My Increasing Disillusion With Micro 4/3

DxOMark recently reviewed the newest version of the Sigma 35mm f/1.4 lens. It performs fantastically. It is easily the best lens in their tests. It has autofocus and costs only $900. And this is the rub: with a Metabones image reducer-type adapter, this would become a 17mm f/0.7 on m4/3. F/0.7. For $900.

Note: I converted the focal length into 4/3 terms. The image actually seen on the frame would be identical on full-frame or 4/3.

Tell me again why Panasonic is trying to sell its 42.5mm f/1.2 for $1,600? On what fucking planet do they live?

The Olympus E-M5 is a great camera. I love it. The E-M1 is great. I even feel much better toward the GX7 now that I've had a chance to use it. But the Speed Booster just makes the entire system untenable. A $600 adapter opens up the lenses of other systems and turns the market on its head.

To play Devil's advocate against myself, I understand that some degree of design must go into keeping the lenses at a particular size. Yes, the FF lenses are significantly faster, but they are also larger — often by a great deal. That said, it doesn't matter. Any photog on Earth would happily trade a little size for a lens that is faster than f/1.

Metabones hinted at a live micro 4/3 adapter, and that would be peachy keen. I do like my tiny lenses and frequently go back to my beloved GF1. Especially when I don't want to truck along a Nikon as when just going to a restaurant with friends. And while FF equipment is usually larger, it isn't always by much. Canon's 24mm, 28mm, 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm primes aren't very large and wouldn't appear out of place on a small body. And again, with the Speedboster, their apertures are all below f/1.0. But whither Micro 4/3 with that ability at hand? A system of small cameras that people buy to then use their Canon lenses?

The prices of 4/3 lenses are just becoming too big a burden for the sake of maintaining the system. The Panasonic 42.5mm really drove that home in grand fashion. I've felt a bit ripped off with my current lenses and their public statements indicate that they will be making no course corrections in the future, meaning I will feel even more ripped off then. The Speed Booster has made it so I can no longer abide this. Not when the Sigma 35mm becomes f/1 on the Fuji X Pro 1, a camera that can shoot ISO6400 without much breaking a sweat.

You can see in the freaking dark. Nothing in Micro 4/3 offers this, and if it did, they would try to charge a bazillion dollars for it. That I will not accept.

There is a concept in economics called the opportunity cost. It's the sort of thing you learn in econ-101. Basically, when you spend money, you are not just spending the money, you are spending the opportunity to buy other things. So when I spend $500 on a lens, it costs me the $500, any other lens I could have bought, a wardrobe, four pairs of shoes, one-hundred $5 Footlongs from Subway, and on and on.

Included in that cost are all of the other competitive camera products out there. Some of them are truly amazing. And that's the rub, right there. That's why camera companies are so desperate to get you into their closed or semi-closed system. That dynamic alters the value equation. Because then, when you spend $500 on a lens, you are not spending the opportunity to buy another lens, because you would have to buy into an entirely new system. It reduces the number of alternative uses of your money, reduces the opportunity cost, and thus increases the value of the lens beyond what it would be in a perfectly competitive landscape.

The art of pricing is thus determining how far a camera company can squeeze its adherents before they start to jump ship to another system.

I bought into Micro 4/3 at the very beginning. I even bought some old 4/3 lenses. And I have felt squeezed ever since.

The World Has Changed: The Metabones Image Reducer

Changing the world.

I spend most of my time on this site complaining about the intransigence of the camera companies. They grew so fat and dumb on their old business model that they were dead-set against any sort of change.

Obviously, that change has been coming whether they wanted it or not. The compact market has been destroyed by cell phones; a few groundbreaking cameras have altered the landscape; and now smaller companies are stepping in to fill the gap left by the arrogance of the larger companies.

One of the (many) things about 4/3 and Micro 4/3 that has always pissed me off was the prices they tried to charge for their good lenses. Don't get me wrong, 4/3 has some of the best cheap lenses available, but the instant they try to make pro-thusiast lenses, that greed took over — the very same greed we see at Canon and Nikon.

Look at Panasonic's laughably-priced X lenses. One of the advantages of small sensors is that it is easier and cheaper to design optics for them. $1,300 and $1,500 were money grabs. And while many lens fanatics were aware of this, there wasn't anything motivating the discussion. No product that made people think about lenses in a different light, no pun intended.

All that changes now.

Metabones has released for the Sony NEX system what's called an image reducer. Basically, you put a full frame lens on this adapter and the element in the adapter squeezes all of the light from the full frame lens down into a smaller image circle that perfectly fits the smaller NEX sensor. Obviously, this makes the image brighter while also taking all of the light from that larger image circle that provides the rich bokeh and shallow depth of field.

If you are someone who regularly works with FF lenses on smaller sensors, be they APS-C or 4/3, this means that you no longer have to worry about crop factor. That is fucking incredible.

For those who are simply curious about lenses and lens design, this provides the motivation we needed to criticize companies' lenses on some sort of even ground. No longer will Panasonic be able to claim that their 12-35mm lens is just like Canon's 24-70mm lens, since we can now attach them to the same camera and see that Panasonic is full of shit.

For comparison's sake, let's take Canon's lenses. The 12-35mm Panasonic X has a constant aperture of f/2.8. Now let's look at what Canon has for the same, $1,300 price. Ok. They have nothing. But they do have a 24-70mm f/4.0 for $1,500. That's close enough.

With a 4/3-specific adapter (which Metabones is not yet making but probably will), that gives the Canon lens the same field of view but gives it an aperture of f/2.0! For $200 more than the Panny lens, the canon lens provides a full stop more light. And remember, everything Canon makes is overpriced because they are milking people who bought into their system, so Panasonic's price is really outside the realm of reason.

Or what about the Panasonic 35-100mm? That means we need to find a Canon lens that is 70-200mm. Well, that's only Canon's most popular focal range, like, evah, so we have quite a selection. For $2,000 we can have one with a constant aperture of f/1.4. If we are willing to ditch IS, we can have that lens for $1,500. $1,349 will net us a constant aperture of f/2.0. All of these lenses will be far brighter, possibly sharper, and undoubtedly have lower distortion than Panasonic's lenses.

I recommend going to Nikon's site, or Sigma and Tamron if you really want to save some money. Make your own comparisons. Take their FF lenses and simply double the brightness. F/4 becomes f/2. F/2 becomes f/1. To be fair, Panasonic's lenses are smaller than the Canon lenses, but when a $500 Canon zoom transforms from a mediocre f/3.5-5.6 to an excellent f/1.75-2.8, I don't care. Only a lunatic would care. Moreover, Olympus Zuiko glass has no excuse. Oly's top-pro lenses are quite large, meaning that in every way, they are competing with the FF lenses in this example.

This is going to be a seismic event, it's just not apparent yet. That is the reason why this technology — something that seems so obvious — has taken until now to be implemented. Camera companies didn't want this technology to exist. They liked having people trapped in their systems, unable to move between cameras and lenses. They liked that the entire thing was a confusing train wreck of standards and crop factors.

No longer.