Monday, December 26, 2011

Gift of small sensors (updated with S90 pic)

A little demonstration of the gift that high-quality small sensors (and lens tech developments) have given us...
Granted, technically there's over 30 years and tons of differences between the two cameras, so an actual comparison would be rather silly, but still. The Olympus was a *miracle* of compactness when it was made, and that included the lenses. (It's still a remarkable and beautiful camera.)
The Fuji, because of today's fantastic small sensors, has at least comparable quality (I'd say it beats the O in many ways, plus a ton of features), and it jacket-pocketable. Its zoom, granted, has slightly smaller reach (120mm (equivalent) vs 150mm), but then it goes much, much wider (28mm vs 75mm), and it's way faster (F:2.0 to 2,8 vs F:4.0).
(If I'd had an F:2.8 zoom from back then, it'd have been twice the size and heft of this Olympus lens.)


The Fuji lens is shown in its folded-up size, and the Olympus lens is shown at its shortest setting, though it looks like it's zoomed out.

Wait, I do have a full frame F:2.8 zoom to show. OK, it's a bit longer still, 80mm-200mm, but just look at that beast! And it's not even an old lens.
The Nikon with lens is 2.3 kilograms! The Fuji is 360 grams. (Five pounds vs 0.8 pounds.)
(By the way, that Nikon lens cost over three times as much as the whole Fuji camera, but when they started making full-frame cameras, it turned out the corner quality was really poor, so they had to replace it fast.)


Like I said, I know that these are not really comparable sets of gear, this was just for fun.
If I'd put the Canon S90 (or S95 or S100) on the left, it'd be even smaller yet (breast-pocketable), and have a not-dissimilar quality, though the handling of course suffers on such a tiny camera.

UPDATE: Russ says:
Olympus has been making high quality, pocketable cameras for decades. My favorite is the XA model. It has a wonderful 35mm 2.8 lens. However, I think the best feature is the almost inaudible shutter. Makes for great stealthy street photography. Even though most are now over 30 years old, you can still find good working examples on eBay for relatively little money.


Yes, the XA and similar film-cameras like the Minox 35, the Rollei 35, or the Konica Big Mini, are amazing.
Though in order to be this compact, they are confined to a 35mm lens, probably F:2.8 or less. This can be all right, and I have owned and several of such cameras*, they are highly useful and I love them.
But if one want's a zoom, it gets a lot bigger if one keeps the large film/sensor size. And if one doesn't, on film the quality suffers badly.  This has been the issue, and personally I find that the Fujifilm X10 is so far the best compromise I have seen in these matters, brought about by advances in lens and sensor quality.

*My first film super-compact was a Ricoh with a gate design like the Minox, I loved it. But it's apparently lost in the tides in history, I can't even find a photo of one, boohoo. Wish I'd kept it. A couple of my more successful pictures were taken with it, this one for example. This one was also taken with such a compact, though I forget which, I only had it briefly.

UPDATE: Okay, I just had to include the Canon S90 too, for completeness's sake. Outstanding camera, for a real pocketcamera. (28mm - 105mm zoom.)


12 comments:

TC [Girl] said...

Eolake said...
"The Fuji lens is shown in its folded-up size, and the Olympus lens is shown at its shortest setting, though it looks like it's zoomed out."

Yes...it does look like it's zoomed out! Amazing diff!

"Wait, I do have a full frame F:2.8 zoom to show. OK, it's a bit longer still, 80mm-200mm, but just look at that beast!"

Holy Mama, is that ever a BRUTE! That is fricken AMAZING the diff in sizes! How much does that entire set-up (including the body) weight, Eo? Dang! Thanks for sharing! That was fun to see! (What a TEASE you are w/that Fuji, though! Let's SEE some MORE PICS, PLEASE! You've been holding out on us! :-D

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

I have a little project Friday, I hope to have new pics in the weekend.

The Nikon altogether is 2 kilos, 300 grams! The Fuji is 360 grams. (Five pounds vs 16 ounces.)

TC [Girl] said...

Eolake said...
"I have a little project Friday, I hope to have new pics in the weekend."

Yes...I remember reading. :-) Is it your (2) neighbor girls?

"The Nikon altogether is 2 kilos, 300 grams! The Fuji is 360 grams. (Five pounds vs 16 ounces.)"

AMAZING! I should weigh my 70-300mm set-up...even though that durn lens [as you already know] is "sick." :-( That's quite a brute to hold, as well!

Russ said...

Olympus has been making high quality, pocketable cameras for decades. My favorite is the XA model. It has a wonderful 35mm 2.8 lens. However, I think the best feature is the almost inaudible shutter. Makes for great stealthy street photography. Even though most are now over 30 years old, you can still find good working examples on eBay for relatively little money.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Yes, the XA and similar cameras like the Minox 35, the Rollei 35, or the Konica Big Mini, are amazing.
Though in order to be this compact, they are confined to a 35mm lens, probably F:2.8 or less. This can be all right, and I have owned and several of such cameras (my first was a Ricoh with a gate design like the Minox, I loved it), they are highly useful.
But if one want's a zoom, it gets a *lot* bigger if one keeps the large film/sensor size. This has been the issue, and personally I find that the X10 is so far the best compromise I have seen in these matters, brought about by advances in lens and sensor quality.

Bruce said...

I love small cameras! My first 35mm camera was the XA2. It didn't do everything, but what it did do, it did very well. It was also the last 35mm camera that I hung on to.

Based on your reports and others, I seriously considered the Fuji X10. But for me it's just too darn big! It would have been the biggest camera I have ever owned. Instead, I have it's smaller cousin, the F600EXR, on order.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

My biggest ever was (a mistake, and) the Nikon D2x. I thin it was almost two kilos by itself, OMG.

The F600EXR seems to get nice reviews. Otherwise I have said for a few years that you don't go wrong with a compact Canon, they have been consistently excellent (unlike Nikon Coolpix which have been erratic).

The F600EXR is certainly *very* reasonably priced!

But do you need such a long zoom, 15x? It always means compromises in other areas, for example very small sensor. I think 5x is about right for an all-round camera, and I can make do with 3x.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Yes, the small sensor, mainly a low-light issue. Here's from PhotographyBlogs's review:

"The Fujifilm FinePix F600EXR produced images of good quality during the review period. It handled noise fairly well, with a little noise appearing at the relatively slow speed of ISO 200 and then becoming progressively worse at the faster settings of ISO 400 and 800, along with a smearing of fine detail. The fastest full-resolution settings of ISO 1600 and 3200 suffer from an even greater loss of detail and colour saturation."

If that's a problem depends on the situations you tend to photograph in, of course. And granted, it's unlikely to find a camera of similar size which does a better job.

Russ said...

I'm glad you decided to add the Canon S95 (current version is S100) because I consider that to be the "best bang for the buck" in small sensor, pocketable cameras. Amazon is currently selling the S95 for $299; a steal if you ask me.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

I agree.

The S100 has a bit longer zoom, 5X. I haven't read reviews yet to see this has any negative impact.

TC [Girl] said...

Eolake said...
"Okay, I just had to include the Canon S90 too, for completeness's sake."

Cute and FUNNY...in a good way! :-D

emptyspaces said...

Bruce, I love my XA2 also! Cameras just don't get any easier to use than that one. I can get 40 shots a roll, too, if I'm careful. Clamshell design is genius.

I use the XA2 and Stylus Epic extensively, with the XA2 being a better "street" camera since it doesn't need to autofocus.

Best part: my XA2 cost $20 and the Stylus Epic $25 (due to a broken panorama mask which I simply removed).