Micro Four Thirds has left a legacy.
It’s future is a little uncertain, probably not in peril, but maybe on the decline, but there is no doubt the things that drove the early mirrorless movement have had an effect on the the priorities of all designers regardless of brand or format.
What M43 needs I think is to be seen as what it is, a smaller option to full frame with most of the quality of larger systems, especially in video.
Size was always a part of the journey, the perceptions of shallower depth and words like “micro” fuelling thoughts of cameras that may be crazy small, but in reality for many brands, with lens adapters, larger sensors etc, nothing changed greatly in this space.
Three of the many contradictions found in the mirrorless landscape. The EM1x is the same handling size as a Canon or Nikon pro camera, because this class of camera needs to be big, the Lumix G9 is also “full sized” but universally praised as one of the best handling cameras available (I am one of its fans) and the Pen F in front is a solid lump of metal, feeling for all the world like a film era classic like a Leica M or my old Canon F1n.
The thing that made a real difference was a smaller sensor, leading to smaller lenses.
I remember doing this once a long time ago, comparing my Canon 85 f1.8 to this very lens. Both true portrait lenses. The lens on the right is very light for its size, but it fills a big hole in a M43 users bag.
Light weight followed in a way except sometimes even the smallest M43 lenses adopted metal again and many were built to a premium level, so again lightness was not always a given, but in direct comparison they still had an optical edge.
A different equivalence. The metal M43 75mm (150 f1.8 ff equiv) weighs more than the plastic fantastic 85mm, being one of my heavier M43 lenses by size.
This format difference did not always lead to a lighter bag because you could carry the same lenses as a full frame user, but gain a benefit in reach, so many including I, did. My base bag kit is 16-300 (ff equiv) with a mix of decently fast zooms and primes, but in full frame that would be impractical, but all too easily I added a true 300mm, making a 16-600 lit.
The big lens at the back is a 300 f4, which is much the same size in all formats and a big ask to lug around for only 300mm in full frame, but as a super light 600mm, it often pays its way. The little zoom in front is an actual M43 300 f4.
The resulting effect seems to be going two ways.
On one hand, full frame lens makers are happy to make some of the biggest and heaviest super primes ever, but on the other, the push for super light weight plastic bodied lenses and sometimes even old school pancakes style lenses is strong and common to all brands.
Nikon, Canon, Panasonic and even Sony, the makers of some of the biggest monster lenses are all offering a light weight alternative.
Something that became a selling tool to early mirrorless adopters has become an expectation, even if it was mostly based on false beliefs.
Personally I switched over more than ten years ago for two reasons.
I did like the smaller size and old school form factor as well as having fond memories of Olympus their glass, their philosophy, but none of these meant anything if results fell short.
The reality is when Olympus released the first EM5 with a sharper sensor, exceptional stabiliser, super accurate contrast based AF and new lens designs*, I felt released from old and stubborn habits.
Olympus effectively shamed the big players into making their own sharper sensors with no low-pass filters, newer lenses and tightening up their overall performances. I remember an early blogger (2013-ish) relating his own epiphany, when comparing his new EM5 to his trusted 5D mk2 Canon, noticing that the AF was more accurate and predictable (static subject), the files noisier at high ISO settings, but sharper and he could drop the ISO in this situation anyway because of the stabiliser and accuracy combined with the depth of field advantage of M43.
The 5DII was the king of the time, so who the hell was this little usurper?
More followed with Steve Huff and many well followed bloggers comparing big to small, new to old and surprising many including themselves.
My own experiences mirrored this. My Canon kit was full of the Canon full frame favourites, but lens calibration issues, soft edges, unnecessary heft to performance ratios, an awareness of ageing designs, especially AF motors and edge softness and the reality of tiny little M43 glass often beating them out, combined with the smooth-soft 5DII sensor made switching an imperative at the time.
