Originally Posted by
jacknyoc
... I don't get the sense that the micro 4/3 technology could ever achieve that level. am I missing something?
Originally Posted by
rkkwan
A small sensor will never match the performance of a larger sensor at the same time. ...
Just like a APS-C or even full-frame dSLR at this moment will not match a medium format digital camera.
One of the fun things about technology is that it evolves quickly. Consider for example
this article posted recently on the BBC website. The article discusses a new camera that focuses after the fact. The work is based on someone's Ph.D. thesis which starts off by saying:
This dissertation introduces a new approach to everyday photography, which solves the longstanding problems related to focusing images accurately. The root of these problems is missing information. It turns out that conventional photographs tell us rather little about the light passing through the lens. In particular, they do not record the amount of light traveling along individual rays that contribute to the image. They tell us only the sum total of light rays striking each point in the image. To make an analogy with a music-recording studio, taking a conventional photograph is like recording all the musicians playing together, rather than recording each instrument on a separate audio track.
In this dissertation, we will go after the missing information. With micron-scale changes to its optics and sensor, we can enhance a conventional camera so that it measures the light along each individual ray flowing into the image sensor. In other words, the enhanced camera samples the total geometric distribution of light passing through the lens in a single
exposure.
So while a small sensor can't currently match a big sensor, I see no particular reason why this might still be true 10 years from now. In fact, the above Ph.D. dissertaion demonstrates that if you measure stuff properly (such as light passing through a lens / light falling on a sensor) and throw enough processing power at it, you can still get a viable shot.
Who knows? In the (near?) future we might have ultra small cameras that actively scan a scene and produce a high-quality shot compliments of micron-sized sensors and raw compute power attached to the camera.