Started by fen_and_field, 21 Aug 2026. 12 replies, 509 views
Gear in this topic: Lumix GH7, OM System OM-1, M.Zuiko 300mm f/4 IS PRO
The rumour sites have Panasonic doing an APS-C L-mount body and, depending on who you read, stepping back from Micro Four Thirds altogether. I'll believe it when I see it.
But it does raise the question for those of us with a bag of MFT glass. I photograph birds on an OM-1 with the 300 f/4, and there's nothing else at that weight that gets me the reach. I'm not moving. I'm interested in whether anyone here actually is.
Every year. Every single year. MFT is dead, MFT is dead. Still here, still grand.
micro43mick said:Every single year
Proper tired of this one. OM System is MFT only, so even if Panasonic walked away tomorrow the mount doesn't vanish. And there's a decade of second hand lenses out there that'll keep working long after any of us have stopped caring.
I'll be stood on a wet hill in Glencoe with my OM-1 II whilst the rest of you argue about it...
micro43mick said:Still here, still grand.
It's shrinking. That's not the same as dying, but it isn't nothing either.
As a Panasonic L-mount user, an APS-C L body makes total sense for them. The L-mount has Sigma's APS-C lenses already sitting there, and they'd have a direct answer to the a6700 and the X-S20 without needing a whole new lens line.
Doesn't mean they drop the GH line. The GH7 is still the best small video body going imo, the internal ProRes RAW, the cooling, 32-bit float audio with the XLR module. Nobody else does all of that in that size, and the video crowd buying GH bodies aren't going to suddenly want a bigger sensor and bigger lenses. If anything goes, it's the cheap G bodies, not the GH.
And honestly, if they did it, I'd probably buy one as a B-cam. Small, L-mount, cheap. That's exactly the gap in my bag.
ben_carrick said:Doesn't mean they drop the GH line
Doesn't mean they don't, either. Companies say 'fully committed' right up to the day they aren't... Just saying
tomthurlow said:Companies say 'fully committed' right up to the day they aren't
Possibly. But my 300 f/4 doesn't stop working on the day of an announcement. Nor does the OM-1. The marsh harriers at Wicken Fen won't know what mount I'm using.
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reckon the people who say mft is dead have never carried a full frame 600 up a hill. i did that once with my mates kit in the Grampians, never again, my shoulder still hasnt forgiven me. APS-C is all most people need anyway and MFT is basically APS-C with smaller lenses so im on your side here
Depth of field at macro distances on MFT is a feature, not a bug (fight me). At 1:1 on full frame you're working with a sliver of focus so thin that a jumping spider's front eyes are sharp and its back eyes (the other four, the creepy ones) are mush, and you have to stop down so far that diffraction eats you alive. On MFT I get roughly two stops more depth for the same framing at the same aperture, which in real life means a whole Phidippus audax (the bold jumper, my nemesis) in focus at f/8 instead of f/16.
The downside (there's always one) is that you hit diffraction a stop or so earlier on MFT, so f/11 is about my limit before things go soft. But that's still more usable depth than f/22 on full frame, and I'm not carrying a 100mm macro the size of a coke can.
Plus in-camera focus stacking on the OM-5 means I don't even have to think about it for the static stuff.
I'd keep shooting it even if they stopped making bodies tomorrow. (They won't.) (Probably.)
I think real question is if new people buy into MFT. Old users will stay anyway, they have the lenses. New buyers in my local shop all go to full frame now, even complete beginners, because Z5 II and A7 IV used are not so expensive anymore. A system that only keeps old users slowly gets smaller, this is what 'shrinking' means.
TomekKRK said:New buyers in my local shop all go to full frame now
Somebody's buying all those OM-5s, so.
Weather sealed MFT is the only thing I'd trust on the west coast. Salt, rain, wind off the Atlantic, the lot. If it ends, it ends, I'll shoot mine till it dies and then buy a used one and shoot that till it dies too
Well. OM System have just announced a new PEN. Not quite the funeral some were predicting.