Olympus Blues ....Are the Greens and the Shakes

After a bit of a break from taking photography seriously - a bit unfocused if not diffuse - I have been using the E450 for more or less snapshots and I have been with the family all the time this summer so the "better " more thought out shots have been actually compromised into being ever so slighty better but often lacking.

So this summer for the first in four years of E450 joy, I produced no signature portaits of the kids and no perfect landscapes.  In fact: Quite a lot of mediocre results due to various factors, mainy of course concentration, but also some limitations of the camera: My main bug bears are then:

1) camera shake / movement blur
2) using too wide an angle
3) composition needing cropped which could have been in camera zoom or "shanks pony" zoom/ shifting my backside
20m
3)b) titled images needing rotating and cropping out good composition
4) Olympus Greens

On the latter, the green,  green grass of home is ever so slightly too green. I guess this is because olympus have chosen to optimise their system into producing stunning sky and sea blues and flattering skin tones (in contrast to panasonics crappy jpeg engine). I shoot only jpeg Large Fine now because without a full photoshop investment and a lot of time on my hands, olympus have hard coded the best jpeg conversion chip in the business and i cannot do better.......except for those garish lawns and hillsides.

I was a bit taken a-back by olympus having a vivid setting as factory default but more disappointed that "natural" still produced garish greens and rather flattering skin tones are more apparent. Reds and blues become more realistic thought.

The fix for images with a lot of green, such as lawns or grassy summer mountains is to set the camera to "muted" which suddenly makes the greens very natural and even adds depth and texture to grass details.

Just remember muted will give rather dowdy blues, yellows and reds while also losing some flattery in skin tone.

On the green issue i coud advise someone who is clued up and who has lightroom, corel 64bit or photoshop to then shoot raw and adjust per "keeper" shot first, then running a batch conversion on the series from the shoot. I would rather be behind the camera on location than in Post personally.

On being behind the camera, this brings me to point 3.

The main draw back with the earlier olympuw E series cameras through to the latter day last of the 10mpx my dear old 450 , pre E3 /30 ,was the small view finder. The OVF gives less than full view of the actual chip frame size and is small and difficult to use with glasses. I often find I am trying to catch my kids in full flight and at the right moment, head out of camera ,and i more or less end up shooting with a "blind" eye to the actual composition TTL.

This leads to most often shots which are too wide, shots which are tilted badly off plumb or zoom shots which are cropping off limbs.

For kids-in-action shots there is just going to have to be more praqctice in setting up and knowing what focal length will work best. CAF focusing in ljive view is too slow, but can be useful for candid shots of people at ease. Also a better eyecup is probably available for spectacle wearing clots like me. This then covers two.

I think i need to go back to looking at some posed, stock library family shots etc and get a feel for composition and then fire off lots of frames when i feel the golden moment is in there.

So no quick fix there, only a back to the basics, experiment and experience. At least i stand inspired as i have hardly lifted my olympus to eye this year!

Finallly the real bug bear for E450/420 and I suspect many other non image-stabilised E series cameras: low shutter speed .

Programme/ Auto mode in Olympus favouritises aperture wide for faster shutter for the same exposure. This is okay if you own the faster, over price f2.8 glass wear, but for the vast majority of we "hundred" series owners we dont own, and we cannot just go over to standard shutter priority and dial in because we have poor non base ISO. We shoot ISO200. Or can we?

Well we have had the sun here and i have bet on 1/320th on S mode as often as i remember to set the camera up. I then shoot even -0.3 a lot of the time to get nice saturation and further more I have been using a polarising filter all summer, whipping it twixt the two kit zooms it fits. The thing with the E series is that you can pull detail and colour out of the three quarter tones into the shadows, but the quarter tones are often poor and the highlights clip in.

So here I have dozens of S images and a good few high light range images which can be lifted, but you know what? ? I like underexposed landscapes and people shots and town or boat shots because it kills off blocky highlights and adds depth with heavy shadows which have good gradation into them.

My investment then for the end of the summer with no work contract for August yet, was a half price monopod which is a full 1669 mm extended ,almost eye height, which i will experiment with to see how much this improves my camera shake issue to free me up for A priority and low light shots.

I am inspired to do a blog based on the very theme post shooting. Watch this space.

Bemoaning low house prices? Eikas cheif economist in lala land

http://mobil.aftenposten.no/meninger/debatt/Taler_-eller-tall-om-boligmarkedene-7384960.html

Roughly translated; house prices in Oslo are too low and on a national basis it is not economic with any new building.

