, but not much more than that.  Sixteen is the bottom for me due to my stock photography submissions.  If you are only putting images on the web, have at it.  It may not matter.  But it does for me. Everyones' needs are different and only you can judge how many pixels you need.

With 24mp, I can get more versatility to make those necessary crops (always as little as humanly possible while still providing a properly composed image), and still retain a high pixel count. For stock photography, the ability to make large prints and see fine detail can be important to a buyer.

The rumor sites on the web say Olympus will soon introduce an E-M5 II, which will do as Hasselblad did and make multiple images at a time, then electronically combining the images in-camera to achieve a very high resolution file.  I believe Hasselblad's is 200mp. That can work fine for images that have no motion, if I'm understanding the concept correctly, but won't seem to work well with moving images.  I think it would be hard for the camera to fire off 4 or 5 exposures, in a semi-simultaneous way, when you have your shutter speed set to 1/2000th second to catch birds in flight.  But, I may be wrong.  If I am right, then this new method of increasing image file size may not work for all but a handful of situations, maybe just studio or landscape work.

The camera sensor manufacturers, along with the camera companies in some cases, have done some wonderful things with dynamic range.  When digital cameras were first mass marketed, the dynamic range of imaging sensors was horrific.  I think they were even worse than slide film, which could record about 5 or 6 f-stops of light.  Now, my Nikon D810 for example and according to DXO, can achieve almost 15 f-stops of light.  I can tell you that having that much dynamic range, in many cases, solves a whole lot of photographic problems.  Really, the Nikon D800E and now the D810, have spoiled me when it comes to dynamic range.  

The M4/3 sensors don't have quite that much, and as you increase ISOs, the dynamic range of sensors goes down.  In the future, I'm hoping that the M4/3 format sensors can increase the amount of dynamic range available.  The lessons learned by being spoiled by a great camera.

Additionally, 16mp may be the upper practical limit for a sensor this small due to diffraction issues.  The more dense a given sensor size is packed with pixels ( i.e., the smaller the pixels), the lower the f-number when diffraction softening rears its ugly head. Can future technology, maybe in advanced software, overcome the limitations of the laws of physics with diffraction and digital noise as it has with vignetting and lens distortion?

Last is the dimensional ratio of the sensor.  This is a minor thing and only one of preference to me.  No big deal.  In fact, it wouldn't be any deal at all if the M4/3 sensor were 24mp as I could then change ratios in-camera and fire away without another thought.

That being said, I have never really cared for the 4:3 (analog television) ratio.  I could set my E-M1 for 2:3 but I feel I am somewhat stuck with 4:3, as with 16mp there isn't much room to crop to 2:3 or 16:9. There are just too many pixels lost for my needs.  My favorite ratio is that of 35mm film (2:3) with 8X10 print size (4:5) running not far behind.  I guess all those years of photographing with 35mm slide film and 6X7 Pentax are burned into my psyche. 

Some other thoughts...

Olympus E-M5, Panasonic 100-300 f/4-5.6 lens @538mm ~e),
1/1000th sec. @ f5.5, ISO 5000 (click to enlarge)

I wonder if Olympus and Panasonic have made internal corporate decisions to cap M4/3 at 16mp for the foreseeable future and work on continuous improvements at that pixel count?  Hmmm.  I wouldn't be surprised if they had.

A lot of the improvements in the world of M4/3 have been prioritized in the realm of video.  Personally, I don't give a hoot about video.  Many of you do.  We each get to choose what is important to us.  Is video the focus of the future?  4K, 8K, better video formats?  Maybe even 8K video in which you can pull out high quality still images?  Eight megapixel still images are being pulled out of 4K now.  Maybe the trend is to move to 8K and pull out even better images, which begs the question if true, "will still photography for M4/3 go away as a standalone entity?  Probably not.

Will Olympus and Panasonic, with their successful partnership, decide to delve into the APS-C sensor market?  Probably not.  But they have hit upon a formula for success and to take their innovativeness to another level would be fun for all of us.

I'm sure, if you have and use M4/3 gear, you may have other questions about the future of the format.  Lenses don't seem to be the issue.  Olympus seems to be really catering to the pro and enthusiast still photography market.  Panasonic is blowing away the video market.

The bottom line for me is to closely follow the industry to see if my issues can and will be resolved in the near future.  The operative word is "near".  Lower noise at ISO 800 and above, more pixels which then would allow me to capture finer detail as well as crop as needed without losing too many of those pixels, a greater dynamic range capability of the sensor as well as programming out the increased diffraction that comes with increased pixel density.  Time will tell but I'm not going to wait forever.  At some point in the future, I'll have to decide whether or not M4/3 fully can meet my future needs and, if not, what direction will I have to go?  

I still have every intention of keeping a smaller, lighter less expensive but with high image quality camera system.  Right now, for the most part, M4/3 fills that bill nicely.  But, depending upon what Olympus and Panasonic plan to do or it becomes apparent that M4/3 can no longer fulfill my areas of interest, I may have to go in a different direction. However, if I decide to get out of the stock photography business, none of this will matter as then I will then photograph only for myself.  If that is the case, M4/3 works pretty well for me.  Even small improvements will be welcome.

If the day comes when M4/3 is not improving to keep current with other formats, will a mirrorless APS-C or full frame system better solve my concerns? The problem with larger formats is, of course, the necessity for larger lenses to cover the increased area of the sensor.  Larger, heavier lenses are contrary to my desire to go smaller.

Are there larger format systems out there that have a plethora of small, lightweight and less expensive lenses that might do the job, if necessary?  Not sure at this point.  As I said, I'll be watching and reading for what the M4/3 manufacturers do during 2015.

Thanks for looking.  Enjoy!

Dennis Mook

Many of my images can be found at www.dennismook.com.  Please pay it a visit.  I add new images regularly.  Thank you.


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