Dawid, as a general rule I avoid the use of "Never". You may remember all the trouble that Richard Nixon got into after uttering the word NEVER.
Hi Walter,
Did you buy an E-3, or are you just evaluating one? I hope you enjoy this camera, it certainly does look fabulous on many fronts.
I don't want to start a huge discussion here which is off-topic from the Olympus E-3, but let me just defend my statement: Being in the technology industry myself, I am also averse to the term "never".
However, I use it in my post with the same conviction as when making a statement like "a body with mass can never be accelerated past the speed of light". I harbour a secret belief that this will one day in the future be
circumvented - but for now we have to accept that this is a law of physics.
So too, I believe that photon counting statistics (very nicely described
here if you haven't read it yet) place a somewhat fundamental limit on the noise performance of a sensor, if one considers the standard model of still photography being
a single recording of the photons that hit some kind of sensor.
Now, therein lies the key - I am confident that no four-thirds camera that is likely to be released by any manufacturer will ever improve on the ISO performance of, say a Canon 5D or a Nikon D3 -
as we know it. Why? Because they will either have to abandon the traditional model of still photography (such that one no longer captures a single frame (or moment) of a scene - all sorts of interesting theoretical possibilities arise here, but they will all mean severe digital manipulation of one or more images), or they will have to drastically reduce the number of pixels on the sensor.
I am sure that, on the digital processing side, many interesting things will happen. But, if you want to capture something like a high-quality sequence of a ballerina in the air on a dimply lit stage, there is only so many photons being thrown towards your camera, and for the time being, I think that physically larger buckets will consistently outperform smaller buckets, and four thirds will always have smaller buckets, because they aren't going to reduce pixel count!
(We really should applaud Nikon for abandoning the 'megapixel race' their D3, I hope canon does the same!)
To capture a better image of a scene, I think we shall have to start emulating the human vision system, but this will completely change the whole concept of how a camera works - maybe when this happens, SLR cameras will become a niche, like large format view cameras are today!
Just as the maximum resolution possible from a 6x7 camera will
always be better than the maximum resolution from a 35mm camera, so too will the maximum light sensitivity of a 35mm camera system
always be better than the best possible from a four thirds camera. Both are dictated by physical size, nothing else - and that is the trade-off one makes (on either side).
Those are my views, in anyway.
Would you be satisfied a prefect 16 mp camera?
Well now, the definition of "perfect" is very different for everybody else, but I must say that, at this stage, I am, and will for a long time, be satisfied by a perfect 8MP camera - a 1D MkII N! I am overjoyed at the stunning image quality and colours my camera produces, and I wonder if I will ever be able to exploit it well enough. I am sometimes bothered by a bit of banding at ISO3200 (which is why, I guess, the 'standard' range only goes up to ISO1600) - but the noise performance (grain) at ISO3200 is, in all other respects, wonderful for my needs.
But my needs are very personal, so if I were to produce commercial sports images, I am sure I'd like to continue to see improvements in high ISO performance, but for the kind of more abstract shots I do, the grain even adds to the images. With this camera, I feel I can extract the best from all my lenses, it's wide enough without mercilessly exposing the poorer corners of the lenses, and the per-pixel detail from those big pixels are great for my needs.
With a 16Mp camera, I'd have to substantially increase my storage and computing infrastructure to deal with the amount of RAW data I'd have to maintain!
But... a 16Mp camera that has a "small raw" mode to give me binned, 8MP raw images with fantastically low noise, now that would be great. If canon followed Olympus' lead, and actually released firmware to substantially upgrade older models in terms of photographic functionality - based on advancements in new models, we might (??) have had updated firmware for the 1Ds MkII to add binned "small raw" output - I'd love a 8MP full-frame camera with great ISO6400 performance
But we can dream...
This may or may not even be possible, I don't know enough about the 1Ds' imaging path.
Anyway, here I went all off-topic in anyway! To conclude, based on the original subject of this thread, I would say the E-3, from a purely photographic standpoint, does not seem "hot" - the 40D et al should still be better (from what I've seen). But features-wise, it certainly seems quite amazing, and must be very enjoyable to use!
And the lenses... oh my. I am jealous that I have to use Canon primes to get the sort of quality my colleague is getting with his Zuiko zooms.