Ja vel, as they say here . He is gryning really about the biggest correction to the markets for consumer finance and mortgages in the north western hemisphere since who knows when...it almost has no comparison as a half decade of insiduous decline to what i mean is infact a greater reality now ahead of us:; rather several major changes:

1) we are facing a shift of wealth creation, distribution and retention away from the western middle class engine to asia and to the super rich.
2) we in the west are going to have to get used to paying a much higher proportion of income on food and energy
3) we are in a new epoch where  nervousness is a powerful brake on the previous lunacy of loose flowing credit- uncertainty in the finance system based around intervention regulation versus abject failure if the mistakes were repeated and a western world liquidity crisis rose again.

Although maybe not inevitable, it is a forseeable scenario that house prices to income ratios outside the major western metropolises will continue to be a gearing with a declining profile towards three times average household income per average city or regional house price.

Norway is not exempt from the demands on banks to have higher equity to debt ratios. This has had the immediate effect at the highest percieved risk end where now first time buyers have no access to one hundred percent mortgages. They are faced with 5 - 10 years of saving for the minimum deposit; that may even need to rise if house prices show stagnation or a falling trend for the flats they would be buying.

This is the base of the whole pyramid of consumer property, but it is in fact just a drip of petrol which used to get the nitrous effect when boy meets girl, and two starter flats are sold at a major joint capital gain. That is what had been stoking the fires of the Norwegian house market prices, and many regional markets.

With the 1970 and 80s babies themselves dragging their feet terribly in starting families, this meant that the single white female had made a very tidy profit on her appartment because she had been in that rabbit hutch for 5 to 10 years. She and himbo had probably not paid a bean in capital repayments either but came out with maybe a million krone as the downpayment on their big step up the ladder.

Now they cant sell or make less or find they are even in negative equity and losses on selling costs. So the bottom rung on the ladder has actually affected profoundly the town house appartment, semi in the commuter belt or out of town villa two steps up the ladder or more.

Eventually you reach a level where ordinary employees are not the fuel in the market. Here the rich in Norway have been really stung due to a hang over of super high glamerous prices which the glitteratii thought nothing of paying to secure a bit of coastal paradise or luxurious cabin at altitude.

Lower down from the impulse purchases of the well heeled, capital investing in property means getting ROI,  in turn that necessitates selling at some point. That also relates to green field and brown field redevelopment plots.

It is therefore pretty obvious that two main scenarios pan out: house prices fall,  land prices follow , developers and builders decide to get a little less rich or lower margin operators come into the market. The next scenario is that a bubble is suddenly created with masses of first time buyers getting access suddenly to the market: this would happen because the blue-blue government get their puppet strings pulled and create a system for 100% mortgages or subsidise first time buyers, , , which was called sub prime in the USA and was probably the the grain of sand in the evil oyster which precipitated the whole crisis......

Olympus and Focusing Improvements

A missed opportunity from fourthirds days has been to install a focal range lock on olympus system cameras.

Olympus had a pretty poor in prism pdaf and it sounds like the on chip pdaf is less than ideal. Prior to the quad core processors, the contrast detect functioned inadequately in low light; but that was par for the course in all cameras without an EDM built in or with flash attached.

What olympus could do is a retro software update to include a focal range lock and a focus-auto-bracketing functionality for the FT and the first editions of the mFT bodies.

In the first instance you would include hyperfocal as one setting with a display of what that is in meters for the lens settings. Then you have arbitary or user definable ranges down to minimum resolving distance for the lens. One setting further to this would be a toggle to a shorter range, another to take at midpoint if no target is found upon full release of the button.  Yet another variation would be to lock a point on prefocus half depression, then to hunt only so many meters -cm-mm around this calptured point.

Further to all that we have then the possibility for functionality to both focus auto bracket x amount of frames to y range of the varied focal points, and to execute depth of field auto bracketing.

All the above could be retro programmed in a software update to nearly all four thirds format cameras!

We then open up much enhanced use in sports and nature photography for the entire range of lenses; and in both ontrast detect and pdaf. We also improve possibilities for better results in continuous tracking mode too.

Finally focus bracketing and dof bracketing are both especially useful in macro photography and landscape; on the one side you fire off several shots and find a best frame while on the other you automate a series of shots for merging in post processing.

Olympus- A Compact Integral Zoom mFT ?

