This particular image was shot with FE24-105mmf4G OSS lens.
For this particular trip I used 3 cameras and 3 lenses and I never changed lenses. I had 2 A7R2 bodies and 1 A7R3.
My first A7R2 was gripped and mostly used with the FE16-35mmf2.8GM (I used it for most of my shots).
My other A7R2 was almost permanently paired with the Batis 85mm f1.8 lens. Initially, I used my A7R3 with the FE24-105mm f4G OSS. But once I actually got this place and saw the strange weather, it got kind of nervous using my newer camera that was not covered with Sony's excellent accidental damage protection plan.
So after that I used my FE16-35mm f2.8GM on my gripped A7R2, which was covered with the accidental damage protection plan.
I think Sony's 3 year accidental damage protection plan(insurance) is really great and so I can use my A7R2 in any environment without fear of breaking it. Unfortunately , my A7R3 and A7S2 are not covered with that plan and I cannot risk them in this kind of environment(extreme heat). If my A7R3 or A7S2 fails shooting in this kind of place(it gets almost 35c or higher), the normal warranty comes with the camera will not cover the snow or extremely high temp caused damage. Pentax Nikon Olympus fanboys make so-called weather sealing a huge deal, and criticize Sony or Canon bodies for lack of proper sealing but none of these properly sealed camera makers guarantee you their cameras work in this kind of place, definitely not honor the warranty if it breaks in this kind of a place. So even if you shoot one of so called weather sealed pro bodies from Nikon, Pentax or Olympus, you must protect it with a good Ziplock bag too.
I think weather sealing is one of the most overrated camera quality or feature and something you can not test systemically or practically unless actually killing your own cameras. So I would like to say this to all so called reviewers please do not comment anything on so-called build or sealing quality, you do not know it.....
Why m43 is doomed 30(updated 2):
I think a few weeks back I wrote about Sony's financial results and they did not look good.......actually horrible.
And to me, Nikon's results do look actually worse than a month ago. But still they seem to some how manage to beat the small sensor rivals such as Fuji, Olympus and Panasonic.
Fuji is actually fine, and their systems are growing in their specific segment of market.
And we are very sure their camera business is still in black.
m43, on the other hand, seems to be losing considerable amount of money every year, and really rapidly becoming an unpopular niche system, they seem to be the only one real loser here even beaten by the D-SLR duo that they and their fan base really despise.
Despite of all negative press against D-SLRs and especially against Nikon and calling them as prehistoric dinosaurs of the camera world, Nikon somehow still manages to outsell all mirrorless manufactures. It seems Nikon outsells m43 duo by 3-1 ratio, and it is striking.
So why do even Nikon D-SLRs from prehistoric time(according to m43 fans)comfortably outsell the m43 duo and m43 duo seems to be the only one real loser here while all other mirrorless guys including Canon, Fuji and Sony are successfully increasing their sales, at least by value?
Is a typical m43 kit too bad a value camera system? Oversized ? Overpriced ? or both?
Is a m43 kit considerably smaller than a budget FF kit as the duo promised, especially after equalizing the DOF and light gathering power of all the systems in question?
As an avid admirer (no longer a owner) of many fine Olympus FT and mFT lenses, I'm sure the Zuiko 25mm f1.2 Pro will perform as good as it is advertised. But that is not the issue here. The main issue is the issue of the value or perceived value of the system.
The main and direct competitor to this lens is not the Zony 55 f1.8 (which together with an older A7 will cost ~2000 dallors, neither weather sealed), but the newer Fuji 35mm f2 (which together with a 2016 X-T2 will cost ~1500 dollars, both weather sealed, and as such closely comparable to this lens + an E-M1 in most respects).
In such comparison, this Zuiko will not favorably compete at all. It is both bigger and heavier than the Fuji 35 f2, and is priced 4times as much. It is not possible to expect a mFT sensor plus this lens to perform 3 times better than an APC sensor (and for the people interested, the flexibility in DOF will be more or less comparable). Keep in mind that X-T2 is no slouch either (and the X-H1 is extremely well received, maybe arguably the current best seller ILC camera) under 2k camera market.
By this pricing, they have not only priced the lens out of the mainstream m43 market, but have opened the door to some of their users to take a good look at the Fuji's X system. Not a good marketing strategy, IMHO. Olympus seems to be repeating the same mistakes that led them to terminate their original 43 system.......
This means, we can expect the price to either rapidly drop under the 1000 US mark over the next year (which will depress the price of their other lenses), or the X system gain even more momentum.
