Fools paradise choices

[the black fox]

As a lot will know i switched to Olympus after heart failure , and to be fair I have found it a good solution , but going back over old photos on Flickr in all honesty I got far better photos with my previous Nikon DSLR set up ..
I currently have a Nikon 300mm f4 lens with a broken focus motor plus a 1.4 tc and am wondering whether to get that fixed and revert back to crop sensor or even go full frame ..
Moving to a Sony mirrorless is another option but probably out of my financial reach .. just pondering the options .. what would you do on a limited budget

 

[tijuana taxi]

In what way are the old photos better?
Work out the areas you want to improve then think which outfit would be best.
Even if FF is financially possibly can you still manage the longer lenses.

I switched from Canon FF and now use M4/3, but my photography is mainly
travel based.
Suits me, but I don't need tracking capability or fast auto focus.

 

[the black fox]

What I may do is to weigh up the cost of the lens repair first … then draw up some old files and subject them to up to date p.p methods to compare them side by side with MFT stuff .. my limiting factor is the 100-400 lens is f6.3 . There is no affordable way round that .just mulling over options really

 

[tijuana taxi]

What I may do is to weigh up the cost of the lens repair first … then draw up some old files and subject them to up to date p.p methods to compare them side by side with MFT stuff .. my limiting factor is the 100-400 lens is f6.3 . There is no affordable way round that .just mulling over options really

Why have you recently become so dissatisfied with your photos and equipment?
Is it the realisation that the gear you want is now within reason financially unattainable?

I faced this quandary about fifteen years ago when I wanted to get into wildlife photography.
All the usual commitments, family, mortgage and just generally lots of other things that came first.
It became apparent to get the results I wanted it would need one of the long primes such as the 500/4
Also a new camera, think at the time the best option was the 1d Mkiv with its 1.3x crop factor.
Nearest I got was a 7D and 400/5.6, didn't really work for me and I became rather disillusioned.

Went back to my more usual landscape and general photography with the realisation I just couldn't afford the five grand White stuff.
Soon forgot about it and then a move to lighter and smaller gear reinvigorated my photography.
Just have to accept that its more about what you do have and making the most of it.
I hope you get back on your more settled path soon and enjoy your hobby again to its fullest.

 

[THIRTYFIVEMILL]

If funds are limited and you’d like to go back to Nikon then look for a lightly used D700. I just bought one myself, my third in all. Never get tired of the IQ of this camera and it’s full frame.

 

[AndrewFlannigan]

I long ago realised that "image quality" is a chimera so my only interest in cameras and lenses is whether they get me the picture I want and are fun to use.

I'm just as happy to use my Ixus 70 and crop its 8MP files as use the full 24MP of my Nikon D600. Moreover, I seldom buy new and then only if there's a really big discount on offer.

This may not work for others but it has always worked for me.

 

[jerry12953]

Surprised you're considering moving on from your Olympus kit. Having seen so many of your photos on the Olympus thread, why ever are you dissatisfied with them?

Edit : and you have the option of upgrading to the OM1 when it becomes available again.

 

[snerkler]

As a lot will know i switched to Olympus after heart failure , and to be fair I have found it a good solution , but going back over old photos on Flickr in all honesty I got far better photos with my previous Nikon DSLR set up ..
I currently have a Nikon 300mm f4 lens with a broken focus motor plus a 1.4 tc and am wondering whether to get that fixed and revert back to crop sensor or even go full frame ..
Moving to a Sony mirrorless is another option but probably out of my financial reach .. just pondering the options .. what would you do on a limited budget

Firstly, sorry to hear about your heart failure.

When it comes to image quality you are going to get a lot of opinions, they’ll be those that don’t see a difference and those where the difference is blindingly obvious. I’m somewhere in between. As you know I have run the Olympus system alongside FF for some time, although my Olympus stuff is now stripped back to the very bare minimum, the reason being is that overall FF gives me nicer images. Yes there are times when the difference is minimal, but then there are times when the difference is much larger, but it’s really difficult to quantify. I wouldn’t even say at normal viewing sizes it has anything to do with sharpness either, on a 15” laptop M4/3 has enough sharpness for me.

So what is it about FF that I prefer? Well it’s very difficult to answer, but there’s more depth somehow, and dare I even say the images often look more ‘polished’. All I know is that I often prefer the images I’ve taken with FF vs those of M4/3.