Picking up from the last blog, Olympus will continue to showboat the best sensors and in camera elec-trickery in the OMD range and hand-me-Down to the EP compacts. They have a few more lenses in them I reckon, especially fast zooms and macro and long end telephoto "big white". However I would not be suprised to see the mFT format going into non interchangeable lenses.

Oly come very near to fighting for their own customers With the XZ2 versus the EPMs and last season sales of EPs and so on, because the XZ is just so very good for general snap shot hobby and travel use. I bet you there are a few pros use one on their day off!

The one big difference now will be the sensor quality -

They handed Down the spec to the smaller XZ10 and also to the New Stylus super zoom which uses some Technology from the OMD's allegedly - EVF probably anyhows.

Now I reckon they will hand me Down mFT chip or a slight Crop of the existing sensors into an integral lens camera.

Why? Well the sensors on the stylus range are just too small - they will always be better quality than Your average mobile Device but they will not get near the performance for sports, low light and Professional Publishing.

The point here being that you do not need to be on price With the low end PEN cameras here. If you offer an f2.8 or faster zoom lens, constant aperture or sub f2 to f2.8 then you hit into People who aren't interested in system cameras, or those who would like to avoid lens Choice paralysis!

The benefit is of course, as you see in the stylus Product range, that the lenses can collapse further than a flange mounted system can allow: the lens housing flange can receed into the house and the lens follow inwards to create a really small carrying package.

What we are though talking about is a trade off: you would get say 12-45 in a camera With f2.8 which would be more compact that the EP range With the kit 14-42. If you are looking to sell to enthusiasts then they have the EXIF data and would know that a wide-street-portrait camera focal range is for them.

Now what you do NeXT is you then sell a New camera which does a longer telefoto range With maybe a high qaulity digital zoom using the best IBIS can do and improved in camera Processing or perhaps a Nikon style "best shot" : so you here start at say in old Money, a 45mm ( 23mm FT) and go up to 180 (90 on ft) and then do a Nice Reach on stabalised digital Crop, perhaps re-pixelating upto full image size. Oh yes, the Technology exists to add more pixels to an image while retaining a high degree of Fidelity, and this could work in camera.

Olympus then sell the enthusiast or photojournalist two cameras at the price of the highest end small sensor camera - maybe upto 700 dollar mark. The houses are pretty much standard.

An alternative would be to do something a little Ricoh like and have a two lens system, where the Mount is not traditional bayonet type flange, but a boxy, mechanical locking unit which self calibrates to the actual required flange position. You sell that then initially as a two lens system, covering 24mm to 250 mm as FF focal lengths and perhaps develop a wider or a Fish eye adaptor, or a super long one.

Olympus and Panasonic really stole a march on Canikon who were happy for them to play there, and have had some degree of Catch up to do and not got there yet. Samsung are the dark horse, but not regarded as highly as they should be by pure camera-fan-boy brand snobs. Sony really blaze a trail With their slightly bigger APS-C mirrorless into New photographers.  Now Olympus can do this again and cover the mid ground between Leica and the higher end Fuji compact offerings and the G12 and Nikon top enders, and their own and Panasonics own- coming out Ahead With something unique.

But wow, you say, the mFT is a system set up and you either get the Whole idea of IQ With buying lots of glass, or you are better off With Your mobile or a 1970s polaroid? Hell no, if mobiles took as good images as top end compacts at the 500 dollar mark or thereabouts, there would be no market for 500 dollar small chipped compacts. Many enthusiast and pro' FF and APSC owners have a smaller non system "quality end" compact.

Here Oly can make cash on the Whole body-lens combi at first purchase point and capture a creaming niche based on the far superior images mFT sensor or even a 75% Crop can take over the current "mid" sensore enthusiast compacts, while also eating into Leica and Fuji and whatever luxury prosumer compact is launched NeXT.

The philosophy is that the best camera is that which you have With you the most and which best covers Your style and tastes in focal legnth and aperture. The more compact, to a jacket Pocket single lens beauty, the better.

Olympus - A Full Frame on the Wish List

Olympus of course in reality decided that digital cameras would one day be far smaller than 35mm cameras. Ironic then that the OMD EM5 is not that much smaller than an OM10 35mm film camera. However, Olympus and originally the others in the FourThirds Group were right that one day that there would be enough megapixels and improved signal to noise in theory, that would allow us to come to where we are today With the mFT format- and this is likely to be pushed to 20mpx at some point.

The limiting factor was optics, but in reality many full frame lenses are best stopped Down to mid f2 to f3.5 so at that the Depth of Field is about the same as the sub f.1.9 prime lenses.