Many avid m43 guys in m43 forums seem to have heavily invested in m43 already, and they have no other place to go, so raving about the EM1MK2 and the super expensive new 25mm f1.2 Pro prime regardless of the prices they asked for these. So for them it may not be the issue, but if they were in the market and were looking at a system, I know for sure that Fuji X would look much more attractive in both performance and value than any of these high-end 20mp m43 bodies.
I wished Olympus'd gone the route of making pro grade, weather sealed f1.8 primes instead.
Many m43 fans,especially Olympus guys chant" f1.2 is f1.2 is f1.2 and is always big and expensive regardless of the sensor format".
But it should not be so, really........
First of all, many of m43 lovers are confused *f*/1.2, with the number *1*/1.2. The latter is an aperture ratio. To obtain the aperture = effective opening diameter, you have to insert the focal length f, then divided by 1.2. Therefore the opening is simply larger with a f = 50 mm lens vs. 25 mm. And for isotropic sources (as most reflection), the larger diameter gathers quadratically more light.
So the m43 25mm f1.2 lens should be about the half the price of the Canon 50mm f1.2L. But in reality it is just as expensive, that is why many even avid m43 shooters complaining about it.
Many Olympus fans claim the "photon efficiency" on smaller sensors is generally higher, more efficient but it is not true.
Historically, there has been a generational lag, where techniques like BSI were introduced first with small sensors in smartphone market. However, with Sony now also building 35 mm full frame BSI sensors, and with 90% quantum efficiency (QE), this is meaningless nowadays - except maybe comparing medium format against A7, and don't forget even the much maligned Canon 5D4 sensor(by DR fanatics in many camera forums) is now able to get 86 percent QE value. So even the Canon sensor is no longer bad, in fact quite a good one.
You cannot possibly exceed 100% QE, no matter how small your sensor is. Furthermore, small BSI sensors also practically do not exceed 90% QE (simply because you have to maintain gaps between pixels). So m43 loses here again miserably.
A lot of m43 fans hate the equivalence and choose to be misguided to believe the only one purpose of using fast primes is to get super shallow DOF,"only one eye in focus" kind of look, and they say they can get it with m43 with the set of f1.2 primes.........yeah they can get shallow DOF with a m43 plus f1.2 primes...........but I'd say they can get it easier and cheaper with FF. There is no honest coherent point in m43 community. The reality is there are many FF lenses capable of super shallow DOF exist and they do not cost much more than m43 f1.2 primes.
And a f1.2 lens on m43 is just like a f2.4 on fullframe and therefore it should cost like a FF f2 or f2.8 lens, not like a f1.2 FF lens.
Plus, of course, shallow depth of field is not the only point of shooting a fast lens.....and for DOF and light gathering power, ff f2.8 is about the same as m43 f1.4, and therefore a FF set up actually much cheaper than m43. Think about how much the good f1.4 m43 primes like PL12mm f1.4 costs......and how much a lens like Sony FE35mm f2.8 or Nikon AF-S28mm f1.8G costs........now you see my point, I guess.
On top of the above point , for light gathering power, a 19 element retro-focus design performs poorly, vs. the prevalent, 6-8 element double Gaussian design for normal lens (look everywhere, whether it's Canon, Sony, M-mount Leica). A design like the Olympus 25 mm f/1.2 Pro is really for DoF and image quality, but with little regard on the transmission.
Current Olympus lenses average a transmission of 0.97-0.98 per lens element, therefore this lens likely will be around T/1.5, i.e. the amount of light of a double Gaussian f/1.4.
Again, this proves my original point m43 is not a cheap or any more affordable system than a FF..............for the same noise level it must need 2 times brighter lenses than a FF and they don't exist, but lets assume they were existing, they'd cost much more than fullframe f2 lenses........and in the end you would have been paying about 3 times more for just FF f2.8 performance with m43.
My argument is *light transmission*, not image quality. And I am not arguing for or against any particular lens. But trying to compare 'systems' performance per $ in fair manner.
And ,BTW, many fullframe systems have some normal perspective macro lens, where you want to sacrifice some transmission for resolution and they are all super cheap compared to m43 version of these. The Sony FE50mm f2.8 macro costs only 400 US and that on a A7R is much sharper than any lens on any m43 body. Canon also has a similar lens, Nikon also has a decent 60mm f2.8 G macro lens and they all cost much less than the Panasonic Leice branded macro lens. Also, if you do not mind using a thirdparty macro lens, there are two incredible offerings from Cosina and Sigma for Sony system:
1 Sigma AF70mm f2.8 Art Macro (comes in Sony E and Canon EF)
2 Voigtlander 110mm f2.5(the best macro lens ever made by any one, albeit its full manual design).
Another big mistake the Olympus fanboys make in many silly camera forums is that they call their beloved Oly as Olympus system. But there is no Olympus system, period. It is called m43 system. Without Panasonic lenses, there is no m43 lens advantage that many Olympus fans claim Olympus has over Sony and Fuji.
