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**Simon Bee** · 3 March 2022, 01:53 PM

Well not 'all' of us Dave, I learnt a some time ago to stop chasing the 'latest and greatest' as 'I' don't need them and it's also a sure way to deplete your bank account quickly.
I haven't got the time to be stuck in front of a computer either so PP is kept to absolute minimum, I think too many folk today are obsessed with perceived image quality instead of 'really' enjoying what photography is about .... capturing a record in time.

**DerekW** · 3 March 2022, 04:13 PM

I am one year younger than D in W and I will most likely be ordering an OM-1 tomorrow. And just to cheer you all up I am on a 0 to 4 year life expectancy forecast from the medics. So someone will collect a nice set of Olympus cameras before long.

**pdk42** · 3 March 2022, 04:49 PM

Photographers are a strange bunch (and I put myself in the category so I'm not just saying everyone's mad except me - except of course I do know that this is in fact the case!).

- We spend a lot of money on buying equipment for the sake of improved image quality.
- We keep saying that IQ is important to justify this spending.
- IQ on most cameras is now so good that it requires careful inspection of the images (aka pixel peeking) to know that the IQ is indeed improved.
- But when the IQ doesn't quite meet what we expect when pixel peeking, we then do a complete backflip and say "but it not about the IQ, it's about the images as a whole and enjoying my photography"

If we were entirely logical and pragmatic creatures, we'd only reach for the new camera reviews and get our credit cards out when there was a clear and pressing need to do so - such as our existing camera being broken or realising that there was a specific and clearly-identified weakness with our current gear. But the truth is that most of us do photography as a hybrid hobby - it's not just about the images, it's the gear to some degree too. So, I think it's entirely reasonable to talk about the IQ just as much as the images. They are different aspects of the photography game.

**Graham_of_Rainham** · 3 March 2022, 06:03 PM

I have said on many many occasions that it’s all about the finished product. By the time all that precious pixel data goes through the many processing systems, of the camera, computer, printer, projector, monitor or TV screen, there’s nothing left of the original data, it all been manipulated.

I can send the same file to two different printers and get back considerably different quality products.

I have, a couple of months ago, presented a range of projected images (at HDTV resolution) to a photographic society, some taken with an iPhone and others with a 20M mft camera. The “challenge” to the audience was to guess what took the picture. Virtually all were guessing as the IQ was essentially the same and I even threw in some taken with my old ZX-1 and nobody was the wiser.

I recall many years ago an article that was published when one of the first MF digital camera was launched and the assembled press were asked to determine (guess) if the 10x8 prints were taken with the MF camera or a small CANON pocket camera. The results was very revealing, in that they did very little better than pure guessing!

I also see thousands of pictures each year, in competitions and have seen prints at 20” x 16” with incredible details, colours, contrast etc., that don’t come close to winning. I have over the last few years given top marks and winning positions to pictures that I was subsequently told were taken with a smartphone camera. I am also pleased to say that I have also given top score to a B&W wet print, that the photographer took great delight in telling me that they used very out of date film, paper and a 50 year old Pentax

**Melaka** · 3 March 2022, 07:02 PM

I'm a year older than D in W and have come to the conclusion that what I have now is what suits me best. It's too much hassle to learn new menus etc and I hardly ever do PP, preferring to get it right in camera to start with. I know I can't take it with me but there are other things I'd rather spend it on - such as our forthcoming family trip to the Kruger which will afford endless opportunities for the sort of photography I enjoy and hopefully give equal enjoyment to the younger generations.

**moggi1964** · 3 March 2022, 09:06 PM

Gimme more .....errr, SOMETHING! I NEED IT if I'm going to take better pictures.

I would suggest that something is time and practice. It's not pixels or DR or ISO or ELO. Well, maybe ELO

**MJ224** · 3 March 2022, 11:57 PM

I enjoy the journey, as much as the arrival............

**SJB1956** · 4 March 2022, 04:46 PM

I despair at some of the heated arguments and point scoring that goes on about these types of things, particularly on sites like DPR which, save for the odd time, I stopped visiting ages ago to come here.

My guiding principle can be summoned up by comments made by Dr Micheal, “Wildman” Leach who is a professional wildlife photographer who has worked for the BBC and the major studios and who has presented a few zoom lecture to our club in the past and whom I thoroughly recommend to members here.

Basically he says:
1. Club photography lives in a parallel universe from all other forms of photography, especially commercial photography.