However throwing reality aside in the Wake of Nikon's wonderful Df-g full frame, why don't Olympus look at going a step further at a lower price tag: putting a 36x14mm sensor in an old OM body- no autofocus, full compatibility to OM lenses and Conversion rings to other FF Legacy gear.

Autofocus is what takes up so much of the processor Power and necessitates more room for Electronics. However you could have some low intensity CF or on chip based PDAF focus assistance such as live view focus "peaking" and Depth of Field preview. You could add an in-body infrared IDM laser shooting from the prism. Or sod it and just rely on ground glass and the split objective Mirror Method ( which some Companies will etch retrospectively to reflex Mirrors on DSLRs by the way. )

Even a last generation Sony 36mm sensor at under 16 mpx would Catch the imagination and bring many an OM hoarder of lenses out the closet.

The OM series With the OM10 became the market leading pro-sumer camera range for a while in the 80s before the evil empire of plastic and EOS came to the world. In effect Olympus built very good 1970s cameras until the late 80s and could not make the transfer to autofocus, which always seemed to me to be a bit of a removal of the Whole feel of photography.   Back then I reckon they should have kept top end of manual focus, With better in camera exposure Programming,  and not tried the OEM camera system they did. They could have developed AF in their own time, awaiting patents to run out and so on, or pioneered full frame, manual focus cameras.

Olympus has made a great direction and now has Three legs to stand on: mid to high end consumer compacts, the mFT compacts and the prosumer OMD EM series. They showed that they could flog an old horse With the 12mpx sensor for Three crucial years, re-establishing the brand on an sensor made for the last white hope of FT DSLR. So they will no doubt have a good run With minor tweaks to the OMD system line up, and hand me Downs to mFT compacts and maybe lower Down as I expect into single lens non system mFT.

But if only, if only they would dare to do an D-OM full frame!

Camera wish list: what Olympus should make

1) a couple of integral mid speed lens mFT compacts which telescopically collapse down. A wide - street with around 20mm to 40mm ff equivalent : and a portait with 65 to 130mm.

2) a full frame digital OM mount dslr, with manual focus and simple in camera features

3) a sports OmD EM-S which has better ergonomics and AF

4) a two lens system ergo compact at a crop to 14mpx of mFT with a range FF eq of 22mm to 80 and 80 to 300;

Taking Good Pictures...Aprt IV- Camera Set Up Tips In General

At the top "Lobe" of my quality diagram in the last bloggs was of course technical, and this means in taking shots, camera settings and more importantly human interface.

Camera settings are just such a well covered ground in everything from the classic text books, coffee table books, youtube and of course the user manual, that I feel I just want to give some simple tips across the range of camera types used for the "capture", and some general tips on camera settings and how you interact with the camera and subject / scene and how this then affects the settings and image quality.

Generally- The Human Factor is The Weakest Link:

First tip is to always ensure the camera is in a "base" setting before you pack it away, or when you first open it. Be comfortable with these: ISO , shutter priority, image stabilisation, single shot release, image file type etc. You can then work out which settings will be best for the subject, scene, day or period of travel your shooting will be on.

The biggest single cause for poor photos is undoubtedly camera shake, followed by excessively blurred action. These are as much the operator's fault as they are the conditions and subject.

Whatever the camera, learn to hold it steadily and release the shutter in a gentle squeeze and hold method (that is if you are NOT in burst mode!)

If you have a very good scene or moment to capture, or variable light effects such as sunsets, then don't just be satisfied with one shot: take lots. This comes back to the last point because you may capture for example children better or you may have held the camera most still in one particular frame you took of several more or less identical, or where you boosted the shutter speed to avoid shake, or maybe switched on image-stabalisation you had left off. So yeah, be aware of the settings.

Avoid longer focal lengths for hand held shots- it is often better to crop from a faster, steadier held shot than switch to a bigger lens or longer end of the zoom.

Learn to pan on moving subjects and find optimal settings for good panned shots - often between 30th and 60th of a second exposures. Even on a simple POS or mobile device, you can practice this and get some good results.

The three lobes of my diagram interact of course:  here are a couple of cross

Deciding what the shot is going to emphasise: 

Go in close: this is about framing the subject or scene, composition, but of course it feeds back to set up and what settings the camera may apply to the shot. Going in closer means the subject is more prominent.

