Today, we're celebrating an anniversary
because ten years ago, Panasonic joined Olympus
to announce the arrival of the Micro Four Thirds system,
and today, we're going to talk about why they did that,
and the impact it had on the camera world.
Let's get Undone!
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What is happening, everybody? I'm Gerald Undone
and in August of 2008, a new lens mount
was announced by Olympus and Panasonic
for a new mirrorless format camera system,
the Micro Four Thirds. As a lover of this system,
I thought I'd be fun to take today's video to discuss
some of the more interesting history
behind this release, as well as provide, sort of,
a basic buyer's guide to my viewers
who are just getting into cameras.
First, though, I just want to give a quick shout-out
to Camera Canada, who frequently provide me
with the gear that I use to make these videos.
I highly recommend them, so to any of
my fellow Canadians who are looking to get some camera gear,
make sure you check out their links in the description below.
Alright, so what even is a Micro Four Thirds?
What does that phrase mean, and why did anyone even think
that we needed it? Well, let's get the Micro part
out of the way first because it's the easiest.
In this case, Micro pretty much means mirrorless,
because the Four Thirds system already existed
in the DSLR variety, and so it's micro
because part of going mirrorless means
that you don't need the space for the pentaprism
or the mirror box, so the flange distance
and the body get considerably smaller.
Now, this is true for any mirrorless system but this one,
specifically, was based on Olympus' Four Thirds system
from a few years prior, only this time,
instead of Kodak helping with development,
Panasonic stepped in to help with the mirrorless
development of the Four Thirds system,
and the first camera that they ever actually released
was the Panasonic Lumix DMC G1, known just as the G1.
Flash forward to today, and we've got all the way up
to the G9 now. So now, what about the Four Thirds part?
Many people will tell you that this name
comes from the aspect ratio of the sensor,
which is 18mm by 13.5mm typically, or a 4:3 ratio,
and although this makes sense, it's not actually true.
the name actually refers to the physical size
of the sensor, which is almost exactly half the size
of the 35mm full frame sensor. It gets its name
from an old technology called video camera tubes
which were used to capture television images
and were prominent from, like, the '30s until the 1980s
until CCDs took over. These tubes were essentially
cathode ray tubes which were akin to the vacuum tubes
found in old televisions, which is why TV
got it's nickname, "The Tube."
Anyway, when you measure these tubes,
you have to use a formula because the size of the tubes
includes the glass enclosure that goes over them,
but that doesn't represent the actual usable area
on the inside, which is about two thirds the size
of the entire tube. And this is where
the Four Thirds sensor starts to get its name.
So, the first thing you need to do in this formula
is you need to know the diagonal of the sensor.
So, we know that the four thirds sensor
is 18mm by 13.5mm. In order to figure out
the diagonal, we're going to have to use
the Pythagorean theorem, which is a2 + b2 = c2.
So, if we take the square of 18mm, which is 324,
and then take the square of 13.5mm, which is 182.25,
that's a total of 506.25 and then we get the square root
of that, c2, which is... 22.5mm.
So, the diagonal of a four thirds sensor is 22.5mm.
Now, if we put that into the video camera tube formula,
which is Diagonal x 3/2, or 22.5mm x 3/2, times 1.5,
we get 33.75mm. That would be the size
of the glass tube for which the Micro Four Thirds sensor
could be inside on a diagonal, if that makes sense,
including the glass enclosure,
but those glass tubes were usually measured in inches,
so we have to convert the 33.75mm into inches,
which, at a rate of 25.4mm to one inch,
gives us 1.33 inches, or 1 1/3",
which can also be represented as 4/3rds inches,
hence the 4/3rd inch image sensor or, the Four Thirds.
Now, I know you math fans out there are like,
"Aw cool, that's such an interesting way to come up
with a name for something!" and everybody else
is thinking, "Why in the hell would they come up
with such a bizarre, convoluted, esoteric way to name
a system that's using a technology
that wasn't even around when the camera system
was being invented?!" And I can kind of
see both sides of that there, but I did think
it was interesting and I also think it's better to dispel
those rumours, 'cause everybody is going around saying,
"Oh, it's the ratio of 4:3." It's not the ratio, although,
coincidentally, it is kind of cool that the ratio is also 4:3
when most typical cameras have a 3:2 aspect ratio,
and a lot of these modern ones, you actually can switch
it between 3:2 and 16:9 and that kind of thing,
but the typical, you know, original format is a 4:3 ratio,
so I can understand where that misunderstanding
came from. So now that we know all that,
why would anybody even want a four thirds image sensor?
Well, for two reasons, mainly. One, it's smaller.
This allows you to have wider, faster lenses be much
more compact. Typically, a comparable lens
for a full frame camera would be much larger,
much heavier and much more expensive,
and in many cases, not that much better, if at all.
The second advantage is how the path of light
meets the sensor. Because of something
called Telecentric Optical Path, the light is meeting
the sensor in a much more perpendicular way,
allowing for brighter corners and better off-centre
resolution than you'd find on a larger sensor format,
especially when shooting at wide angle focal lengths.
There's also some disadvantages that go along
with having a smaller sensor as well, and for this,
you need to know two things.
One, that a pixel can only be so small based
on our current, technological capabilities
and two, the more pixels you have,
the resolution goes up, but the surface area
of each individual pixel goes down.
