Olympus quits camera business after 84 years • Hacker News Board

Re: Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

#141

Post by jychang » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 8:58 PM UTC

ben7799 wrote: post #96

akersten wrote: post #5

Sad to see them go - photography's such a great hobby and having competition in the space is healthy. There's a few brands out there still, but there is a noticable stigma in the professional community around equipment that isn't Canon. If you're not using L-glass, it feels like you get the same kind of judgement that Android users experience when they show up with green texts in iMessage. As a matter of principle, I…

Pros love Canon cause their service stomps all over everyone else, the equipment is just the cherry on top. They're more like a partner in someone's business than just a retailer. Seriously.. their service is so fantastic & easy to work with it puts you at ease shooting with their expensive stuff. I think this has more to do with it than anything to do with sensors or almost anything else when it comes to really seri…

This is the biggest factor. Canon Professional Services offer extremely good support for their cameras. Nikon Professional Services are good too, but not quite as good as Canon's. And Sony... is lagging very far behind.

Canon also is known for top notch lenses, which is the real core component of a camera system. You may spend $2k-3k for a camera, but as a professional you'd spend much more money on multiple lenses you need that are all $2k+ each, and you'd be using the same lenses each time you replace the camera body.

Canon cornered the professional market this way.

Re: Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

#142

Post by slantyyz » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 8:59 PM UTC

anta40 wrote: post #108

akersten wrote: post #5

Sad to see them go - photography's such a great hobby and having competition in the space is healthy. There's a few brands out there still, but there is a noticable stigma in the professional community around equipment that isn't Canon. If you're not using L-glass, it feels like you get the same kind of judgement that Android users experience when they show up with green texts in iMessage. As a matter of principle, I…

> There's a few brands out there still, but there is a noticable stigma in the professional community around equipment that isn't Canon Weird. How do arrive at that conclusion? Typically pros pick Nikon or Canon FF DSLRs. It's very common at least among photojournalists & wedding photographers. Now mirrorless is the hot stuff. Sony/Fuji/Olympus started earlier, and after a few year, Nikon & Canon decided to join to c…

Nikon's first mirrorless cameras were announced in 2011, so around the same time as Fuji's X-Pro1.

While a lot of people mocked the Nikon 1 series (because of their strange form factors and handling), they were the only mirrorless cameras that had autofocus nearing DSLRs for several years. They were actually pretty good cameras.

Re: Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

#143

Post by x87678r » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 9:00 PM UTC

ben7799 wrote: post #96

akersten wrote: post #5

Sad to see them go - photography's such a great hobby and having competition in the space is healthy. There's a few brands out there still, but there is a noticable stigma in the professional community around equipment that isn't Canon. If you're not using L-glass, it feels like you get the same kind of judgement that Android users experience when they show up with green texts in iMessage. As a matter of principle, I…

Pros love Canon cause their service stomps all over everyone else, the equipment is just the cherry on top. They're more like a partner in someone's business than just a retailer. Seriously.. their service is so fantastic & easy to work with it puts you at ease shooting with their expensive stuff. I think this has more to do with it than anything to do with sensors or almost anything else when it comes to really seri…

Still like these from the Winter Olympics Pro support.

Canon: https://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2018/02/09/a-look-at-c...

Nikon: https://nikonrumors.com/2018/02/10/this-is-what-heaven-looks...

Re: Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

#144

Post by pkulak » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 9:00 PM UTC

I'm really sad about this. It feels like everyone went full-frame without appreciating the benefits of smaller lenses and bodies. Olympus glass is the best in the industry, probably because they don't have to make everything so damn large. I've got Olympus lenses that cost $400 new and can't even match $2000 full-frame glass. Sure, I'll keep my kit forever, but it sucks to know I'll never upgrade any of it.

