Sunday, March 04, 2012

Leica 25mm Summilux Review (updated)

Kirk's Take: Leica 25mm Summilux Review, article w/photos.
By amazing coincidence, here comes an article from the opposite side of the reduced-sensor fence: professional photography made with a Micro Four Thirds camera, including a new Leica lens for the format. 


This diagram below show us the huge difference in size between a full-frame sensor and a M4/3 sensor. This of course is clearly reflected in sizes, prices, and weights of the corresponding cameras. But the quality of the results of the smaller formats is crawling up every year, and is now entering professional areas. 

(The ones I talk about here are the outer/black one, the red one, and the purple one.)


Update:

"question: full frame is the most expensive type of camera, because it has the largest surface area AND the largest aperture(?) capabilities"?

Yes to the first, no to the latter. That's incidental, and large aperture lenses (like 1.4) are big and expensive, they are only there for the pros.
But the same aperture, like 2.8, gives more background blur on a larger format, for optical reasons.
(There are even bigger formats than full-frame by the way, like Hasselblad cameras at tens of thousands of dollars.)

APS-C was a failed smaller film format in the nineties. The most popular sensor size in DSLR cameras (exchangable lenses and mirrors) just happens to be about that size, 17mm x 25mm, about half the area of 35mm full-frame, 24mm x 36mm.

"35mm" is the film width for the most popular film, on which 24mm x 36mm negatives was the most used format.

4/3 and Micro Four Thirds is outdated terminology, referring to sizes of old-time video tubes!! It's about half the size of APS-C.

It is stupid that names for digital camera formats are all based on such outdated terminology, instead of just saying the actual size in millimeters. Some theorize that it's to hide how small some sensors are, I dunno. 

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