2. Professional photographers are brand and format agnostic. They use what they need to get the job done. This one needs a bit of clarification because it depends on whom is paying the bill, i.e. budget comes into this, but for simplicity lets assume the client wants the best and is prepared to pay for it.

3. The point about who pays is very important. If a particular manufacturer is prepared to "long term loan kit" then they will use it. My understanding is that the kit is not really given. Rather it just appears and if it needs to be replaced or repaired or additional kit is required and they make it then it becomes available.

4. If the client is not paying or there is no manufacturer to provide the kit than its down to the professional photographers choice and the equipment used is determined by the job and the budget.

5. With regards to image quality .....well, you would be surprised just how much latitude there is to play with here. The reason for this comes down to how the world consumes images. Printed images are usually in magazines so a double A4 spread is about as large as most images go. The majority are much smaller. Most images are viewed on a phone, a tablet and then a computer screen and with the many, many millions of images being published each year, they are viewed for seconds. The output from a 5 mega pixel camera is more than sufficient for HD TV.

6. The real kicker for myself is the ranking for what is important to a commercial photographer. This is :

A. Originality. Photograph or film and animal or a bird etc in a situation or doing something no one has seen before. Thats the really important point.
B. The image should be noise free - or as free as the circumstances allow. Better a slightly noisy original image than no image at all.
C. The images need not even be particularly sharp

!

In other words, in most situations, practically any modern quality camera is more than good enough to capture most if not all the images you require. If its not, it will be because of something like a particular set of circumstances eg. cramped space.

The more important consideration is technique and a real understanding of the subject.

Also, a good deal go what we see in pictures and on the TV and in film, particularly in wildlife programmes, is the result of sophisticated trickery.

No one can really film what we are seeing in real time out in the real world because it's too difficult and more importantly, it's too expensive to even try. Instead, its set up, under controlled conditions in a studio or on a set of some kind. The famous BBC shot of rodents walking along the M4 ( think it was the M4 ). It never happened. The motorway was a called model manufactured by Tarmac and delivery on a wagon. The road surface looks too new and so the contents of a vacuum bag were used to weather it down, plus a few other unpleasant things. The motorway car lights streaming past......a child electric train set running around a track. The traffic noise....the BBC sound department went out and recorded it from a bridge over the motorway and in post production the two parts were synchronised together.

With this in mind, I suggest we all take time to brew a coffee or a cup of tea and then pop across and lookout the images from someone like Petrum Bambouskem and when we do, I bet not one of us looks at the images and asks...."I wonder what camera he used to take that image", or even less probable ...."I wonder if I took that images with a different camera would it have more or less noise in it than this one"?

We will all rationalise about whether to buy the OM1 or not differently. Personally, from the images I have seen taken with the camera, the files look better, but I know OMD will have a long time to produce these and so I would expect them to be as good as they possible can be. When I say better, I mean, the ones Olympus have published genuinly just look very clean and the colours look right.

I will probably buy the camera, but if I do my decision to do so will have nothing to do with just one factor. For myself, ease and speed of use, convenience and the general overall look of the images will be the most important considerations. It will be an improvement on the Mk3 in this respect and if I buy it my wife will have access to my MK3 and my daughter will probably inherit the MK2. As a family we will have the first Professional Olympus Macro four thirds , the 5 and the last to carry the name OM1. Pixel peaking will not be a consideration.

Finally, a plea to the wise. Please don't let this site become anything like DP review where people sit at key boards arguing about very little of importance. Let's all get out with whatever camera and lens we have and take some pictures and share them.

Take care all. I am off now to have another conversation with myself about why buying the OM1 would be a good idea.

Elsewhere in the world, people are having a similar conversation, but it about how they eat, buy medicine, or escape Putin. It's only a camera and we are fortunate enough to live in a part of the world where we have been able to amass the wealth to buy such things and not really have to think too hard about it.

Have a lovely weekend and lets hope a for a peaceful resolution to the events in Ukraine and a better and more peaceful world for our children and grand children to grow old in.

