(part 1) Back from Australia-China: unfair E-P1 versus Mamiya7 comparison.

October 13, 2009
reviews
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Dear readers!

I am finally back from my journey. I had a job to do in Australia and China. First of all I would like to thank all Australian and Chinese people I met during those two months. The whole trip was an incredible experience and I never had any difficulty at all working in both countries. People were extremely friendly and I came back to Europe with many many many good memories. Thanks!

My work:

I made one documentary and three photoreportages. In the next days I will show you some of the photos I made. As you may remember I had the Mamiya 7 and the Olympus with me. The first story was on request of a European newspaper. I’ll show you a comparison of the results from both cameras. It is obvious that this is an unfair comparison because the Mamiya gives you a 6×7 cm positive image! But maybe some of you are interested to see how big the difference is. Please notice that I am very very very happy with the E-P1 performance which is easily on par (and sometimes beats) the quality of other (non fullframe) DSLR! And please notice that this isn’t meant to be a über-professional comparison. To do that you need a resolution chart, both lenses with the same aperture, a tripod, same light and other limits like that. So give me a break! I do not pretend to be a professional reviewer :)

The photo shows you a 60 year old miner in Lightning Ridge (Australia). I always took one photo with the mamiya (6×7 positive film) and one with the Olympus (in RAW). The positive film has been scanned at 3200 dpi with the flextight professional drumscanner (16bit, tiff format, gives me a 60Megapixel resolution photo which weighs 320 MegaByte!!!)

The first photo you see has been taken with the Olympus E-P1 and 17mm lens (Raw converted in jpg with Photoshop and downsized).

The Mamiya 7 photo (mamiya 65mm lens, fuji velvia 100, downsized):

The 65mm mamiya lens is the equivalent of 32mm in 35mm format.

I cropped and downsized both pictures:

The difference in sharpness is huge. The E-P1 performs well but nothing beats medium format film.

Next photo, very difficult situation. Only one strong light!

First the E-P1 and 17mm lens (Raw converted in jpg with Photoshop and downsized)…

….and the mamiya 7 (mamiya 65mm lens, fuji velvia 100, downsized)

As you see there is a difference in white balance. I haven’t made a white balance on the mamiya photo. I used a film for natural light where there was artificial light (I had no other film with me).

Now I am going to show you the a crop from the head and this time in real size…no downsizing!!!

The E-P1 is overexposed and burns part of the head. My fault! With the spot metering inside the mamiya7 I measured the head of the man and this saved the photo.

Finally I am going to tell a little more about his story. His name is Vittorio. Since 1969 he lives in the middle of the australian nowhere. He owns a mine. And on top of the mine he has built a castle!

You can enter the mine from his living room…(photo taken with the E-P1)