About the Micro 4/3 Photography FAQ Forum

[Amin Sabet]

The Micro 4/3 Photography FAQ Forum (not to be confused with our Site FAQ) is a place where we will collect some of the questions which seem to get asked over and over again, along with clear, concise answers.

If you are interested in contributing a carefully written answer to one of these questions or another question which you think is appropriate for this forum, send me a PM with your question and a very brief version of how you would would approach explaining the answer.

Some of the many, many questions we plan to address eventually are shown below:

Why should I choose Micro Four Thirds?

Which Micro Four Thirds lenses do you recommend to start out with?

What is the difference between Four Thirds and Micro Four Thirds?

What are the implications of using different sensor sizes, and what does "crop factor" mean?

What is an adapted lens and how do I get started with them?

What does it mean to say that lenses are "equivalent"?

What does "diffraction limited" mean?

Can Olympus lenses be used on Panasonic bodies and vice versa?

Can Four Thirds lenses be used on Micro Four Thirds bodies?

What is dynamic range?

What is image quality?

Why shoot RAW?

Why shoot JPEG?

What is exposure compensation?

How can I get good pictures of children?

What is postprocessing, and how can I do it?

What is HDR?

How do I get a shallow depth of field?

How do I get a 3D look?

Why does my camera blow highlights?

Why are my photos so noisy?

How can I resize images for the web?

How can I get started with off camera flash?

What is a good online service for large prints?

What is a good online service for making photo books?

What is a good strategy for making backups?

Should I use lens filters?

How can I photograph an eclipse?

What is zone focusing, and how can I use it?

What is G.A.S?

What is CDAF, and how does it differ from PDAF?

Why should I choose primes over zooms or vice versa?

How are minimum focus distance, magnification, and focal length related to macro photography?

How do teleconverters work?

How do extension tubes work?

How does image stabilization help me?

How can I test to see if my lens is defective?

Is it normal to have dust in a lens, and will it affect my images?

How do I know if my sensor needs cleaning, and what is the best way to clean it?

What is a color profile, and why should I care?

Do I need to do color calibration, and how should I do it?

How can I get pleasing colors in my photos?

... and many more.

[QualityBuiltIn]

Originally Posted by Amin Sabet

The Micro 4/3 Photography FAQ Forum (not to be confused with our Site FAQ) is a place where we will collect some of the questions which seem to get asked over and over again, along with clear, concise answers.

If you are interested in contributing a carefully written answer to one of these questions or another question which you think is appropriate for this forum, send me a PM with your question and a very brief version of how you would would approach explaining the answer.

Some of the many, many questions we plan to address eventually are shown below:

Why should I choose Micro Four Thirds?
All of the creative control and almost all of the quality of a DSLR camera in a much smaller & neater package. And you can join in this forum.

Which Micro Four Thirds lenses do you recommend to start out with?
The Panasonic 20mm is the icon of mu-43. Your new camera probably comes with a 14-42mm kit lens which is genuinely useful. Don't worry though because we'll soon persuade you to buy a wide lens, a portrait lens, a longer zoom, and so many more...

What is the difference between Four Thirds and Micro Four Thirds?
Both systems use the same size of image sensor but the Micro Four Thirds standard removes the mirror box to reduce the size of the camera body. Micro Four Thirds was developed for digital photography from the start rather than paving the cow-paths of SLR film cameras.

What are the implications of using different sensor sizes, and what does "crop factor" mean?
Search "David Pogue Sensor Size" on the New York Times for the best answer you'll get to these questions anywhere.

What is an adapted lens and how do I get started with them?
Because the distance from the back of a mu-43 lens and the sensor is so small (short flange distance) any old lenses you have from your SLR or DSLR would be designed to sit farther from the sensor. Clever bods have build adapters that make up the difference and allow you to use lenses from bigger systems on your mu-43 body. Mostly there is no electrical connection so autofocus won't work although there are exceptions.

What does it mean to say that lenses are "equivalent"?
35mm film cameras are the de facto standard in the world of photography so most lenses are calculated back to what they would be if they were on a 35mm SLR. The lens on my compact is a tiny 4.25mm but that is equivalent to a 25mm lens on a 35mm camera.

What does "diffraction limited" mean?
Great answer posted by Amin. Diffraction is the bending of (light)waves at an obstruction. In our case the obstruction is the aperture blades of the lens.

Can Olympus lenses be used on Panasonic bodies and vice versa?
Yes. But in some cases users claim different performance (rendering) on different bodies.

Can Four Thirds lenses be used on Micro Four Thirds bodies?
Yes but only with an adapter either Panasonic DMW-MA1 or Olympus MMF-3 and these do autofocus although reportedly slower than native mu-43 lenses.

What is dynamic range?
The ability of your sensor to deal with light bright areas and deep dark bits within the picture you've composed.

What is image quality?
In a nutshell how good your pictures are. There are various metrics and much debate. It has something to do with sensor size, pixel density, lens quality, processing 'engine' and so on

Why shoot RAW?
Because you want to spend more time on your workflow back at your PC than in the field taking pictures? Or because RAW captures and records all the information that the camera can at the time. You can then go home and convert this data into a great image using Lightroom or Aperture or your choice of software today. But tomorrow better software may come along that lets you get even more detail out of the same old RAW file.

Why shoot JPEG?
Because you want to spend more time in the field taking pictures than back at the PC processing them. And they make smaller files and in camera processing is really good these days.

What is exposure compensation?
If you choose to over or under expose an image compared to the 'normal' metered value, for example to take account of uneven lighting in a scene or for creative reasons.

How can I get good pictures of children?
With great difficulty. Wait until they grow up. When they are sleeping. From a safe distance.

If you like this I'll complete my answers in a couple of days. Sometimes stuff is funny in my head but just wrong when I open my mouth. If this is inappropriate, Amin, please feel free to delete - I won't be offended.



What is postprocessing, and how can I do it?

What is HDR?

How do I get a shallow depth of field?

How do I get a 3D look?

Why does my camera blow highlights?

Why are my photos so noisy?

How can I resize images for the web?

How can I get started with off camera flash?

What is a good online service for large prints?

What is a good online service for making photo books?

What is a good strategy for making backups?

Should I use lens filters?

How can I photograph an eclipse?

What is zone focusing, and how can I use it?

What is G.A.S?

What is CDAF, and how does it differ from PDAF?

Why should I choose primes over zooms or vice versa?

How are minimum focus distance, magnification, and focal length related to macro photography?

How do teleconverters work?

How do extension tubes work?

How does image stabilization help me?

How can I test to see if my lens is defective?

Is it normal to have dust in a lens, and will it affect my images?

How do I know if my sensor needs cleaning, and what is the best way to clean it?

What is a color profile, and why should I care?

Do I need to do color calibration, and how should I do it?

How can I get pleasing colors in my photos?

... and many more.

.

[Mellow]

Great idea! The same questions do seem to come up frequently. Let's hope people are aware of the new forum, because if they don't the questions will STILL come up and, knowing the people in this forum, they'll get answered.

[snaimpally]

It would be useful to have a FAQ explaining the alphabet soup of model numbers, how to interpret the numbers, and the differences between the models. For example, the suffix KK refers to the 14-42mm kit lens while the suffix X refers to the 14-42mm PZ kit lens. As another example, the G3 has an electronic viewfinder while the GF3 does not, etc. I recall seeing a Panasonic review were the reviewer had a nice 2-3 sentence explanation of the entire Panasonic MFT lineup.