Going in close has another effect on using wider lenses and zoom focal lengths, because a close shot will have a shallower depth of field with high aperture. Cheaper lenses with apertures of f3.5 say, can often come into their own when really getting in close and having for portraits for example, just a portion of the face framed, with the short focal distance meaning the lens still achieves a blurred background.

Alternatively for portraits you can back off and use longer telephoto shots to achieve well blurred backgrounds on cheaper lenses or when you cannot use max aperture.

If you really like taking all sorts of shots with a blurred background and foreground, then you are going to set the camera on aperture priority. As the light fails, check the shutter speed and pump the ISO up if you must to get higher shutter speeds.

Type of Camera and Technical Approach

The type of camera you own and use on the day will influence of course what you can and cannot do. Here I want to focus on the limitations and tips on how to get the best images within those, by understanding them and also by using post processing.

The Mobile Device : Smart Phones and Tablets

A few years ago all the parents I knew invested in an entry level DSLR from canon/nikon. Now they must be gathering dust as all I see is mobiles, and the reason is that people want to share the moment instantly. This of course means that a lot of images are once again poor technical quality, but maybe high personal value and have merits in capturing the scene: the best camera is the one you have with you as people say.

Mobile devices have big limitations but are easy to carry and churn out now better images than the point-and-shoot 10mpx compacts of just five years ago. Most have a fixed focal length, with a digital zoom worth avoiding in most cases as the quality declines greatly using it and camera shake becomes emphasised.

Hold them steadily and learn as I say to release the shutter without shake, or use a delay on shutter release (timer) if you are not able in low light for example. Use the finger touch spot focusing and keep your head up out of the camera until you see what, when and where in the frame you want to take your subject. Learn to use lamp posts, walls, friends shoulders, or a tripod/monopod mobile clamp adapter if you want best results.

Avoid clutter: for people shots come in close, use high above shots where the floor provides a neutral background isolating the subject somewhat,: Alternativley use a very low angle, where sky or background is neutral and even out of focus on some of the better lensed- mobiles.

Switch flash off - red eye is just irritating and removal gives dead dull eye effect often. Also  usually flash will grossly overexpose some faces, or any lighter matieral in close ups of less than 2 m. If it fires on a night panorma scene it will undoubtedly cause some light scatter near the lens.

Use the enormous depth of field: Due to the lens being so close to the film-plain, you can have an enormous depth of field, which is very useful in fact - for the same exposure- the brighteness of the image - you have much more of the scene crisply in focus. This is useful for family and people shots where they are some feet apart, once being pretty close.

The immense DOF is very useful for landscapes and in fact you should be using it!, where you really want to include foreground detail, that wind blown, craggy tree on the lochan side, or some street detail where the eye is lead forward through the scene: this is because most mobile cameras have a very wide angle and field of view: often like a 24mm - formerly a superwide angle in 35mm Film SLR days. So if you take a shot of mountains long away, you are likely to have actually taken a shot of the "fields" in the foreground as the subject, because the hills are so far away. I most often actually crop to a panorama and exclude some bland or confusing foreground., and I use a panorama app : these are absolutely fabulous on the latest iPhones from 4S onwards by the way, matching exposure and auto releasing the shutter as you rotate smoothly.

On that point:  by in large right now, apps which are most useful are those for post processing - Aviary is very good for android phones, while Snapseed for tablets, and its "cloud" version up on Google + are getting to a very useful level even for processing DSLR shots transfered in. Apps which engage  the camera, apart from the panorama apps, are by in large immature for the moment and you are better with a post' image treatment even if it is for fun. In either case, try the app and see if 1) it will over-write the original, which is bad , it should default save-as a new file 2) does it deterioate the file quality ie megapixel reduction or unwanted loss of detail? Even Photoshop express does this, which they need to look at now if they are going to have a free app at all.

I really enjoy a bit of post proc in camera, the filters can be fun and it is worht trying monotone or antique colour styles on many shots just to see how they turn out. but for really good shots I have taken shots out of camera and onto photoshop at work or GIMP at home, where the better "unsharp mask" and general fidelity and image integrity mean that the end results are much more satisfactory for printing (photo books for granny) or just as an impressive keeper, or maybe you have a journalistic shot?

Conversely, I often like to reduce the image size for rapid upload to face book. With mobiles now taking over 10mpx as standard and some with HDMI video, you can soon end up with unneccessary upload time because the images will never be seen bigger than 800x 600 pixels if they are being shared on facebook!




Cheap or 'Consumer' Compact Cameras

Usually compacts will have some more adjustments in camera or they may offer better depth of field control to a slight extent. Half press shutter may help with capturing the focal point you need. Going in close is more likely here to produce a nice blurred out background too.