Now,what is rather clear here is that some people with a single brand system lack any solid understanding of other brand competing systems that they do never touch or try out side of a studio or a shop. In fact, many of them seem not even understand there are many different types of system camera users even in their own mount system:
(1) also own other mount systems
(2) be critical to their own equipment
(3) only partial to what they currently own but clearly understanding why they have chosen it over the other systems. however, having some respect to all other brand systems in someway(although they do not choose them).
Let me also give you another hint, that people may not having Fujifilm (X-mount) simply being put off by the X-Trans sensor/CFA, or the terrible classic camera controls,in spite not displeased with Fujinon optics (not just still photography, but also cine/broadcasting lenses).
They are superb, nothing Olympus makes positively challenges to the best Fujinon lenses, especially zooms. The Fujinon XF16-55mm f2.8 is the current absolute best standard zoom in any mount. It beats the CanonEF24-70mm f2.8LMK2, the Nikon 24-70mm f2.8VR E, the Sony 24-70mm f2.8GM, and of course the Olympus ZD12-40mm f2.8 Pro according to Tokyo university science lab studies of these lenses.
And the Fuji X-T2 or X-Pro2 is a lot cheaper than the Olympus EM1MK2........I think the Olympus will cost about 1799USD and the Fuji rivals costs about 1400US or 159800 yen here. In fact, the Sony A7MK2 is even cheaper with a much bigger better sensor than the Olympus.
So now it is the right time to back to my first question here, the problem is seemingly the worst value of the m43 system.
The Olympus EM1MK2 and Panasonic GH5 are fantastic cameras, no doubt about it, period. But considering the 4 times smaller 6 times cheaper sensor choice of the system, they should not be as expensive or more expensive than the Canon 6D, Nikon D610 or the Sony ORIGINAL A7, which costs only 980 US or 89800 yen these days.
On top of that, for quality to quality comparison, Olympus Panasonic lenses are usually more expensive than the fullframe or Fuji rivals.
The new Olympus 25mm f1.2 Pro is as I wrote above not even as bright as the Canon 50mm f1.2L or even not as bright as the Sony 50mm f1.4 Z, but costs just as much as the fullframe rivals do. What really matter here is not the f number but the actual opening size and that is why the m43 25mm f1.2 is not equivalent to the full frame 50mm f1.2 , even not f1.4, but worse f2.4. So no matter how sharp it might be, we have to conclude it is overpriced and oversized. I think, now, Olympus Panasonic are just making the same mistakes they did in legacy SLR 43 era.
I think they should not challenge the FF rivals in the same field but in overall system functionality and reach.
I think many many people actually prefer innately deeper DOF at any given f number of m43 system, powerful dust-reduction system, 2x reach,etc, but they are just ignoring the natural or coherent strengths of the format and working against them, just to challenge the FF and APS-C based system..........
I think it is a huge mistake.
UPDATE: As I started this m43 is doomed series a few years ago, many of its fans really strongly disagreed with me and called me a Sony fanboy or deranged FF fanboy.
But the fact is I have never been a fanboy of any system or brand, I just dislike all systems in many ways and like them all in some ways.
And I have always owned at least a couple of m43 bodies since the dawn of that system, so I think I am very realistic about the system and value of it. I do not call myself or any one as an authority of anything, but I am sure at this point of this game, many will appreciate me that I have been brutally honest about this and writing about the real truth about this industry. Now many of so-called experts(actually clueless online morons pretending to be experts of ILC industry) literally repeating what I have been said about m43.
It is dying and will definitely die at least as a serious still camera system.
Those insecure m43 fanboys always hurt and react too much to drag it down to a name calling contest whenever anyone honest or new write about any issue of m43 as a system since those new to this system or wondering if it is right for them kind of people are all not very sure if this will still be a relevant system 3 years from now. And it is really a reasonable question to ask, but it will make those asking about it a troll in any m43 or mirrorless related forum.
But they do ask and tell others how Nikon must be dying or will have to be dying, or how Sony will terminate their A mount or the entire Alpha division as the new CEO Yoshida is not interested in any hardware gadget business, etc.
But the truth is nothing other than m43 or Pentax is really doomed. The m43 fanboys say Nikon is arguably much more doomed........but the reality is Nikon still sells 3 times more than m43 and Pentax combined(by value).
They say Nikon's biggest issue is lack of their own sensor, well , they have had it since about the D2X time.
