Striped beauty

Red & White Striped tulip.

 

This image is all about color fidelity, the blood red streaks contrasted with the milky white petals amidst the dark chlorophyll green background.

 

Shot taken with the Olympus 75mm f1.8.

 

RAW file developed entirely from the native free Olympus software with no further processing as it doesn’t need further enhancements. Took less than a couple of minutes. And yes, this is noticeably better than the SOOC JPEG.

 

Colors of images from m43 sensors often tend to be on the "thin and weak" side but there are ways to overcome it, even just by using the free Olympus RAW developer.

 

Meanwhile, many reviewers till today still tend to review mirrorless ILCs like they would DSLRs. As such the weakness of the mirrorless cameras are totally being glossed over.

 

Main differences in features of mirrorless vs DSLR are as appended.

 

Sensor read-out speed

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- A real achilles heel of mirrorless that reviewers often avoid any mention or de-emphasized.

Eg; A recent camera review I came across mentioned that the EOS R6 was better for action than A7III but the latest A7IV is now better than the R6. Zero mention of sensor read-out speed where the A7IV remained the same as A7III at a dismal 1/15s for uncompressed RAW or 1/30s at 12bit RAW compared to the EOS R6 at 1/60s at 12bit RAW.

 

- Resulting “rolling shutter effect” in fast action shots and video due to slow sensor read-out speed.

 

- The highest FPS of mirrorless cameras are in electronic shutter mode but it defeats the purpose if the sensor read-out speed is slow (rolling shutter effect) and you end up resorting to its noisy mechanical shutter with much lowered FPS like those found in a DSLR.

 

- Olympus E-M1 MKii has the 1st truly usable fully electronic shutter with a sensor read-out speed of 1/60s (prev E-M1 1/13s), zero wear and tear to the mechanical shutter which Nikon chose to leave out entirely in their recent Z9. I set fully electronic shutter (Silent Shutter in Olympus speak) on my E-M1 Mkii as default.

 

- Lower bit depth is commonly applied to increase sensor read-out speed hence it’s misleading to mention sensor read-out speed without indicating related bit depth applied. Existing Nikon Z6ii and Z7ii, Sony A7IV and A7RIV are all no faster than 1/20s, at 12bit the Z7ii manages 1/30s compared to the Canon EOS R5 and R6 at around a much more usable 1/60s 12bit. Same thing can be said about FPS and the related bit depth applied.

 

- What that typically always do get a lot of mention; the gazillion FPS and AF points as headline numbers with no mention of related bit-depth or sensor read-out speed etc. While good to have, the overabundance of FPS and AF points are of little relevance for general use not involving fast-paced sports or birds in flight genres where fast sensor read-out speed is essential. All the superfluous amounts of FPS and AF points are useless if the sensor read-out speed is slow. In addition, mirrorless on-sensor PDAF is typically not as effective as the separate PDAF module of a DSLR.

 

DSLR separate PDAF module

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Unless Mirrorless ILC come with stacked sensors, their AF tracking performance cannot match those of a DSLR thanks to its dedicated PDAF module. This is regardless of how many gazillion AF points the mirrorless sensor has, cross-type or not. The PDAF sensor module have entire pixels dedicated to the sole task of performing PDAF computations and do not suffer any loss of light from Bayer/Color filters like PDAF on sensor which can only occupy a small section of a each pixel that has other metering and WB computations to deal with thus slowing down the entire process. Mirrorless cameras with stacked sensors are still very expensive.

 

IBIS

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- Read the fine print, one brand’s 5 stops stabilization is not the same as another brand’s 5 stops. This must be considered in conjunction with the IBIS' maximum effective focal length which is only mentioned in the finest of fine print, blink and you'll miss it and camera reviews typically chose to be silent on this.

 

- Telephoto focal lengths.

Lens IS is more effective than Camera IBIS at longer focal lengths but synced Lens IS with Camera IBIS is best.

 

- Lens and body synced IS.

Nikon Z9 is essentially 5 stops at 70mm but with "Synchro VR" it’s 6 stops at 200mm with selected lenses but yet it’s only 3 stops (and only 3 out of 5 axis) with F mount lenses. The OM-1 is 8 stops at equivalent 300mm. Sony is now the only brand without synced lens and body IS.

 

RAW vs JPEG level improvements

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Finally, it’s now important in the mirrorless era to differentiate real RAW improvements from improvements at the JPEG level only which is merely skin-deep. Camera makers already hit the wall with sensor tech some years back and are now resorting to baked-in softwares to sell perceived improvements. Fact is, the same or better improvements can be obtained from competent post-processing without the need to buy the latest camera at full retail price.

Done