I see little difference in sharpness, detail, information with M43 and the ISO thing is often evened out by the x2 math with lenses and DOF, but there is a difference in dynamic range and recovery of extremes, which is the reality of more or bigger pixels. It is not twice as good, just better by being bigger, but not by miles.***
Another example. The 17mm Oly was a reluctant buy for me at the start of my M43 journey, not a compelling performer on paper, but it quickly showed-up my Canon 35 F1.4 L (first model) at less than half the size and a third the price and the physically closer EF 35 F2 was optically pleasing but mechanically ancient by comparison. Just after I went away from Canon they produced the 40 pancake and a new 35 f2, but I had waited long enough. The 17mm went on to be one of my favourite lenses still to this day.
The end result being a predictable response by the sleepy photographic whales to the school of hungry little sharks nipping at their flanks.
The area mirrorless struggled with was phase detect AF for tracking, but that would come and then go to a new level, Sony winning the race, Canon, Fuji, Olympus and now Panasonic are right there, but in most other areas, mirrorless was fresh, new and often just better.
The mirror was a brilliant idea of necessity, but never the straightest line to the ideal.
Being new and exciting also helped I guess. Most photographers get restless at some point, I am no different, so new ideas tend to get a leg up with some, others holding on to old ideas for far too long.
The ascendency of Sony was a surprise to many, but not early mirrorless adopters as they lifted this already promising movement into full frame territory, so if you were already on the mirrorless steed, not the tired old SLR nag. It felt inevitable.
The younger generation’s adoption is telling. They want results over all else, so lumpish lenses, full frame cameras and the “non-camera” brand Sony mean little. With fresh eyes, they just want what works.
How much of this was down to M43 and Fuji?
The EM5 Mk1 sensor and most other Olympus sensors are Sony made, the lens pedigree of the brand is known and small was always their mantra. This shows that all things are connected, but sometimes certain elements raise to the top of the pile. “Giant killing” is a catchy phrase, but a stirred giant is problematic to the pesky awakener.
M43 and its exponents did much to change perceptions, but even they would have known that the big four (and Fuji is a huge player, if a little understated) would eventually come back at them.
Video is to me the most interesting case in point.
The 4:3 format has a lot of advantages in video and is quite close to the family of similar sensors lumped into the Super 35 group, which covers the bulk of movie cameras for the bulk of movie making. When you take away the perceived need for more pixels for stills, low pixel count M43 sensors are even relatively light safe.
Full frame is becoming the mid-range norm for videography, but is it really needed?
The reality is, Sony is not the king of video at the moment because it is full frame, but because it got video AF right first. It’s main competitors are full frame, but none of the brands had much hope without AF performance being addressed.
I bought a full frame for video, ironic really as stills are where full frame should make more difference, but I felt at the time (18 months ago), that I needed better low light performance and the M43 offering (GH5s, BMPCC4k) were expensive and ageing. The S5 was the most logical. A year later and I would have been more than happy with the G9II, so even the stalwarts like me can get the jitters and be proven wrong.
The cinematic sweet spot is about f4 on a full frame which is f2 on an M43 lens, this gives you two more ISO settings. Stabilisers, rolling shutter, focus accuracy, size, weight, expense, lens design exceptions are the M43 specialities, all of which help video. Ironically, the S5/S5II perform more to my liking in APS-C mode.
I could have stayed with M43 and found other ways, The G9II and 10-25 f1.7 would have been fine.
Anyway….drifting.
I think from my time in camera shops during the last twenty years that M43 and Fuji were the guilty fear of the bigger players, in denial for far too long, but I also feel they have done much to catch up and use their larger format advantages fully.
This means we have more choices, which is a good thing surely. When I go out the door to shoot most things, I still choose M43 in preference**, only looking at full frame when extremely low or murky light is likely or I need another capable video camera to match my M43 cameras.
*Every lens in my M43 and even the older 43 format were up to twenty years newer than the glass Canon and Nikon were pushing at the time. Every lens I compared to the M43 format lenses were early AF generation lenses. Not Digital versions, but older film AF lenses. They were all fine, but showing their age when compared. At the time of EM5’s release it had the fastest first acquisition AF on the market and it still holds up 12 years later.
**Ease of use, size and weight which lead to more options, flash performance, familiarity, depth and finally, reassuringly and consistently decent results.
***My S5 is one of my newest cameras and the G9II still does not have RAW support, but I can see the difference in my M43 files when pushed.