Micro Four Thirds in the era of the Full Frame Hubbub

The Era of the Full Frame Hubbub

2018 is the year when the duo of DSLR manufacturers, Canon and Nikon made moves to establish a beachhead in the full frame mirrorless world. Enthusiastic and triggered Youtube gear reviewers, quite a few of them, owners and users of the Canon and Nikon cameras grasping at the opportunity to denounce Sony gear and restoring faith in the two empires. Meanwhile, Micro Four Thirds (MFT) gear is being written off as passe, devices of the past, and at risk of being overrun by top-end phone cameras and computational photography. Even reasonable authors are being led to believe that with so much pressure from the full frame makers, MFT has a limited and declining future.

The MFT brands are not standing up and saying that MFT is doomed. Why would they? Currently, the sale of MFT gear is their major source of income. Olympus has not made any announcement producing a parallel full frame catalogue, Panasonic has announced they will build a second line of gear based on the Leica mirrorless full frame mount. But Panasonic says that they are not abandoning MFT.

If market size is constant respective shares are getting smaller

Sony was until this year, the only commonly available full frame mirrorless maker. Now, this market is being split at least three ways by Sony, Canon and Nikon. The Sony share of the full frame mirrorless market has to be, by logic, less than 100% that it once was.

The rest of the mirrorless market is APS-C (Sony, Fuji and smaller makes) and MFT (Olympus, Panasonic). They exist now, because

• the bodies are smaller and lighter in general (although that is a design choice)
• the lenses are smaller and lighter in general either in absolute terms or by the fact that there is a crop factor particularly for the telephoto range (although that is a design choice)
• they are cheaper (although that is a design choice)
• they produce smaller files which take less storage, memory buffer and computational processing memory
• the smaller sensors don't generate as much heat during movie making
• the smaller sensors have a lower manufactured cost - this may not have been reflected in the recommended retail pricing because there was little or no previous competition, so the brands obviously wanted to reap the rewards and keep a higher margin.

These points are often disputed and rebutted - again, if you are an unbeliever, your role in life is to dispute the facts.

Perceived Handicaps of the smaller MFT Sensors

On the other hand, people who just don't get the smaller sensor point to

• Lower technical image quality from
• lower resolution by design choice
• 2 stops higher noise level (in relative terms) for the same technology level and if you choose the same amount of scene lighting
• one or more stops less dynamic range (in relative terms) for the same technology level. (Again if you choose not to overcome the scene contrasts)
• 2 stops deeper depth of field, in relative terms if what matters to you is to produce an extremely shallow depth of field.

It comes back to viewpoint again. A handicap is only real if you perceive it to be so.

We've been there before. Hopefully, the brands have learned from history. The Four Thirds DSLRs and their lenses were not small enough. The sensor tech at that time was premature. At that time, Olympus and Panasonic had to retreat with severe financial losses at that time. That was then. Now is different. 

• Sensor tech has advanced a lot since those times. Good enough sensor tech is now available such that even minuscule phone camera sensors are acceptable. And MFT sensors are more than quite capable of super large enlargements (if you bother to take a good shot in the camera). Enlargement software like Qimage and Topaz A.I. Gigapixel offer computational methods to enhance the situation.

The way forward - leadership and determination in MFT

What matters more than anything is not so much the technology (which will continue to improve) but the wielding of it. MFT producers need to 

• understand the existing asset base - reliable MFT optical assets (lenses) have already been established, unlike the new full frame mirrorless mounts.
• wisely choose approaches to the producing the new range of bodies, both in features and pricing.
• continue to develop features in computational photography to enhance the bodies (remember the image sizes are smaller and can be more readily computed).
• define and aim for the optimum balance between aggressive product quests vs prudent financial management of the product lines.