New Olympus Rumours

[mawz]

I actually think people like us (this forum) ARE the intended audience. Your general audience is better off with a point and shoot with a built in zoom, they don't want interchangeable lenses and the hassle that entails. Your DSLR enthusiast with the my zoom is bigger than yours mentality is going to go for a Nikon or a Canon in all of their infinite varieties. Why sacrifice for a smaller sensor and fewer lenses?

The intended audience is Soccer Moms who want DSLR quality and P&S size. Same market as the Pentax K-m and Oly E-4x0 series, just smaller. We're just a nice side benefit.

While the G1 seems intended for people who generally want a DSLR but a bit smaller, the Olympus seems intended for people who in years past would have bought a rangefinder. They want small, they want the biggest possible sensor, but they want good interchangeable lenses.

One of the big advantages of the G1 is ergonomics. It handles better than the larger Oly E-4x0 series despite its smaller size. The grip is the key. The Prism hump is half room for the largish EVF installation and half a response to how badly Panny got burned on L1 sales.

Honestly I don't think there is much of a market for this new Olympus Micro 4/3 effort but if there is a market, people like us are a big part of it. Hopefully they will come out with some good stuff before they realize how small the market is.

I personally think there's a much larger market for m43 than there is for 4/3rds. 4/3rds just has too many compromises vs other similarly priced and sized systems. m43 has a distinct size advantage over anything of similar IQ and a distinct IQ advantage over anything of similar size and Panny(and through them, Olympus) can draw on the EVF technology from Panny's pro video arm which the other players likely to try an EVIL system really can't (Sony and Canon, the only other two companies to have good EVF tech floating around, aren't likely to start EVIL systems anytime soon).

 

[Al Kaplan]

Digital format size is about where roll film sizes were a century ago. I took half a century before it seemed that the winners were full frame 35mm and 6x6 cm on 120. Then there were a dozen varieties of flash sych plugs followed by variations of the cord to flash plugs and several variations on the hot shoe... and in the end we get stadardization. Edison had the right idea: This is a light bulb and it fits this socket! This is an electric plug and it fits this outlet! Period! Use it or light a candle.

 

[Trius]

Maybe the real name will be OM-1D?

Al: SHUT UP AND STOP TEASING ME LIKE THAT!!! 😀 :bang:

 

[nightfly]

I thought soccer moms were the market for point and shoots with super zooms. Do soccer moms really want interchangeable lenses or care about sensor size and quality?

I think the market for 4/3s and micro 4/3s is pretty small but we will see. Since everyone seems to own some sort of digital camera, even a small share of everyone could be big enough to sustain it.

Ironically the people who will be most hurt if Olympus does a good job of it will be Ricoh and Sigma and maybe to a lesser extent Leica who make the current favorite cameras of this bunch. I don't think it will register too much of Nikon and Canon's sales.

 

[mawz]

I thought soccer moms were the market for point and shoots with super zooms. Do soccer moms really want interchangeable lenses or care about sensor size and quality?

They're also the primary market for low-end DSLR's. Really what they want are superzoom P&S's with low-end SLR sensors (they do tend to get stuck shooting in poor light with no flash alot). An m43 camera with a wide-range IS zoom like the upcoming G Vario 14-140 is exactly what they're wanting.

 

[FA Limited]

when you go into the store and the most obvious difference between cameras is the number' x zoom, i mean 20x has to be better than 10x right?

 

[RayPA]

I thought soccer moms were the market for point and shoots with super zooms. Do soccer moms really want interchangeable lenses or care about sensor size and quality?

I think for some the answer is 'Yes.' The term "soccer mom" probably has more to do with economics and priorities than the specific capri pants-wearing, orange-slicing, mini-van driving American mother of a 6-12 year old.

It's a personification of the type of individual smack dab in the middle of a particular economic bracket, and it can include a number of 'types,' including soccer moms, students, senior cruise ship patrons, or any individual looking to step up from the dP&S to a more "powerful" family, creative, or vacation camera. However, these individuals can't financially justify the "big" purchase. (And, btw, I've seen that rare breed of actual soccer mom with a prosumer dSLR!)

Think of the pre-digital days when every family owned a instamatic-type camera. Those cameras worked and fulfilled a purpose, but everybody knew that a "real" camera was an SLR with interchangeable lenses. It's not much different from that now, except our "instamatics" come with 20X digital zooms. Compact camera tote-ers know that their cameras aren't "real cameras" just like we knew the family instamatic wasn't a real camera.

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