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.
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-peepingThe 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 viewThe 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.
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