So this tells us two more things: that a larger sensor
will always have more pixels than a Micro Four Thirds
sensor when they're using the same sized pixels
because there's just more space to put more pixels
on a larger sensor and two, if the sensors have
the same amount of pixels between a Micro Four Thirds
and a larger sensor, the pixels on the larger sensor
will be bigger and thus will have a larger surface area
for, a sensitive area, for light. Also, there's a depth
of field difference between Micro Four Thirds sensors
and, say, full frame sensors for instance,
because of something called a crop factor.
Now, because the Micro Four Thirds sensor
is half the size of a full frame sensor, a 35mm sensor,
any image that you look at that has the same
focal length will have, sort of, twice as zoomed,
two times cropped look on the Micro Four Thirds.
So, let's say, for instance, that you were taking
an image with a 35mm lens on the Micro Four Thirds,
that will have the same field of view as a 70mm lens
on a full frame camera. And, because depth of field
is determined outside of aperture by your distance
from the subject and the focal length of the lens
that you're using, it's pretty much impossible
to achieve the same depth of field
with a Micro Four Thirds camera as you can
with a full frame camera, assuming that the apertures
are constant. For example, let's say that you were taking
a portrait of somebody that was 5 meters away
and you were using a 100mm lens at f/2.8
on a full frame camera, and you took the photo,
and you were like, "I really like that depth of field.
I like the amount of bokeh that I'm getting."
If you try to take that same image
with a Micro Four Thirds camera, and you took
a 100mm lens and you stood in the same spot,
it was an f/2.8, you'd be getting an equivalent
focal length of 200mm, so your field of view
would be much more narrow, it wouldn't be the same
shot anymore, even though the depth of field
might appear to be the same, but your shot is no longer
the same, so you'd have to back up twice as far
in order to get the same shot because you're shooting
at a 200mm equivalent. And then, when you took
the shot, although the field of view would be the same,
the depth of field wouldn't be the same.
It would be less shallow because you're further away
and so you'd have less bokeh. So then, if you thought,
"Well, I'll use a 50mm lens then
because that's a 100mm equivalent and I'll stand
in the same place and I'll take the same image",
then yes again, you will achieve the same field of view,
but you'll still have a less shallow depth of field
and still have less bokeh, because you're using
a 50mm lens instead of a 100mm lens and so, therefore,
the depth of field increases.
So, no matter how you slice it,
if the aperture is the same, a Micro Four Thirds system
will always have twice as deep depth of field
and half as much bokeh. So, when you lay it all out
like that, it kind of seems like it'd be silly
to get a four thirds system due to the disadvantages
in low light resolution and depth of field,
but this is when Panasonic stepped in
when they launched the Micro system with Olympus
to show how you can take those disadvantages
and turn them into unmatched advantages.
In terms of size, Micro Four Thirds should, and could,
be somewhere between the compact point
and shoot cameras and the smaller DSLRs,
but, when you look at a lot of the higher end models
from Panasonic, they're actually not that much smaller
than DSLRs and that's because Panasonic figured out
what to do with that extra space, which was to turn
these cameras into an incredible hybrid photo-video workhorse.
The Micro Four Thirds sensor is easier
to keep cool than conventional sensors,
so you can use higher resolution video
with better codecs for longer record times
and still manage to keep it under control. Take the GH5,
for instance, you can record 4K at 60 frames per second
pretty much indefinitely. You can also record 4K
at 10-bit internally with a large range of codec
size flexibility. These cameras come with full-sized,
clean HDMI out ports, USB, mic in, headphone out
and large batteries that last surprisingly long
for their cost. They usually offer the fastest photo drive
modes of anything in the business,
usually hitting 20 frames a second and beyond.
They offer complex shooting modes
and in-camera transitions and functions
that are usually only found on higher end
cinema cameras. And, due to their short flange distance,
they can be adapted to host a huge variety of lenses
from different mounts, but they also have
a surprisingly vast and impressive collection
of native lenses from Panasonic and Olympus
that are so compact that you can fit an entire array
of Primes into a small camera bag
without ever causing fatigue, making it, probably,
the best travel camera system in the market.
Micro Four Thirds is a pretty interesting system
that has offered photographers and videographers
options that can't really be found anywhere else
in its size and price range. And over the last ten years,
it's made pretty big leaps forward,
culminating in its current lineup.
Now, I've read some critics online that think
that the Micro Four Thirds system has reached its peak
and should rightfully die off, now that Sony has figured
out a way to balance full frame features
and value together, like with the a7 III,
and now with Fuji doing most of what Panasonic
and Olympus is doing in their bodies,
but with a larger sensor and with better quality,
and the truth is, I really don't know what
the future holds for the Micro Four Thirds system.
I do know that at the moment,
there really isn't another camera on the market
that can do everything the GH5, or even the G9 can do,
and I also know that every time I think they've reached
their end of innovation, they announce some new lens
or an update that renews their relevance
and makes me want to buy that new thing so badly.
In either case, at the very least, we need to recognize
the impressive feats that Olympus and Panasonic
have pulled off over the last ten years with this system,
because as somebody who shoots a great deal
of his videos on Micro Four Thirds,
I know my channel wouldn't be the same without them.
And, so that brings me to my question for you guys.
What kind of impact has the Micro Four Thirds system
had on your life? Do you have one? Have you used one?
Did you like it? Do you not like it? Let me know
in the comments below. Anyway, that's going to be it
for me. I hope you found this video helpful,
or at least entertaining, and if you did,
make sure you leave it the old thumbs up
and consider subscribing if you haven't already,
but if you did not find this video helpful or entertaining,
feel free to hit the dislike button twice.
Alright... I'm done.