Micro 4/3 Curioser and curioser . . . when is 24mm NOT 24mm?

Jock Elliott

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Troy, NY
I was fooling around with the LX100, experimenting with different aspect ratios.

I took this at 3:2, taking care to put the candlestick at the lower left corner of the frame:
LX100 aspect ratio experiments 001.JPG

The I took this at 16:9:

LX100 aspect ratio experiments 002.JPG


The data says both were taken at 24mm (e) or 11mm actual, but one is clearly wider than the other.

How can this be? Or what am I doing wrong in thinking about this?

Additional: I tried the same trick with the FZ200:

This is 3:2:

FZ200 aspect ratio experiments 002.JPG

This is 16:9:
FZ200 aspect ratio experiments 001.JPG

Clearly, the difference is in the height, not the width, of the frame.


Cheers, Jock
 
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The LX100 is one of the few cameras with a true multi-aspect sensor, so the image isn't being cropped - the whole frame is actually changing. 4:3 will be taller and narrower than 3:2 which will be taller and narrower than 16:9. Only 1:1 is a crop, taken from the 4:3 frame. With the FZ200, as with most cameras, there is a "native" aspect ratio and everything else is just cropped from that. I'm not sure what it is, but let's imagine it's 3:2, then the height stays the same but the sides are cropped off to make it 4:3 and, conversely, the width stays the same but the top and bottom are cropped off to make it 16:9.

That's one of the things I really loved about the LX series cams, and miss not having now... Shooting at 16:9 at 24mm with the LX5/7 was almost like having a 21mm lens too...

-Ray
 
The same angle-of-view is maintained for each of the three common aspect ratios in cameras that have a multi-aspect sensor; the LX100 being one of those. This type of sensor has been used in some but not all Panasonic cameras and is also found in the Canon G1X II. There is an explanation of this type of sensor near the bottom of the page in the link below.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1 Review
 
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