And the D850 sensor , while it is produced by Sony, is a completely unique to Nikon and now Nikon is saying good bye to Sony , they will be working with Tower Jazz.
So Nikon will not have any sensor supplier issue, but m43 will.
Why? Because the volume they move and value they make is too small for any serious sensor manufactures to take the format seriously. Thus, they've been clinging to the 3 generations older sensor tech for 7 years or so since the OMD EM5 days. So I must say putting m43 in the same league as Nikon or Sony is just a bit over the top.
So I think I am right Olympus will eventually go FF or at least APS-C(super 35) just for the newer better available sensor electronics tech for the bigger more common sensor formats.
For the same reason half sized MF will eventually die since it is a super niche format and the IQ advantage of that over the FF 135mm format is just too insignificant.
So the Phase One type of real MF will dominate the highend market and Fuji , Hasselbald or Pentax fake 645 all will have to go extinct soon. Sony will not make much by producing that format sensor for them, they will make much more money by selling the real MF sensor to Phase One and some others.
And I am 100 percent sure Sony will make a MF camera system is a lie, they are not interested in such a niche market, their shareholder will not let them go there, it is really simple as that. Sony is not Phase or Haselblad, not even Fuji, and they know their brand value and where it works the best better than any reviewer or those pundits at SAR junk.
So I must say when I wrote this article first time I did not believe Oly would actually go FF, but now I do believe they will go FF quite soon.
UPDATE2: Everybody talks about weak build of Sony cameras but is it really true?
Now I think my A7R2 and A7R3 are quite well sealed, they were really soaked at this point and even more wet after that, but they worked just fine. I used a Ziplock back for protection but one of my A7R2 had nothing to protect it but it too survived. This was not a weak rain but hard intense one lasted 7 hours or so since it was a typhoon generated rain.
So now, I think I know the weak weather sealing and build quality of Sony cameras are all BS. It is a quite tough camera.
I used to shoot under this kind of weather many times with my EOS5DMK2 and EOS6D or Nikon D7000, D700, D800, D810, etc, and honestly none of these were actually better than my A7RX cameras. In fact, in my real world experience, the weakest ones were those Canon D-SLR's and toughest ones were the Nikon D8xx and D700. Of course, the D5, D4 and D3 are all tougher but I do not like the sensor in these and I do not like the size of these.
So I think I will compromise a bit of body toughness for a bit more manageable size and I think the D750 size is the best balanced for most of things. For me the A7R3 and especially the R2 is a bit too small. I really want a bit bigger version of my A7R3.
I think the real problem of Sony system is weak barrel design of their G and Zeiss designated lenses. The GMaster lenses are better but the G and especially Sony Zeiss ones are extremely weak.
UPDATE2: During my recent academic trip to Osaka, I was really kind of convinced that maybe BNC ranking is right.
At most of tourists venues we visited there, I saw many many EOS M cameras. The BCN ranking here seems to be really correct. This time I met many many people using some sort of EOS M.
At this temple I met 12 SE Asian tourists shooting with a EOS M50. That camera seems to be a huge success for Canon, at least in Asia.
I also spotted a several Sony A7X cameras here.
But I saw no Nikon , no m43 here.
Maybe, is it the m43 duo that is really doomed or is it Nikon?
Well, Nikon may not be dead yet, but they may fail with the new Z system soon, I think it will not be a very successful system since they will have no lens to back it up, at least at the launch, and Nikon does not seem to have the courage to open the mount architecture.
This means unlike the E mount or m43 system, Nikon will not get much help by any of those major third party lens makers.
I think this is a big sign of a failing system.
After all, Nikon is a about 3 times smaller company than Olympus and about 12 times smaller than Pana.
UPDATE3 : now we know the excessively wide mount diameter of the Nikon Z mount and many people are guessing it will be a FF and MF mount rather than a APS-C-FF mount.
Many Nikon fans take it positively but if it is a FF mount that also covers the small MF sensor image circle, then it would be too big for an APS-C and APS-C is the still dominant format in ILC. Ignoring that sensor size may be a big mistake.
But I think it is not the case since we have heard many times that Nikon would release a several mirrorless bodies this year ;two FF and two APS-C.
I hope it is really true. Many forums experts love the idea of it is a FF optimized mount that is big enough to also cover a small MF sensor like the one in Hasselblad X1D, but MF is really a niche thing, too small a market to even take seriously.
And making a FF mount that also covers a small MF sensor, then it would be too big for FF, let alone APS-C/DX.
If that is the case, the new Z system would have huge lenses , I mean excessively huge ones for just a 35mm format body.
