m4/3

About two years ago, I briefly noted that Olympus had announced the Micro 4/3 (m4/3) standard. The rest of this post is yawn inducing so feel free to check out anytime, but like I said before, it's essentially Olympus DSLR quality with a smaller body. I bought into Olympus SLR 4/3's format despite its major shortcomings since the good parts fit my uses, the bad parts didn't matter too much, and I subjectively like Olympus, having used their venerable OM-4 long ago. I recently decided to buy into m4/3 as my "compact" camera for similar reasons.


A standard m4/3 setup is smaller than my most used 4/3 lens. Certain limitations mean it won't replace my brick yet, but m4/3 has a place with me. A natural feature of m4/3 and similar formats is a shorter flange-to-film distance, allowing the effective use of many legacy lenses. I've seen nice results using old OM, Voigtländer, and even CCTV lenses. I won't be screwing around with that for now though, I just look forward to traveling with the thing.

*the photo is a m4/3 E-P2 with 14-42mm 3.5-5.6 kit lens, compared to a 4/3 12-60mm 2.8-4 (which has some grime on it).