Re: Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

#145

Post by veesahni » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 9:00 PM UTC

Derbasti wrote: post #135

Someone1234 wrote: post #14

That's a legitimate shame for open standards. M43 has its proponents and critics, but either way it is rare to see a somewhat successful multi-vendor standard in photography that actually worked . The main problem is that the market itself has been shrinking, and there's just not enough room to have so much competition (Olympus, Panasonic, Sony, Fuji, Canon, and Nikon). M43 was successful, but it succeeded in an area…

But where are those small cameras? Panasonic's GM series is all but abandoned, and the E-M10 is hardly small compared to a Fuji X-E3 or Canon M50. To me, that always felt like M43's Achilles heel; it promises to be small and light, yet most kits actually end up just as big as APS-C. I still love my GM1, though.

Aren't Fuji & APS-C lenses still bigger than equivalent M43?

9-18, 15 f1.7, 45 f1.8 such a tiny tiny kit

Re: Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

#146

Post by solarhoma » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 9:01 PM UTC

WWLink wrote: post #61

eropple wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point M43 is, in my neck of the woods, basically a video format anyway. I do on-site videography (my schtick being "we can run a four-camera live show from anywhere I've got Ethernet and power") and all my cameras are M43 because they hit a great spot on the price/quality curve. (Sony's APS-C cameras are very respectable too, but the glass is pricey.) Never used an Olympus, never understood the point of one.…

They're cheap! You can pretty easily get an olympus body for 2-300 bucks and a m43 lens also pretty cheap. The panasonic 25mm for example is usually around $100-150. That all sounds big until you realize an a7 body is like minimum $1000.

A little steep on the body. A7ii with kit lense is ~1000.

Re: Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

#147

Post by slantyyz » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 9:03 PM UTC

foldr wrote: post #81

slantyyz wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But a lot of people who self-identify as being serious about photography will stigmatize you for the gear you're using.

Indeed. What usually happens is that trends develop for photos that can only be taken using expensive gear. So for example, when I was a kid and everyone was shooting "full frame", no-one gave too much of a toss about background blur -- beyond the obvious fact that some (easily achievable) degree of it is often useful for softening distracting backgrounds. Now people obsess over paper thin DoF because it's a sign of…

>> I was a kid and everyone was shooting "full frame"

Ok, this is a little vague, because are you referring to digital or analog?

When I was a kid, everyone was shooting full frame, because, well 35mm was the de-facto standard for film. Although my first camera was a 110 format camera, which is a hair smaller than a 4/3 sensor today.

Re: Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

#148

Post by ranma42 » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 9:03 PM UTC

slantyyz wrote: post #136

ISL wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, the big monoculture risk is Sony's image-sensor fab. As I understand it, Sony, Fuji, Nikon and many others all rely upon the output of one company's manufacturing process. There's a good reason for it -- they appear to make the very best sensors (edit: in terms of dynamic range and noise) in the commercial-camera market. Canon makes their own sensors, which are good in absolute but not relative terms, which ap…

IIRC, Canon's 1" sensor cameras use Sony sensors too. Don't know if their smaller sensor cameras are home made or not though.

My G3X uses an IMX183 according to a string in the firmware image.

Re: Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

#149

Post by mc32 » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 9:03 PM UTC

Yhippa wrote: post #137

mc32 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Especially for Cameras and Lenses that's solely on user's mind. Tell that to Ken Rockwell!

Wow, that's a name I haven't heard in years!

Yeah he has one of those sites people think about when they talk about the good old days of personal websites with useful info. Though truth be told he always went a bit overboard on the salesmanship angle... but still useful.

Re: Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

#150

Post by arghwhat » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 9:06 PM UTC

akersten wrote: post #5

Sad to see them go - photography's such a great hobby and having competition in the space is healthy. There's a few brands out there still, but there is a noticable stigma in the professional community around equipment that isn't Canon. If you're not using L-glass, it feels like you get the same kind of judgement that Android users experience when they show up with green texts in iMessage. As a matter of principle, I…

> I always saw Canon as a large conglomerate who tacked on photography as another arm of their company

Just for reference, what is now Canon started purely as a company making camera bodies, using lenses from what is now Nikon (who didn't make cameras themselves until much later).

They're a big conglomerate now, but they're a camera company at their core.

I would love to support Nikon as well, but affording one good camera system is hard enough. And quite frankly, everyone is suffering. Spreading our bets for the sake of competition can also lead to no single company being sustainable.