The question I’d be asking if I was in your position though is not whether you prefer FF over M4/3, but is the difference enough to warrant all the extra bulk and weight? It’s a tough call for sure. What I can say to muddy the water further, is that if I crop the 100-400mm heavily on FF to match the FOV you’d get with the 100-400mm on m4/3 there really isn’t a great deal of difference if any (at normal viewing sizes), FF does crop very well indeed imo. This of course will depend on lenses as well.

 

[the black fox]

just put the whole idea to bed , initial service on the lens is circa £250 then if it needs a focus motor £500 + ,just a idea I was mulling over , as Jeremy says the best option and probably the cheapest is to wait out delivery on a OM1 .
I will continue to use the nikon lens in M/F as I get good shots with it like that .

 

[woof woof]

What I may do is to weigh up the cost of the lens repair first … then draw up some old files and subject them to up to date p.p methods to compare them side by side with MFT stuff .. my limiting factor is the 100-400 lens is f6.3 . There is no affordable way round that .just mulling over options really

Yup.

For me as a happy snapper MFT is cheap with lots of options but more specialised stuff which begins to push the envelope is a potential problem and at f5.6/6.3 on MFT I can understand the issues. Getting that amount of reach with other systems could have its problems, APS-C could keep things reasonable but the package might lack that final bit of reach or be more expensive and heavier.

Good luck wrestling with this and finding a way forward.

 

[myotis]

So what is it about FF that I prefer? Well it’s very difficult to answer, but there’s more depth somehow, and dare I even say the images often look more ‘polished’. All I know is that I often prefer the images I’ve taken with FF vs those of M4/3.

I think it's smoother tonal and colour gradation from the larger sensors that just give the images a different "feel" You get the same difference going from FF to Medium format.

It was a similar difference in the film days when going from medium format to 5x4. The 5x4 stuff just looked "better" and it wasn't because of detail and sharpness.

 

[sphexx]

I think it's smoother tonal and colour gradation from the larger sensors that just give the images a different "feel" You get the same difference going from FF to Medium format.

It was a similar difference in the film days when going from medium format to 5x4. The 5x4 stuff just looked "better" and it wasn't because of detail and sharpness.

Brilliant. So Jeff could avoid a lot of frustration by jumping the progression and going straight to 4x5 (and film)*. Job done!





*It’s a variant on the well known Letter to George:

Letter to George

Dear Mr. Johnston, Thank you for your response attempting to assist me in my Nikon purchase. However, I find your recommendation preposterous and extremely strange coming from a so-called expert. First of all, the D700 at $2,450 is far beyond...

theonlinephotographer.typepad.com

 

[woof woof]

The following is all just my humble opinion.

To minimise the differences between MFT and FF I try to apply the crop factor to the aperture which can't always work as the look you'll get at any given focal length at f1.4/f1.8 on FF is pretty difficult to maybe impossible get with MFT but I can use MFT wide open at f1/7 or f1.8 to f4 or f5 and get something close at least in good light.

When looking at similar pictures side by side one give away is the aspect ratio, 3:2 for FF and 4:3 for MFT. There are areas where MFT appears to win as the lenses can be excellent and the system seems to lack some optical nasties that I see in FF sometimes such as CA, onion ring bokeh and maybe a couple of other things like harsh bokeh as some MFT lenses IMO give very nice smooth fall off and bokeh. Looking even closer at 100% or more MFT gives a more grainy look whereas FF looks smoother but is this a bad thing? People used to talk about the smooth plastic look as a bad thing, do they want grain? Whatever your view, it's a difference.

Thinking about colour and dof graduations I think it can be close and if things start to fall apart or not can perhaps depend on the light at the time and any processing and if you push those sliders a bit too far. Being sympathetic and not turbo charging things seems best sometimes.

The conclusion for me is that if the light is good and if I shoot MFT wide open to f4/f5 I find I often get pictures that can be lost in a slideshow or pile of FF pictures but if I go looking for the differences they're usually there if only seen when looking for them and going to 100%+. The biggest issue for me with MFT is a lack of DR compared to FF as sometimes it matters, sometimes it doesn't.

 

[myotis]

Brilliant. So Jeff could avoid a lot of frustration by jumping the progression and going straight to 4x5 (and film)*. Job done!

That hadn't actually occurred to me, but almost half a century ago, I did do some bird photography with a 5x4 (and what might even have been an f6.3 lens), using a bulb release attached to many feet of rubber tubing that allowed me to fire the shutter remotely.

