Just One small thing
The arrival of olympus’s new OM-D flagship – which is already making quite a splash – got me thinking again about the whole topic of camera size. Essentially, right from the start of photography, the idea has been to build ever-smaller cameras so you don’t end up looking like Frank Hurley in that famous photograph of him slogging through an Antarctic blizzard weighed down not just by a massive wooden plate camera, but also a portable darkroom. Perspiration, as they say, is inversely proportional to inspiration.
Over the century-and-a-half of photochemical photography, the basic progression has been from full plate to half-plate (6.5x8.5 inches), quarter-plate, sheet film from 8x10-inchs to 4x5-inches, two-and-a-quarter square (a.k.a. 6x6cm), 6x4.5cm, 35mm, half-frame 35mm, 110 and disc… the latter two getting a bit ahead of themselves in terms of the film emulsion technologies of the time and thus putting the cause of smaller cameras back quite a bit. We had a brief fling with APS – which, in case you’d forgotten, stood for ‘Advanced Photo System’ – in its ‘C’, ‘H’ and ‘P’ image sizes. APS was killed off prematurely by the arrival of digital imaging which essentially went in the other direction as far as sensor size was concerned – i.e. small to larger – but where, ironically, ‘APS-C’ is currently still the most popular. The challenge with both film photography and digital capture was – and still is – balancing the size of the capture medium with the image quality potential, something that was got most spectacularly wrong with the disc film format. Thanks to the film history, there’s always been the perception that bigger cameras delivered better pictures, which was sort of right for quite a long time (although a lot of it was to do with lens quality as well), but doesn’t really hold up in the digital era where in-camera and postcamera processing can cure a great many ills.
There’s been some comment about the OM-D E-M1X being a big camera, which it is compared to anything we’ve seen previously in the Micro Four Thirds format, but it’s certainly still pretty compact when compared to, say, a full-35mm D-SLR such as Nikon’s D5… which is exactly what Olympus is targeting. So it’s all relative and, in fact, relatively relative because everybody is going to have a different idea of what constitutes bigger or smaller. Weight might be a better means of making comparisons because pretty well all of us are going to understand the difference between lugging around ten kilograms of camera gear for hours on end or five kilograms… it will be noticeable, especially if it’s a hot day.
This is precisely what Olympus is trying to promote with the E-M1X and its M43 format M.Zuiko Digital lenses, especially the longer telephotos.
What’s interesting is that the prime audience for this camera and other speedy mirrorless models such as Fujifilm’s X-H1 or Panasonic’s Lumix G9 – namely sports, action, wildlife and bird photographers – are still largely stubbornly wedded to their D-SLRs even though they’re now proven to be bigger, heavier, noisier and slower. I am a member of a bird photography group and looking through the last few competitions recently revealed that every single winning image bar one was taken with a D-SLR. The one exception was shot with a superzoom-type fixedlens camera. My quick survey also revealed that bird photographers seem to have deeper pockets than most because quite a number were using 600mm fast primes on full-35mm D-SLR bodies. Canon’s EF 600mm f4.0L IS USM II will set you back around $14,000 (and it’s now a superseded model) and Nikon’s AF-S Nikkor 600mm f4.0E FL ED VR is priced at around $17,000. Olympus’s M.Zuiko Digital ED 300mm f4.0 IS PRO – which is, of course, equivalent to a 600mm f4.0 – can be had for around $3200. So, particularly as far as telephoto lenses are concerned, we can also throw greater affordability into the mix… smaller often means cheaper (with some notable exceptions, of course).
Having now shot a motorsports event with a full-35mm format D-SLR kit and then done it again, just recently, with the E-M1X and a pair of M.Zuiko Digital teles, there’s just no argument. The weight difference is undoubtedly dramatic – with the Olympus lenses actually giving me increased capabilities along with the reduced kilos – but the clincher is that the M1X is a superior sports camera to any D-SLR thanks mainly to its advanced tech, but obviously the increased portability is a big (!) asset too.
So size isn’t everything, but it is something when it’s combined with other elements of a camera’s design that enhance its suitability for particularly applications – such as speed, durability or AF performance.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether the OM-D E-M1X is bigger or smaller, but because it is just so effective at what it does and easily outguns competitors that are very much larger, its size definitely matters. Here, then, less is undoubtedly very much more.