Sharpness of Panasonic 14mm 2.5 (H-H014E) and the Sony FE 55mm 1.8 (SEL55F18Z)

So as my first meager post without any real introduction, I have a comparison between two completely different cameras, lenses, and even field of views. Furthermore they were post-processsed (of course) with slightly different steps, lens correction, noise, and sharpness parameters, so any conclusions I make should at the very least be taken with a grain of salt (and at the worst completely ignored).
So I have both the Sony A7 and the Olympus OM-D E-M5, with the A7 being for nicer photographs where I have more time to take things carefully and the E-M5 as a rugged, sweat all over it camera. My interest was, how much nicer are the images going to be from the A7 and the nicest lens I can find for it (the SEL55F18Z, according to DXOMark) compared to the E-M5 and a nice tiny, wide-angle pancake lens (14mm 2.5). The following pictures have Panasonic on the right and the Sony on the left. Given the different fields of view the scaling factor is 2X higher for the Panasonic (original photos on Flickr, Sony: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kevinrechts/15005703376/, Panasonic: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kevinrechts/14842084528/)


The first image shows the Panasonic at 200%  and the Sony at 100% (definitely not a fair comparison), but you see that the sony is very sharp even when pixel-peeping

The second shows the Panasonic at 100% and the Sony at 50%. The sony edges out the Panasonic still, particularly when examining the fine grid pattern on the pier. However it is not a huge difference and there do not really appear to be any artifacts or moire patterns.










The third picture shows the Panasonic at 50% and the Sony at 25%, the difference between the two is now very small in terms of sharpness and this is still a much higher resolution than any social media sites will keep the images so for many practical purposes, they are now identical with the Panasonic having a much larger field of view










The final shows the Panasonic at 25% and the Sony at 12.5%, the images are now all but identical and the advantages of the Sony are gone. Of course colors, saturation, and white-balance are different but these can all be tweaked in post-processing so it is more difficult to compare.

Clearly the Sony setup will perform much better with low light and noise, but for bright, day-time pictures the difference is not as large as I would have suspected, particularly when given the substantial price premium of the Sony setup.

Alpenbrevet Bike Race with OM-D E-M5

Due to a friend's inability to participate, I ended up at the last minute with a start-place for the Alpenbrevet Gold Tour (I unfortunately did not however end up with any last minute thighs of steel or training opportunities). Such a 'race' with over 5000m of elevation, is a nice place to have a camera, because the views are spectacular and the riding speed for the back of the pack is the same as a slow jog. It would also serve as a good test for using the Capture Pro (which lets you hang the camera on a backpack strap) while biking.

Gear

1. Olympus OM-D E-M5 (fairly small, water and hopefully sweat resistant, amazing in body stabilization for taking pictures without stopping)
2. Panasonic Lumix G 14mm 2.5 (nice field of view, tiny, sharp images)
3. Peak Design Capture Pro (https://peakdesign.com/store/capturepro)

At the start of the race just before the official mass start at 6:45AM. 
The sunrise through the clouds.
 The first climb up Grimsel Pass despite the fog had many picturesque moments, particularly before the socked-in summit. Here is the old cobblestone road that predates the longer, bleak, modern tunnel.
After the first pass, the descent got much better and moments like this reminded me why it was worthwhile to have a camera with a good dynamic range with me.

Finally at the top of the highest pass in Switzerland and perfectly clear weather

Conclusion

The E-M5 is a tough camera functioned perfectly in freezing, wet, sweaty environments. The image stabilization left me with only one blurry image an impressive feat since cycling can be a very jostling sport. The 14mm Panasonic is a great little lens and makes the whole camera very easy to handle. It also appears to be fairly robust itself. The capture pro worked very well. Getting the camera clipped back in, too some getting used to, particularly one-handed, since the angle needs to be just right and it is hard to look carefully and bike at the same time. After a few attempts though I could grab a picture in a few seconds and return the camera. Not quite as easy as a jersey pocket, but most pocket cameras would not survive or at least fog up severely after 8 hours of sweat. The viewfinder of the E-M5 did fog up once but it went away quickly and the screen worked fine.