However due to their small image circle size- a portion of which lands on the sensor chip, depth of field reaches a hyperfocal point at a shorter range, where everything is in focus at that plain and beyond to infinity.

Most compacts now will have a zoom lens built in.

Super Zooms: I was very seduced into superzooms when I first wanted to move away from 35mm film, having had a 35mm-90mm Pentax 35mm as second camera. However by in large the technical quality of superzooms has been so poor and the long end zoom so shakey that I steered clear. For the price of the higher end like the very good panasonic, fuji and olympus ones you can get a good entry level ILC / DSLR with a pretty effecttive kit zoom up to 200mm old equivalent, or a very good deal on a used system with a few lenses.

ILC System Cameras: Nikon J/V, Leica, mFT from Panasonic & Olympus, Nex, Samsung

These cameras have really evovled into the enthusiast and serious user area, and are used by pros' with for example one New York Times photographer only using micro four thirds now.

Interestingly they have to a large extent separated into kit zoom purchase packages a bit like the entry level DSLRs were a few years ago, and then the prime lens as the key : it is only recently that Oly and Panasonic began introducing pro-sumer zooms, which are fiendishly expensive and not all that long a zoom range.

These cameras, especially the APS-C chip ones, offer pretty much all a mirror -viewfinder based single lens reflex offered, and if you like a view finder all the manufacturers offer a EVF in a model of compact with one built in or as a clip.

Olympus and Panasonic have dumped mirrored DSLRs a while ago now and will only produce mFT for the forseeable future. Samsung IIRC, never began with a mirrored DSLR in the first place.

Drawbacks with the cameras are lacking a viewfinder and not getting the full-frame short depth of field, but that is a little compromise for a much smaller system which can fit in your jacket pockets and is less imposing infront of people that lifting say a giant old nikon D3 up to your eye!

That is the benefit here- you can choose what lens around the weight, size and lack of intrusion you want.

In terms of better images, these cameras nearly all allow you to bracket exposures, use spot metering, manually alter ISO and so on. It is important therefore that you set them back to base setting and really think of what settings will make for the best capture of a fleeting moment, or know how to experiment for other shoots such as landscapes.

There are already larger sensor, fixed focal length cameras from Leica at the high end for example and I would expect to see some new hobby/ pro single lens zoom compacts based on one or more of the above systems on the market soon which fold down to a more compact size, while offering most of the image possibilities. Canon with their G series, and olympus with their XZ series vye for top spot on smaller sensor compacts right now, which have the controls of DSLRs and are well worth looking at as an alternative to mFT/APS-C multi lens system cameras if you are unlikely to buy more lenses and use the camera most for facebook and e.mailing around your family.

DSLR Entry and Hobby Level ( APS-C)

The entry level now is just two manufacturers, if you take that Oly have moved over to an mFT non reflex mirror system which is as good as many DSLRs, smaller and better than their previous DSLRS.

So Nikon and Canon are there with very, very good entry level cameras in the medium sized APS-C sensor,  which are hard to fault. They have chosen to keep a high  quality differential from compacts and of course mobile devices, while only creeping the price up a little over time.  The big benefit of these cameras now is two fold - great high ISO performance meaning faster f stop lenses are not needed for achieving low light results which are nice, and that you can of course upgrade to a wide range of quality lenses, many of which are available second hand.

As above, check you are on Base settings before a shoot, be aware not to over complicate things, but also not to just be complacent with P mode. Also APS-C does not have the short depth of field of full frame 35mm equivalent DSLRs.

Full Frame DSLR and latest non mirror FF.

Here you have the best opportunity for depth of field control and these systems offer pro levels of focusing, exposure and clean, low noise images.  You pay for this and with the big, bright zooms you pay a fortune, a complete enthusiast camera, four lens and flash system may be over 20,000 dollars/ euros.

Even a second hand FF from 6 to 8 mpx days,  or nikon's mid way FF sensor camera, will make better images than an mFT or most APS-C cameras due to high quality, fast lenses with depth of field controls, and the good signal to noise output from the sensors.

In any cases, the cameras are nearly all bigger and heavier than other types above, and that means you will want to use a tripod or monopod more often to avoid being an idiot with camera shake!

The lenses are very much bigger so be aware of this when thinking of getting into FF: the depth of field benefit is very marginal compared to the size and price trade off for even a good enthusiast who sells occasional images.