Thanks Bob. The GH4 looks like it will be the king of m43 for a couple months at least, and the DxO crown champion... leading to much joy and much angst from those who pay attention to DxO
.I strongly agree on the summary number DXO comes up with. Even the major category numbers are not all that useful. It's a lot more meaningful to look at the results of their individual tests, but in most cases today what you find is that the differences are really minor. Sensors are simply not what distinguishes front-rank cameras today.
Precisely. And when you consider that the GH4 (and for that matter the E-M1) are basically the same as their predecessors, it's actually rather disappointing. More than two years since the E-M5, we still have yet to see a newer sensor offer a significant improvement for images. Video yes, but stills no.
Perhaps I missed something, but I'd totally disagree. The GH4 has a totally new sensor and its focusing is noticeably faster than GH3. Their DFD technology seems to be working, very well! Walking around dimly lit streets in Japan, it nailed every shot I took. If anything, Panasonic isn't giving enough attention to the GH4's still performance.
Okay, maybe I should have said 'a significant improvement for still image quality'. AF performance is really orthogonal - poor sensors can have good AF (think E-P3) and good ones poor AF (Fuji's X-Pro 1 comes to mind). But none of these newer sensors lets me get the same quality shot I can take with the E-M5 at ISO 1600 at ISO 3200, or anything like that. That's an example of what I'd consider real progress.
You know, when a PC ran at 10 mhz, upgrading to a 20 mhz CPU was a huge improvement. As the operating speeds increased, each upgrade became more incremental. Today, speed is not the issue it used to be. For what ever value it may have, the incremental improvement GH4 offers did inch out over Oly, at both DxO and Imagining Resource's evaluations. I've compared the GH4, side by side to the current Oly's. The GH4's focusing speed is noticeably faster, even in low light. As each new camera is released the improvements aren't going to be what you might consider "significant".
Dhazeghi was speaking of image quality, and the differences that DXO reports between the GH4 and EM-1 are probably within the realm of pure sample variation (0.2 bits color depth, 0.1 EV dynamic range, 791 vs. 757 ISO). Even greater difference simply do not show up in practical photography, even if printed at large scale - there are too many real world variables that consume the theoretical advantage. The camera wars, in the short term, are not going to be won on sensor performance and image quality.
Ditto here!
That's good to hear. Have to shot moving subjects enough to get a feel for it's performance with C-AF nailing subjects moving towards or away from the camera?
Speed is still very important to computing, if not all users. However, what you're trying to get at is called the Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns, where improvements are cheap and significant early on. As time goes on, improvements get slower or more expensive (or both). Finally there comes a point where the marginal return is so low, it just makes more sense to plow your resources into a something entirely new.
Which is exactly why you should be carefull with DxO. They do very precise measurements, trust these. But the measurements are based on preconditions of what to measure and these do not nessecarily have to relevant for your shooting style...
