Olympus E-Pl1 vs Canon G11

[promocop]

nice pufferfish...but what camera?

 

[davelew]

The Olympus FT 50mm macro lens is arguably the best macro lens ever made, and it can be used on the E-PL1 with an adapter that doesn't affect the image quality.

HUH, based on what specs. I would guess that there are quite a few folks who believe that the Zeiss makro planars are "better" and the MTF plots suggest that may be the case.

The Zeiss Makro Planar may have slightly better resolution (2,000 vertical lines on an FT sensor as opposed to 1,500 lines for the Olympus), but that level of resolution only matters if you have a tripod, stationary subject, and studio lighting-- for my uses underwater and in insect photography, things like motion blur prevent me from using the extra resolution of the Zeiss. Also, I don't have a camera with enough pixels to show that extra resolution.

Since I think both lenses give me as much resolution as I need, I move on to ease of use. The Olympus lens has autofocus, while the Zeiss lens is only manual focus. I don't always use autofocus, but sometimes I do, and I like to have that option.

With a tie on performance (both have as much as I feel that I need) and an advantage in ease-of-use, the award of "finest macro lens in davelew's opinion" goes to the Olympus 50mm f/2.

 

[Puffer Fish]

nice pufferfish...but what camera?

A G10 (same lens as the G11 has). I shot it to show that conventional wisdom is not always correct.

 

[bvanant]

With a tie on performance (both have as much as I feel that I need) and an advantage in ease-of-use, the award of "finest macro lens in davelew's opinion" goes to the Olympus 50mm f/2

Well that's sort of like saying that my old beat up Datsun pickup is the same as a brand new Mercedes S600 since they both can go the speed limit in California. :blinking:
That being said if it is good enough for you then it is good enough. Me I like the Canon 100 macro since I like the Bokeh I get with it (and it fits on my cameras and it autofocuses) but I would never say it is arguably the BEST macro lens. In any case, dive safe
Bill

 

[davelew]

Well that's sort of like saying that my old beat up Datsun pickup is the same as a brand new Mercedes S600 since they both can go the speed limit in California.

The Olympus 50mm f/2 can resolve 1,500 lines at f/5.6, according to the MTF tests at DPReview.com. Dpreview has a lot of experience with this lens, because they use it to test the resolution of four-thirds SLR camera bodies. DPReview also says, "Certainly in terms of the studio results, it's the nearest we've yet found to a technically perfect lens."

Also according to dpreview, your Canon 100mm f/2.8 can only resolve around 1,400 lines on an APS-C sensor at f/5.6-- so it's slower (f/2.8 instead of f/2.0) and has less resolution than the Olympus 50mm, even though the APS-C sensors on Canon crop-sensor cameras are bigger than four-thirds sensors.

The Zeiss Makro Planar gets close to 2,000 lines of MTF resolution at f/5.6 on a crop sensor, according to tests I found at photozone.

Although the Zeiss lens does have significantly higher resolution, the difference is really between a 12 megapixel image (the max resolution of the Olympus) and a 16 megapixel image (the max resolution of the Zeiss). I don't think those extra 4 megapixels are that useful (in many situations they would require a tripod and/or very fast shutter speed), and anyway I don't have a camera with the resolution to take advantage of those extra four megapixels.

To go back to your analogy of the cars, I think the Olympus is like the Mercedes S600, while the Zeiss is like an uncomfortable race car which, with aviation fuel in the gas tank, could theoretically outperform the S600. In normal use with just premium gas, the two cars would perform the same, but the S600 would have more comfortable seats.