darrellcraig

Companies buy lens designs all the time. I think Sigma designed the Olympus 8 Pro Fisheye, the 25/1.8 and 25/1.2 and 75/1.8, Tamron designed (and maybe even built, if I recall correctly) the Zeiss Batis 25 and 85... Leica licensed some Minolta designs (35-70 zoom) back in the day, etc.

Try cleaning the contacts on your body and lens. I've had a few lens not detected problems on Sony A7x bodies and other cameras due to dirty contacts, solved by cleaning. Sometimes there was no visible dirt yet still worked post cleaning.

CRFTSHO guys said you need v90, the V60 card tested (I didn't see a mention of brand) crapped out after 5s

Huge thread over on FredMiranda with a highly detailed FAQ developed over time by the users, and detailed info on performance with various lenses. All from a stills perspective of course. I had one and used on an A7RII (sold a while ago) with a variety of glass (you can get adapters to convert to M mount, e.g. C/Y>M, OM>M, F>M, FD>M, etc.). AF is highly variable based on lens and aperture selected. There were also some long term reliability issues. It makes a great helicoid adapter to bring the generally long minimum focus distance (MFD) of rangefinder glass in to more useful range.

An X-E2 with the last firmware update is almost an X-E2S and a lot cheaper used. I assume you are buying used. What is your budget? The X-T1 is pretty cheap used. That at being said, I would enjoy using legacy glass on an A7 or A7ii a lot more - more of the character will come thru and I prefer using such glass without the crop factor.

I've had LX100, GM1/5, X100T, RX100 over the years and decided I wanted a truly pocketable stills camera so went with the GRII. Incredible stills, malleable RAW files, top notch fixed 28mm equivalent lens, APS-C sensor so decent low light and dynamic range is excellent, out of camera black and white JPEGs are some of the best I've seen. Ergonomically it is incredible - you can operate with one hand, which makes more of a difference than I expected for the kind of casual or experimental off the cuff shooting you'd do with a smartphone. The level of customization and your "workflow" with the camera is great, it just gets out of the way - other camera manufacturers could learn a lot from this camera. It was clearly designed by photographers and has been refined over the years. The LX100 is a great hybrid camera, but I was never happy with the stills quality. But really great camera. The RX100 packs a lot in, but was ergonomically a mess - got used to it, but no enjoyment, always fighting the camera. GM1/5 are great, excellent stills image quality (I thought much better than LX100 when paired with good glass like the 20/1.7 or 15/1.7 or 45/1.8). X100T is great, but that's getting kind of big, and I'd rather shoot with my A7s/FE 35 2.8.

I just had the same problem with scratches/abrasions on my GH4 EVF and found a much cheaper solution that worked. I got a quote of $300-something from both Panasonic and local repair facility as it is all one integrated unit apparently. I was motivated to research a bit and found that the GH3/4 cover glass is plastic - which is common to some other cameras both EVF and OVF - and that a number of people had luck removing defects with Novus #2 polish. If you do a search, you'll find step by step instructions using the polish and some cotton ear swabs on a Pentax forum somewhere. I followed those instructions and ended up with a like-new GH4 EVF. For the $10 bucks or whatever it cost me for the Novus #2 plastic polish. Edit: Here's the relevant forum discussion I followed... and I used to throw my GH4 in a bag with no protection over the EVF, but I'm more cautious now that I know it is a fairly soft and scratch/abrasion prone plastic cover glass. http://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/6-pentax-dslr-discussion/39249-scratched-viewfinder-k100d.html If you have a scratched up viewfinder, buy Novus Plastic Polish #2. It is an amazing product. Here is how I polished my viewfinder: 1) I took out five or six cotton swabs (the kind you might use to clean your ears) and set them down on a clean surface. 2) I took my air blower bulb and blasted out any dirt that might have still been on the viewfinder. 3) I placed a small amount on polish (about the size of half a green pea) upon the cotton swab's head. 4) I very gently rubbed the polish left and right, then up and down on the viewfinder screen. 5) I wiped away the polish from the viewfinder with the clean side of the cotton swab. 6) I took a new swab and put some polish on that one too. 7) I rubbed to polish in small circles all around the viewfinder, again, very gently. 8) I wiped off the excess left on the viewfinder with a clean cotton swab. And thus my viewfinder was fixed. I'm still baffled over how well it worked. Read more at: http://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/6-pentax-dslr-discussion/39249-scratched-viewfinder-k100d.html#ixzz3dSMUT4F8