I baited in front of the camera, waited for the birds to come, took my single picture, waited until the birds finished the food, and then went in to change the film holder and put more food down.

I repeated this this process several times before realising it was one of the stupidest photographic ideas I had ever had. However, I might still have a photograph of a house sparrow, lying around somewhere, from that day.

 

[woof woof]

That hadn't actually occurred to me, but almost half a century ago, I did do some bird photography with a 5x4 (and what might even have been an f6.3 lens), using a bulb release attached to many feet of rubber tubing that allowed me to fire the shutter remotely.

I baited in front of the camera, waited for the birds to come, took my single picture, waited until the birds finished the food, and then went in to change the film holder and put more food down.

I repeated this this process several times before realising it was one of the stupidest photographic ideas I had ever had. However, I might still have a photograph of a house sparrow, lying around somewhere, from that day.

Sometimes even if afterwards you think it was a silly idea, you just have to try it.

 

[myotis]

The following is all just my humble opinion.

To minimise the differences between MFT and FF I try to apply the crop factor to the aperture which can't always work as the look you'll get at any given focal length at f1.4/f1.8 on FF is pretty difficult to maybe impossible get with MFT but I can use MFT wide open at f1/7 or f1.8 to f4 or f5 and get something close at least in good light.

When looking at similar pictures side by side one give away is the aspect ratio, 3:2 for FF and 4:3 for MFT. There are areas where MFT appears to win as the lenses can be excellent and the system seems to lack some optical nasties that I see in FF sometimes such as CA, onion ring bokeh and maybe a couple of other things like harsh bokeh as some MFT lenses IMO give very nice smooth fall off and bokeh. Looking even closer at 100% or more MFT gives a more grainy look whereas FF looks smoother but is this a bad thing? People used to talk about the smooth plastic look as a bad thing, do they want grain? Whatever your view, it's a difference.

Thinking about colour and dof graduations I think it can be close and if things start to fall apart or not can perhaps depend on the light at the time and any processing and if you push those sliders a bit too far. Being sympathetic and not turbo charging things seems best sometimes.

The conclusion for me is that if the light is good and if I shoot MFT wide open to f4/f5 I find I often get pictures that can be lost in a slideshow or pile of FF pictures but if I go looking for the differences they're usually there if only seen when looking for them and going to 100%+. The biggest issue for me with MFT is a lack of DR compared to FF as sometimes it matters, sometimes it doesn't.

I largely agree with all of this except the "going looking for it"

On A4 prints made from various sensor sizes (from 1" to FF) of the same subject, I feel it's pretty obvious. In fact looking for it at 100% tends to hide the differences as you are too focussed on noise and detail, rather than the overall impression.

 

[snerkler]

I think it's smoother tonal and colour gradation from the larger sensors that just give the images a different "feel" You get the same difference going from FF to Medium format.

It was a similar difference in the film days when going from medium format to 5x4. The 5x4 stuff just looked "better" and it wasn't because of detail and sharpness.

I don't know anything about the gradation tbh, I just know what I prefer

Brilliant. So Jeff could avoid a lot of frustration by jumping the progression and going straight to 4x5 (and film)*. Job done!





*It’s a variant on the well known Letter to George:

Letter to George

Dear Mr. Johnston, Thank you for your response attempting to assist me in my Nikon purchase. However, I find your recommendation preposterous and extremely strange coming from a so-called expert. First of all, the D700 at $2,450 is far beyond...

theonlinephotographer.typepad.com

That response made me chuckle.

 

[woof woof]

I largely agree with all of this except the "going looking for it"

On A4 prints made from various sensor sizes (from 1" to FF) of the same subject, I feel it's pretty obvious. In fact looking for it at 100% tends to hide the differences as you are too focussed on noise and detail, rather than the overall impression.

I can see your point that looking at 100% hides differences as yes, you lose the view of the whole picture and "things" may then be hidden but other "things" which may not be easily and readily seen will then reveal themselves quite easily, like a smooth plastic look or grain at 100% at base ISO.

I think the only way to do this sort of comparison is to shoot the same subject side by side and as quickly as possible as seconds delay can mean changes in light and colour and contrast at equivalent focal length and apertures. Alter any of those things and the differences could be obvious and even with a just about perfect comparison I bet people will look for clues.

I have done my own comparisons and there was a good one over at Luminous Landscape years back which came to the conclusion that most people could tell what kit took what picture in print but of course that leads to a suspicion that most people aren't us and we'd know and the question of if newer kit would change the result.

