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GXR vs Olympus E-P3

T

tlucmpla

New Member
Not sure if this is the correct place to post this topic.

Saw the specs of the newly release E-P3. Generally, wonder how does it measure up against GXR?
Then again, i'm not too sure whether i'm comparing apple against apple.

aside to this, i'm using my gxr to do HDR shots. the annoying thing i face is auto AE bracketing is only 3 frames.
sometimes, i want to do 5 frames and u can imagine the "hassle" i had to go through.
it seems on the E-P3, i saw these specs
"• 2, 3, 5 frames in 0.3, 0.5, 0.7 or 1.0 EV steps; • 7 frames in 0.3, 0.5, or 0.7 EV steps"

any comments are welcome. :)

Terence
 
E-P3 ist forever bound to this one sensor.
GXR can be many cameras :)

If you are in need for fast AF i think E-P3 is the better choice at the moment.
 
I have both but the EP3 is too new to really comment much. I plan to use both. The EP3 is very nice and very flexible. I like the way Olympus renders. But I love my GXR A12s. They are super nice and the IQ is amazing, particularly in B&W. The Olympus 12mm lens is very good too.
 
With the m-mount settled, I hope the next thing on the GXR launch list will be a FAST AF lens!

I am having trouble with the GXR especailly during time when I want to shoot those 1-3 years old kids at home! My skill sucks so the success rate is lower than 50% now! :lol:

I have tested the Olympus EP3 at the store, the "touch and shoot" way to capture is amazing! It is like using an iPhone4, just A LOT faster and MUCH BETTER quality. Apart from shooting the moving objects, I have tried to move the camera around quickly and make a shoot, in most case it will get a good shot (of course apart from low light conditions where the shutter speed is slow).

The problem with the images from the 14-42mm lens are just not good enough to be compared with the Ricoh GXR A12 lens. But with Olympus's new lens, I am quite motivated to switch side~ :arrow:
 
I'm afraid no matter how fast AF lens you will get, it will not help you with indoor shooting of fast kids. Not if your kids are as fast as my ;)

At first, the problem of relative slow AF speed of existing A12 modules is not in the lenses itself but in the contrast detection focus, which is tightly bound to the speed of sensor. I believe that current AF speed of the A12 modules is at the maximum we can expect from the contrast detection-based AF. It's actually way better than for example the speed of AF in many DSLR cameras in the Live View mode! While the DSLRs are the AF speed daemons in optical view mode, switch them to Live View and you will get slower AF speed than you gets from GXR! And the DSLR Live View AF is nothing else than the GXR native AF. So the GXR A12 is not THAT slow!

In my opinion, the only chance how to improve the GXR AF speed would be in new body with integrated PD-AF sensors, like in the CX5 and as I believe, in the upcoming GRDIV. This is probably the only chance how to speed-up the A12 AF.

However, slow AF is not the only problem. The problem is that kids runs fast. And even if the AF is fast, you would need shutter speeds around 1/100 (but usually faster), to capture them sharp. If you don't like to use flash, you would need high ISO. And here comes the next problem. Relative small depth of field coming from the ASPC.

Even if the camera focuses fast, moving kids are always faster ;) So you would need to close the aperture to get decent DoF for action shots. And this is, I'm afraid, a big issue indoor. Closing the aperture means increasing ISO. And I'm afraid, you will quickly run out of the available ISO ;)

In other words, APSC is great for exterior shots and interior shots of relative still subjects. But it sucks when it comes to indoor shots of fast moving kids. This is where, in my experience, small GRD sensor or even 4/3 sensor with wide lens offers much better flexibility. So yes, I believe the EP3 could be much better performer if shooting fast moving kids, especially indoor.
 
In general on my opinion there is no doubt the E-P3 is the better and much more flexible camera.
Before I bought my GXR I owned E-500 and was always satisfied.
My major reason to get the GXR was the size. I still want to be flexible (with some restrictions). Though my thoughts walking around with 4/3, NEX etc. I realized early, the combination sensor, lens size is a problem. A wide range zoom like 14-140 even for 4/3 couldn't be called compact. And over all due to the lens size body + lens are not much smaller than DSLR.
And here are the advantages of the GXR. The P10 offers 310mm keeping small size but with restrictions in quality. If you need quality you can use A12, but with restrictions in flexibility.
But you now restrictions to the size overall. Priority is on size.
So if size of the camera doesn't matter, my recommendation would be the E-P3.
 
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