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Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

bbc.com

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Re: Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

#321

Post by sudosysgen »

eropple wrote: post #256
Zombieball wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the high price of an A7 probably slowed new customers rushing to Sony over Olympus I think the primary reason customers stuck with Olympus was "vendor lock-in" with lens mounts. People likely bought multiple m43 mount lenses to go with their Olympus or Panasonic. A customer would be more likely to buy another one of these brands if they had an existing lens collection over switching to the A7. Note: I am reluct…

Yeah, much more than body prices for me has been lens prices. A 25mm f1.7 m43 lens is $150. I've got multiple. I don't mind putting them in kinda-risky places on my cheaper bodies if it makes sense.

A 25mm f1.7 M4/3 lens is equivalent to a 50mm f/3.5 lens. Which costs about as much on a FF body - as part of a zoom lens.

In fact, the much better Sony 50mm 1.8 also costs about 150$.

Re: Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

#322

Post by Jedd »

h2odragon wrote: post #295
Jedd wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you want to do that you can not do now?

I'd like to get video using the lens; for stills the current olympus e3 its paired with is still pretty good.

I'm an Olympus user / fan - but my understanding is that Panasonic made the better video bodies. I suspect one generation back would have some highly competent video capabilities are very reasonable prices now.

Re: Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

#323

Post by onion2k »

pkulak wrote: post #153
barbegal wrote: post #31

Photography is one of those areas where devices don't go obsolete very quickly. With a good lens from 50 years ago I can still take an excellent photo on a digital camera from 15 years ago. Sure you won't have all the bells and whistles of the latest cameras and you'll sacrifice a few stops of dynamic range but for the average hobby photographer that doesn't really matter. The only customers who will upgrade every fe…

Man, I hate this phone analogy. Every shot I take with M43 looks nothing like anything taken with a phone. I just took these shots a couple days ago, for an example. There's no way you get anything close to this with a phone. https://photos.app.goo.gl/TSFhhA5igk1iEfRbA

Every shot I take with M43 looks nothing like anything taken with a phone.

How much of that is an actual difference in the camera tech and how much of it is subjective perception?

I suspect for things like the two photos you linked to, even the best professional photographers would struggle to tell the type of camera was used to take them. By the time they've gone through a few apps and services and they're being viewed in Google Photos they could have come from a phone, or an M43 camera, or even a high-end medium format dSLR.

I do wildlife photography when I'm not building web stuff (https://www.instagram.com/onion4k/) - that's pretty much impossible with a phone camera simply because you need to a really long focal length for any animals that won't come close to you, but I still see people out in the countryside giving it a try. I often wonder if they're happy with the pictures they take. I suspect they are. For most people photography is about recording the moment more than producing a print quality picture.

Re: Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

#324

Post by foldr »

sudosysgen wrote: post #254
foldr wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant 35mm film.

35mm film already affords you the very maximum in light gathering and blur, though. The kit lens used to be 50 1.8 or 1.4, which really is pretty much the amount of background blur people are looking for today. You didn't complain about lack of aperture or blur because you already had what people today are looking for. Even medium format and large format had pretty much the same amount of background blur and low-ligh…

Yes, but the point is that people rarely if ever used that level of background blur, as it wasn't trendy to, e.g., take portraits where only one eyelash is in focus.

Re: Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

#326

Post by lm28469 »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #289
vncecartersknee wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really that difficult? I can connect to my entry level nikon d3400 over bluetooth and send an image to my smartphone, edit it a bit and upload it to instagram pretty easily. Granted the bluetooth is very slow and image editing on a smartphone is fairly rudimentary but personally I prefer not to edit images too much.

The bar for broad market consumer products--which digital cameras once were--has a much higher bar than that. "Good enough" would be that you take a picture on your camera, and it's available as a thumbnail in your phone's gallery without any further action. Sharing it would trigger a full transfer. "Great" would be being able to edit and upload without taking your phone out of your pocket at all. It blows my mind th…

I for one want my camera to be able to take pictures, and that's it. I don't want it to be a cloud aware 5g connected behemoth running a desktop tier operating system and lightroom.

Re: Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

#327

Post by Ice_cream_suit »

Olympus will certainly be remembered for at least one thing:

The two decade long tobashi scheme by Olympus Imaging Executives to hide billions in losses.

"While early activities generated profits in 1987, by 1991 Olympus recorded 2.1 billion losses. Rumors circulated that by the late 1990s, losses had grown larger.

Rather than come clean and admit the losses, management continued to ‘double down’ with riskier investments.

Olympus created a tobashi scheme to shift losses off the Olympus balance sheet. Companies located in the Cayman Islands were purchased via exorbitant Management and Acquisition Fees.

When the first Western President, Michael Woodford, questioned these practices, he was fired after two weeks on the job. Woodford became perhaps the first CEO ever to blow the whistle on his own firm.

The subsequent scandal brought arrests of the executive team, an 80% decline in share price, the threat of de-listing on the Tokyo Exchange, and an international look at Japanese Corporate Governance. "

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1053608.pdf

Re: Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

#328

Post by tomduncalf »

sudosysgen wrote: post #249
tomduncalf wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you got a link for more info on the hacked firmware? Hadn’t heard of it before. Thanks!

https://github.com/ma1co/Sony-PMCA-RE Here you go. You can edit the firmware to change read-only settings and install Andrioid apps, with an API to access the viewfinder and to take pictures with various settings as well as access them, and the network.

Oh wow, I had no idea this existed. Interesting, I have a RX100m3 and A6000 that can probably run it. On my RX10m4, they removed the apps feature, which I think was probably a good move for Sony despite restricting the feature set - they are really clunky to use (each app takes over the camera and has its own set of settings, takes ages to start up etc.) and the functionality they provide would make more sense either built into the firmware or as a phone app.

Re: Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

#329

Post by tomduncalf »

tomduncalf wrote: post #328
sudosysgen wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://github.com/ma1co/Sony-PMCA-RE Here you go. You can edit the firmware to change read-only settings and install Andrioid apps, with an API to access the viewfinder and to take pictures with various settings as well as access them, and the network.

Oh wow, I had no idea this existed. Interesting, I have a RX100m3 and A6000 that can probably run it. On my RX10m4, they removed the apps feature, which I think was probably a good move for Sony despite restricting the feature set - they are really clunky to use (each app takes over the camera and has its own set of settings, takes ages to start up etc.) and the functionality they provide would make more sense either…

There are a few projects on Github wrapping the API which the PlayMemories mobile app uses (so you can take photos, access the viewfinder etc), which may be of interest to some: https://github.com/Bloodevil/sony_camera_api for example (I’ve not tried any of these)

Re: Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

#330

Post by PostThisTooFast »

dllu wrote: post #89
noncoml wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but your reply only makes my argument stronger, that is that Canon is not the king anymore, as it used to be for DSLRs.

Yes, I am not disagreeing with you. Sony's mirrorless bodies are presently the best and the Sony GM lenses also have the best-in-class image quality, surpassing DSLR lenses. For example the Sony GM 135mm f/1.8 is the sharpest available 135mm lens [1] and the Sony GM 24mm f/1.4 is the sharpest available 24mm lens [2]. Sony's ecosystem also has many amazing third-party lenses. A personal favourite of mine is the Voigtl…

But their 8-bit video is embarrassing. Even out their HDMI, so there’s nothing you can do about it.
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