[Leica] IMG: M8 vs. OM-D, real people pictures

[pklein at threshinc.com (Peter Klein)]

The following is unscientific, but probably useful.  These pictures were 
shot at the same house, in the same general situation (festive occasions), 
with much the same lighting, some of the same people, and too much food. The 
difference is that the first picture of each pair below was taken with a 
Leica M8 and 35/1.4 Summilux ASPH at ISO 640.  The second picture of each 
pair (Christmas Eve this year) was taken with an OM-D E-M5 and a Panasonic 
20/1.7 at ISO 3200. Each pair was taken at roughly the same place, and so 
has similar lighting unless the bulbs were changed to something different in 
between the pictures.

Both lenses were used somewhere between wide open and closed down one stop.  
Everything was shot RAW and processed with Capture One, using the defaults, 
and making the white balance look reasonably good to my eye, but without my 
trying to go against the basic nature of the camera.


<http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/pklein/friends/erevxmas2011/L1008813.jpg.html>
<http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/pklein/xmaseve2012/PC240049-w.jpg.html>

<http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/pklein/friends/NewYear2011-12/L1009035.jpg.html>
<http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/pklein/xmaseve2012/PC240053-w.jpg.html>

<http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/pklein/friends/erevxmas2011/L1008832.jpg.html>
<http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/pklein/xmaseve2012/PC240067-w.jpg.html>

<http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/pklein/friends/ErevXmas09/L1005913.jpg.html>
<http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/pklein/xmaseve2012/PC240069-w.jpg.html>

Feel free to browse the rest of the folders if you want to see more.

Here's what I'm seeing so far:

1. The M8 with 35mm Summilux is clearly sharper when properly focused. But 
the E-M5 with 20/1.7 is quite usable. Note that the difference in sharpness 
is less when both cameras are set at ISO 800, but it is still there, and you 
can see it even in these Web-sized JPGs.
2. Despite the E-M5's wonderful image stabilization, I can get sharper shots 
at ~1/60 with the M8 than I can with the E-M5.
3. The M8 is biased towards pink/magenta, the E-M5 towards yellow. (Yes, I'm 
using an IR filter on the M8).
4. The E-M5 at 3200 is a bit noisier than the M8 at 640. From other sessions 
not shown here, I see that at 800/640 the E-M5 seems a little less noisy 
than the M8 in the shadows. So 1600 may be the "sweet spot" for the E-M5. 
I'm going to shoot New Year's Eve at ISO 1600 rather than 3200, and see how 
that fares.

--Peter