Please Explain the 4/3 Sensor Size to Me?

[Bruce Watson]

Originally Posted by Chris Hurd

Keep in mind that Marketing, not Engineering, designs the product and specifies what it will be.

Feh. Not in any industry I've worked in. Most marketing people couldn't design their way out of a paper bag. What they do is ascertain what features the customers actually want. It's typically up to engineering to create a functional specification to translates marketing's desires into a format that can be understood (and agreed to) by everyone, then design a product that meets the requirements of the functional spec.

That's the way it's worked in every company I've worked for, eight or nine now IIRC.

Now, I'm not saying that what marketing does is isn't hard, or isn't valuable because it's certainly both. Most engineers would find it difficult in the extreme and couldn't begin to do a good job of interfacing with customers or understanding what they really want. Most engineers wouldn't survive the first lunch with the customers, even if they could get on the customers' schedule for that lunch.

But the design of the product -- creating the mechanism that delivers the required functionality, isn't something that marketing does, it's something that engineering does. Naming something a name like "micro four thirds" that vaguely ties a modern product into the past so it seems like an evolutionary product (whether it is or isn't) so that the product is more attractive to the end customer is something at which marketing accels.

[Matt Gottshalk]

Originally Posted by Bill Davis

My hesitance about the damn thing is that it appears unless you want to buy all new lenses or deal with some kind of adaptor and crop factor mess - you're gonna have to dump what you've got and buy all new kit.

THAT was the big draw for the 5d to me.

Same lens system could be used for excellent stills AND video - and there was a robust market for 35mm glass already in place.

Not sure what a bag full of those early 4/3 lenses will bring in another 5 years.

But that's a bet you either take - or avoid as you make your call.

Funny, I intend to use ALL of my old Nikon glass with the AF-100.

Will there be a crop factor?

Of course, but that is because there isn't a "full frame" cinema film camera out there.

The "standard" is Super 35, which is closer to the APS-C sensor (Canon7d).

In other words, if you put your FF Canon glass on a RED, which also is a S35 sensor, you would STILL have a crop factor to deal with.

That is hardly a bad thing with the AF-100.

I look forward to the no aliasing, moire, and having proper audio inputs alone.