From my 95% stills, 5% video perspective, and owning (or having owned) most of the Panasonic and Olympus lens lineup, I'd say those are such completely different choices that you may not really know what lens you want/need to buy. I had the 14-140 (version 1) lens. I also had the Olympus 14-150 superzoom. I ended up selling both - for stills shooting they simply underwhelmed compared to the primes, even at my normal viewing and printing sizes. In addition, you really need fast apertures on m4/3 to compensate for the increased depth of field and decreased high ISO performance to approach the flexibility of a larger format camera. The Panasonic 15/1.7 is one of the better m4/3 lens choices in my opinion, if the focal length works for you. The Panasonic Leica lenses (PL 15, PL 25, PL 42.5, PL 45) offer beautiful, organic rendering that favorably compares with some of the best glass I use on full frame. I agree with Cinegain that in general the Olympus glass may be preferable to Panasonic, I don't believe that doesn't apply to the Panasonic Leica lenses. Remember the crop factor when shooting 4K with the GH4, so a 15mm (30mm FF equivalent) is not as wide as you might expect. While I prefer the 20/1.7 for stills based on focal length (though it is kind of clinically sharp compared to the 15/1.7), I prefer the 15/1.7 for GH4 4K video. Why not look at getting the 12-35/2.8 so you get some zoom, stabilization, a faster and constant aperture, and excellent build quality and some weather protection (if that matters)? The 15/1.7 is kind of expensive, maybe you could pick up a used 12-35/2.8 for not much more?

Michael1, Canon 50/1.8II is only $125 compared to the Nikon 50/1.8G. Leica 50/2 APO just got a $1000 price increase to north of $8K. Sigma 50/1.4 ART is about $1000. Zeiss Otus 50/1.4 is about $4000. Lots of choices for consumers, with many tradeoffs across those choices. The Otus is four times the price of the FE 55 or Sigma Art 50. Some consider the FE 55 and Sigma Art 50 among the greatest bargains in lenses.

Saw on 43rumors.com that GH3 body is $799 at Unique Photo today.

I'm an experienced photographer just trying to get serious about video, primarily of my 1 and 4 year old children and capturing short video clips to accompany stills while traveling (I travel quite a bit for work). I have OM-D EM5 and same lenses as you (but 17 and 25 instead of the 20/1.7 which I used to have).   I ended up buying a GH3 during the recent sale and have shot stills and video with it last two weeks or so. From a complete novice perspective, my observations are:   GH3 is better at motion - even I can see how the OM-D breaks down with a quick pan or a fast running 4 year old. But for most of the things I video, OM-D is fine GH3 does 1080p60, allowing for slow motion at 24fps in camera or in post (I'm trying to learn Adobe Premiere CC). This is pretty neat. Not sure if or how you can do effective slo-mo with the OM-D. IBIS on OM-D is amazing. It really makes video clips look a lot better, and works for all lenses. The OIS on the 12-35 is obviously not as effective as OM-D IBIS for handheld video. It seems to jump erratically from time to time, and just isn't as effective, as consistently. I think AF tracking is better on the GH3 than the OM-D. Manual focus is obviously the way to go, but I'm getting decent results with the AF tracking on the GH3 with the 12-35. In retrospect, I should have skipped the GH3 and just used the OM-D until I felt like I was hitting limitations.   You can do manual exposure control with the OM-D. If you hit record with the mode dial in 'M', you're in control.