M4/3 zooms with f5.6 apertures

[iangreenhalgh1]

I was looking at buying a m4/3 zoom lens and I was wondering how well the various f3.5-5.6 ones work, given that an aperture smaller than f5.6 will result in diffusion and softening. So does this mean that these zooms at the long end, will never produce an image that is very sharp as stopping them down is going to result in diffusion softenng?

[visualopsins]

Iirc the advanced dof calculator at Cambridgeincolour.com gives diffraction limits. I know sensor size can be specified...

Edit:

Nevermind, use this:

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/diffraction-photography.htm#calculator

I get diffraction limit is between f/11 & f/16

[iangreenhalgh1]

Sadly, that calculator is useless as it doesn't allow you to specify the number of pixels in the sensor and therefore the pixel size.

This page says the diffraction limit for a 16mp m4/3 sensor (what I am using) is f7:

http://fourthirds-user.com/wiki/Diffraction_limit

I guess it's a matter of how much diffraction softens the image.

[visualopsins]

Wow! Thanks for pointer to better calculator...