Q and A: What’s the deal with the new Micro Four Thirds format? — Photocrati:
Can you explain the new Micro Four Thirds format? What is the point of a camera like this compared to one that fits into a shirt pocket like my Lumix FS25 with 29-145mm lens? I see that both Panasonic and Olympus are making Micro cameras now, but they’re not very small and they are very expensive. Why would anyone want one of those?
Gadget Lab | Wired.com:
That focus control is one of the reasons the camera has improved so much. Autofocus lenses don’t have to be sharp front to back. This means that there is less of a compromise between flexibility and quality, and the lens can be designed to be sharper. And any focusing, auto or manual, means that you can achieve a shallower depth of field for differential focus and blurred backgrounds. That the iPhone also has touch-to-focus control is just gravy.
Rob Galbraith:
Starting next month, camera bag maker Think Tank Photo will begin shipping a line of bags aimed at the growing number of editorial photographers whose work includes capturing audio along with still photos, plus photographers of all stripes who are flocking to the new breed of digital SLRs capable of capturing high-quality video.
Rob Galbraith DPI:
Attention, working photographers: this may well be the Eye-Fi card you’ve been waiting for. The new Eye-Fi Pro combo wireless and 4GB SDHC card for digital cameras is the first from the company to be able to transmit RAW files, in addition to JPEG and video, as well as the first to work over a computer-to-computer (ad hoc) Wi-Fi link, no router required.
Gadget Lab | Wired.com:
That it follows the Pen’s stylings is significant, if only in nerdy kind of way. The MFT sensor is one half the size of a 35mm frame (and a slightly different shape, too). The Pen eked 72 shots out of a 36 exposure roll of 135 film by using the same trick. I’m pretty excited about this camera. If it can bring DSLR handling and image quality to a tiny package, it could be the Leica M of the 21st century, and as Olympus has a special event in London scheduled for June 25th, we may not have long to wait.
David Burnett says:
There is a story, probably true, about two well known Magnum photographers, a story going back a couple of decades, I’m sure. Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of the founders of Magnum, was greeting Bruno Barbey, just five years older than myself, at one of the meetings in Paris. The two embraced in that modern European manner, hands about each other’s torso, when suddenly Cartier’s hands went from a gentle touch to something more akin to a frisk. And within a few seconds, he pushed back from Bruno, and exhorted, “But where is your CAMERA?!”
Rob Galbraith says:
We’ve come out of EOS-1D Mark III AF testing retirement just long enough to put the camera’s revised AF calibration and firmware v1.2.5 through its paces, to see if Canon’s changes add up to improved tracking performance.
