At 04:11 PM 9/23/2009, Mark Rabinor wrote, in part:
The 4/3's system was and is a disaster.
Could be but it works for me.Not only does it work for me, but I'm completely out of money and don't plan to chase to be an "early adapter", as I was with respect to computer systems and operating systems.
There will always be something new, bigger and better, on the market.I would guess that 24X36 is not going to be the end of the process, particularly when this is a 6X6 interest group, which looked down on the 35mm folks.
Regarding ISO, I'll never understand how I got along for 50+ years with 64, even hand-held in churches, etc. Never once thought I would need 3200.
I don't quite understand the rest of Marks comments but am impressed by the new Leica.
As most serious photography gets done on bigger and bigger sensors, 24x36 is taking over Olympus was a company who did not have a system out there they they could make a digital body for. So they figured out a way for a new format. The cameras which came out for that format were always bigger than the prevalent APS-C, or 1.5x crop. This format is essentially half frame. The 2x crop 4/3's was half that across. So they were half half frame So they want you to go out and buy a camera twice the size with half the format. Though most the public all they knew about was megapixels. But they did know it when they could not shoot without noise over 400 iso while the full frame guys were doing it over 3200 iso. So they came out with MICRO 4//3s specs and were able to come out with cameras worthy of the size of the format. The new Olympus pen is one. Which is totally blown away with the new Leica X1 with twice the format at 23.6 x 15.8 mm CMOS sensor APS-C and a smaller camera. But for twice the bucks. http://www.dpreview.com/news/0909/09090908leicax1.asp Mark William Rabiner