THE BIG GUNS: MEDIUM-FORMAT DIGITAL 113The Four Thirds system
If you take another look at the Figure 6.3, you’ll see a yellow box
marked Four Thirds sensor. This refers to a brand new Four Thirds
format built from the ground up for digital imaging. Four Thirds has
its own Web site at http://www.four-thirds.org/en/index.html;
there you can read a lot more. In brief, Four Thirds is a standard
established by Olympus and Eastman Kodak Company for next-
generation dSLR cameras. This standard has now been accepted
by major companies, including Fuji Photo Film, Sanyo Electric,
Sigma, Matsushita Electric, and Leica Camera AG. That does not
mean that they all make Four Thirds products—at the time of
this writing, only Olympus, Panasonic, and Leica do so—but they
all subscribe to the standard.
A lot of the original research was done by Katsuhiro Takada of
Olympus, looking to produce a camera that was lighter than a tradi-
tional 35-mm camera, optimized for digital, and based on open stan-
dards. Open standards means that lenses from one Four Thirds
manufacturer will fi t another manufacturer’s camera body. It’s about
time!
For the microstock photographer, there are some real benefi ts to the
Four Thirds system, one not being immediately obvious—format. You’ll
see that Four Thirds is a little squarer than its competitors. In fact, the
proportions are (yes, you guessed it!) 4 : 3. If you shoot macro (e.g.,
product shots, food, fl owers), then the squarer format can mean less
cropping and therefore less wasted image data at the edges of the
frame. Trust me; it makes a positive difference in many shooting
situations.
Reduced weight, open standards, improved format shape—it all
sounds very good. But there is a downside. That smaller sensor can
result in a little more noise (as with compact cameras). However, the
good news is that the latest Four Thirds models from Olympus seem
to have conquered that problem.
Despite the potential technical advantages of the Four Thirds format,
traditional format dSLRs based on the shape and, with the full frame,
size of 35-mm fi lm cameras still have a lot of life in them, particularly
as that format has the backing of the largest dSLR manufacturers,
Nikon and Canon.
The Big Guns: Medium-Format Digital
As long as your lottery ticket has come through, it is safe to read
on—once we get up to medium-format digital capture, we are consider-
ing serious fi nancial outlay, from $10,000 to $40,000. That is serious
cash in anyone’s language. If you are a professional, then such an