on 9/18/03 3:47 PM, Julian Davies at julian_davies@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> I quite agree, but with one exception...
> The E-1 is a full - frame camera system. The frame may be of a size that we
> are not (yet?) used to, but the entire system is designed around it.
> A less than full frame system has characteristics like the other DSLRs.
> Over - coverage from lenses leading to "focal length multipliers", bodies
> which are the wrong size for the sensor, etc.
>
> Julian
Moose also wrote:
>
> I won't, but then that's not what I'm most interested in. Fast, high
> quality zooms is where the market action is going to be, except for fast
> super tele, where, oh my, the E-1 already has its first entry. Spending
> a lot of money on what will be low volume sellers would be a good way to
> make the 4/3 initiative fail. If it is a big success, such lenses will
> follow. To make a new format/system successful, the first products have
> to be the potentially high volume items.
>
> Moose
>
I'm combining these from two different messages, because it hits at
something I've been thinking about... we see all these lenses for various
digicams described by their "35mm equivalent" focal lengths. But if you
design the whole system around the sensor size from scratch, as Olympus has
done, then you don't really benefit from this, aside from giving film
photographers a familiar frame of reference to figure out what they might be
able to image with various lenses.
Perhaps a better way of handing this is to consider 'angle of view' of the
lenses you want to use. If you want a 2-degree angle of view, you need a big
honking lens for a 35mm frame, and a (slightly shorter focal length) big
honking lens for a smaller image size. The slightly shorter focal length
lens just happens to be easier to optically design for higher aperture and
smaller physical size. For my EOS IX (APS format) which also has this
consideration. I wound up getting a 24-85mm focal length lens, which gives
about the same angle of view as the typical high-end point-and-shoot 35mm
e.g. '38-140mm' or somesuch. The lens covers the 35mm frame, but I'm wasting
some of that coverage on the APS film. It could have been smaller and
lighter if designed from the start to only cover the APS-size image
sensor...
For a 'professional' level digital SLR, I would expect that eventually
Olympus will have to offer a 'professional' range of angles-of-view, from
the full-frame fisheye to the extreme telephoto. If they can do this with
fast apertures and great image quality then I think there will be plenty of
interest in the system... whatever the actual focal lengths of those lenses.
As the sensor size is somewhat close to a 16mm movie frame, I would expect
that there might be potential of creating some pretty interesting optics...
--
Jim Brokaw
OM-'s of all sorts, and no OM-oney...
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