**blu-by-u** · 5 March 2022, 12:45 AM

Nothing to argue about. everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

To me, all I needed was better noise control. I shoot indoors at an auditorium/stage. I shoot at ISOs 800 to 1600 (that's my limit) and I have that SAT (shadow enhancement Tec) set to ON. So to me, that dynamic range increase and lower noise are plus for me. BUT somehow, I want to refrain from jumping so fast as I want to hear fellow photographers on their views (Sorry, I take reviewers, testers and ambassadors opinion with a pinch of salt)

Another thing I have noticed in myself, I am seriously loosing my touch. I see my older photos much better composed than my current takes. That why I started a thread

**Ross the fiddler** · 5 March 2022, 03:53 AM

Home visits of wildlife is my main area & the OM-1 will do it better than my E-M1 II with AF & other functions. ISO 6400 is my normal (auto) upper limit so if I can go higher with better IQ then that is another advantage, because wildlife don't normally pose in a well lit studio. Occasional scene photos is another (when I can drag myself out to go somewhere). Just over a decade behind David, but if life is cut short for whatever reason then someone else will benefit (& why I won't spend $$$$ on dental capping etc I can manage without).

**drmarkf** · 5 March 2022, 09:39 AM

Yup, to go for an OM-1 for my wildlife photography I’d set myself a requirement for either much improved bird/animal CAF, or 2/3 stop or more improved noise performance around ISO1600-3200. It became obvious very early that the former had been achieved so I pre-ordered.

Improvement at ISO 6400 and above isn’t likely to do much for the sort of U.K. or safari wildlife shooting I like, but I do like to do nighttime street, and more usable 6400/12600 allied to Oly image stabilisation will be worth exploring for that.

Most of the other improvements will be nice for me to have (especially the HHHR and Live ND for the landscape I do a bit of), but weren’t critical.

So, overall I’m happy with my decision, and it’ll be interesting to see how the full noise/DR equation washes out. I foresee thousands of paragraphs of angry dpreview bickering over b….. all 🤣

**Bikie John** · 5 March 2022, 10:13 AM

Shooting rugby in English winters, I have occasionally had to go to ISO 12,800 - with an f/2.8 lens wide open. The results are horrible on screen but can be OK for the local paper. Even at 12,800 it is chancing it a bit with shutter speeds and I would sometimes like to go even higher. So improvements in general quality at these really high ISOs - whether noise, DR, or colour rendition - will be a huge benefit to me.

We are now out of those afternoons of really stygian gloom, so I won't panic too much if my order gets delayed a bit

John

**MJ224** · 5 March 2022, 10:16 AM

I think the speed of the processor says most of it. Just faster at everything. All this talk of extra stops and noise is a bit OTT, the existing cameras are good for most of what we do anyway. A small improvement is always good, and certainly good enough for me...(easily pleased..))

**biggles3** · 5 March 2022, 11:49 AM

Hi Dave in Wales, your comment on 'ISO Zillions' strikes a major chord...

In all my years of sports film photography, the highest I ever had to push film was Ektachrome 200 to ASA800 (very rarely) and mono was HP4/HP5 pushed two and a half stops from ASA400 to ASA1000 (even more rarely). I also used GAF500 (who remembers that film?), occasionally pushed one stop which created grain the size of golf-balls. If memory serves, Ektachrome Tungsten film would not take more than a 2.5 stop push which still resulted in a fairly slow film for indoor sports where flash was not permitted. I think I once shot some Tri-X pushed 5 stops for some abstract architectural shots for a commission but it's a distant, and thus unreliable, memory.

The notion that I'd need film with the equivalence of ASA25,600, for example, would have been risible; I'd have been told to go away and think about my career choice. Although it's been a very long time since my books were published (c40 years ago) not one of the images, colour or mono, was shot above ASA800 and they included 5fps sequential action shots taken using indifferent indoor lighting in East European sports halls. It's great that we can now shoot very high ISO speeds compared with the film available in the '60s through to the '80s as it undoubtedly opens up possibilities that were not available to any of us back then. However, while I don't want to sound too much of a Luddite. there needs to be a management of expectations, especially when using smaller sensors. I would expect IQ to be high for piccies taken up to and including ISO6400 but much beyond that, I'd expect a gradual degradation, though often fully recoverable in post-production.

I know it's an unfair comparison but last year I took a couple of night shots using the E-M1 III and a Fuji GFX50S both at ISO6400 with the Fuji requiring a tripod. All the images taken by both cameras were perfectly acceptable though the ability to recover additional detail was far better from the Fuji's larger sensor. But for me, the ability to take a good photo in very low light - and using the EVFs' brightness to help in composition and focusing - at that ISO setting is testament to the quality of both sensors. Perhaps one's expectations have been damped by decades of the constraints of film emulsions but when I hear people complain about IQ at uber-high ISO rates, I can't help wondering just how few of them would ever need them. And how would they have coped back in the '60s or '70s...

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