 

[Deleted member 95736]

I would firstly take advantage of some of the trials that people like Canon and Fuji do, even if you have no immediate intention of buying them. It will at the very least satisfy your curiosity. There is then a great deal of availability on the 2nd hand market but what you might find is that your Olympus system isn't all that bad, in terms of results anyway. You'd need to look why you think you took better pictures with the Nikon, truly examine them and see if you have any overlapping pictures from both systems you can examine side by side.

I recently bought in to m43, so it's still quite new to me. People talk about tonality and I was never particularly convinced by the 16mp sensor which seemed quite granular to me but the 20mp seems to me to have a lot more of the tonality people speak of and the OM1, from the early results I'm seeing, looks even better. At some point full frame has to be better but the proportion of times it is isn't as great as I thought it would be, at least not in my limited trials of shooting same scenes with different cameras. An awful lot comes down to lenses in my humble opinion.

The main differences I'm seeing revolve around differences in dynamic range, noise and how much the files can be pushed but so far I've not encountered anything insurmountable

 

[myotis]

I think the only way to do this sort of comparison is to shoot the same subject side by side and as quickly as possible as seconds delay can mean changes in light and colour and contrast at equivalent focal length and apertures. Alter any of those things and the differences could be obvious and even with a just about perfect comparison I bet people will look for clues.

Actually, it's one those rare occasions where I'm not that interested in scientific comparisons.

I make photographs of a fairly narrow range of subject matter and I have files from 1", M43, APS and FF cameras of various ages and resolution. Including regularly photographing the same few sites (and the same subjects) and it's the difference in "feel" between the formats that interest me and I'm not sure how to measure it.

Some of the sharpest and perfect colour and contrast prints I've made came from my Nikon 1. For example, I had been taking pictures at a falconry display with a Nikon 1 v2 with the 70-300mm lens alongside a Nikon d7000 and an 18mm - 200mm lens. I was blown away at how good the Nikon 1 was, but there was something "nicer" about the D7000 images.

it wasn't noise (both had similar noise, after de-noising), but I like a bit of noise, and it wasn't sharpness because the Nikon 1 was clearly sharper than the Nikon D7000. The difference was in the colour gradation. On two pictures of the same Kestrel, on a perch taken one after the other, the Nikon D7000 print showed multiple subtle shades of brown and black compared to far fewer shades of brown and black in the Nikon 1 print.

The more I looked at the prints, the more the initial "wow" of how good the Nikon 1 result looked, gave way to me feeling it was rather harsh compared to the Nikon D7000 print. It wasn't something I could fix in processing, because the smaller file just didn't contain the information needed to match the results. As an aside, I found that making customised camera profiles with LumaRiver, gave small improvements n colour gradation across all file formats. But I've changed cameras since then and can't be bothered with the work involved, for only a small improvement.

It's an experience I've repeated over and over again, and overall the larger the sensor, the "nicer" an image feels. And while I am happy enough with results from all the sensor sizes I use (or used), I can't get away from the differences between them both when processing the files and in the final output.

However, I'm not that interested in a comparison based on minutia, or consciously looking for clues like different depth of field etc, I'm interested in the broad brush "feel" of the image.

How important this is, depends on multiple factors, sometimes it feels important and sometimes it doesn't.

And I confess, that over the years, I have in fact done far more testing and comparisons, than has been good for me.

 

[the black fox]

what your leaving out of the equation is that I have been a (wildlife photographer ) for 25 years or so and during that time I have amassed thousands of photos taken with various combinations of cameras and lenses .. so its very easy to access old files and re-process them using up to date software .. and draw my own conclusions
the thought inially crossed my mind due to the fact I have a nikon 300mm f4 a-fs with a broken focus motor plus a 1.4 tc which as a combo works well in M/F on olympus , and is a stunning lens . I got it for peanuts from a friend so the idea was to get it fixed and get a body to go with it .. but repair costs make it a uneconomic idea . but for anyone looking at older gear my favourite combos of old were
nikon d300s -d7200-- lenses 300mm f4 with either 1.4 or 1.7 Tc's
canon 1d3 or 1D4 - with the 400mm f5.6
any of those combos is ultra fast a.f wise and will still hold its own against the latest mirrorless in my view

 

[ancient_mariner]

@wornish - this thread should be of interest after our discussion in the 'what camera' thread.