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Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

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Re: Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

#341

Post by rimliu »

vparikh wrote: post #262

I have been a long time M43 user since they released the very first OMD-EM5. And the OMD line has been the best camera for the everyday user - highly capable, small with amazing small lens that really are great. The Olympus 45, Panasonic 20mm and the 80-150 are truly some the greatest lens for any system. Shure, you loose some depth of field - but for 95% of the people it is perfect. However, when I was ready to upgr…

I moved from Nikon to Olympus.

Your points read very strange:

Cost: you are omitting the cost of the lenses. See how much FF 600/f4 will cost you compared to Olympus 300/f4 Pro.

Size: ditto. The camera body is half of the story. You need to compare the whole system with lenses.

Compatibility: there is a gazzilion lenses made for m43 by Olympus, Panasonic, Sigma, etc.

Video: The latest releases E-M5m3, E-M1m3, E-M1x are no threat to Panasonic but are perfectly capable video cameras. Even E-M1m2 was reborn with the new firmware.

Some other advantages:

Weather proofking—second to none.

IBIS—second to none.

Quality optics: Olympus pro lenses can be used wide open without significant loss of the quality. This is not the case for most of the high end FF lenses.

Computational photography: Live Time and Live Composite are amazing. High-Res handheld mode is amazing. Live ND is a nice option. Starry AF works perfectly.

Re: Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

#342

Post by rimliu »

meowzero wrote: post #126

It was a matter of time. They were focused on m4/3, which was a good system. But phone technology evolved quickly. Most pros or prosumers go for the higher-end APSC or Full Frame lineups. In my experience, they don't take the m4/3 stuff seriously. For regular folks, m4/3 is too expensive. For the same price, they can use their phones (or buy an APSC camera). The quality is negligible thanks to all the software enhanc…

Actually it is APS-C that needs to go. That format does not offer significant IQ upgrade compared to M43 and has not significant size benefits compared to FF.

No matter how good phones are there is still a clear advantage M43 has over them.

Re: Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

#343

Post by mschuster91 »

efreak wrote: post #340
dr_zoidberg wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some 10 years ago, they refurbished a PowerShot A75 of mine that my father had bought in 2004. 5 years after fabrication, they identified a couple of batches that had been produced with bad sensors, and the cameras affected died a strange death. I had lost all warranty papers, but my local photography shop insisted that I contacted Canon. Had to leave the camera on the official service office, and a month later I had…

I wish more companies would do this. I get that sdcards, headphones, etc are cheap and have low profit margins, but I've had eg Samsung ask for proof of purchase on an 8gb sdcard only a year after the model/product id was released (2015ish, I think? It had a 5 year warranty; the card came with a device from a friend, so no receipt). Other companies do the same. I can't imagine that warranty fraud is that big of an is…

> I can't imagine that warranty fraud is that big of an issue on small things.

A big ticket item like a camera is at extremely low risk of counterfeits, and every participant from the manufacturer to the place of sale will track the serial numbers of cameras shipped, so the "chain" can be reasonably reconstructed by only the camera itself.

For SD cards it's the other way around - no one tracks the serial numbers along the chain of purchase and there is a massive issue with counterfeit product. Requiring a proof of purchase at least helps to filter incoming claims...

Re: Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

#344

Post by m0zg »

rimliu wrote: post #337
m0zg wrote: post #22

Sad, but inevitable, after Nikon stopped dragging its feet. I used Oly cameras for a few years, mostly due to their compact size and excellent in-body stabilization. But then Nikon released Z6 and I switched to that. Not much larger, much better image quality (Sony looks too "blue" for me), great usability, great stabilization, great glass so far. Still Olympus OM-D series were excellent cameras.

Z6 may be compact, but the lenses for FF will be big, heavy and expensive anyway. Also, I do not think that anyone came close to Olympus IBIS.

You can just use f/4 most of the time. 24-70 Nikon f/4 is not that different in size or weight compared to 12-40 f/2.8 Oly. Image quality is still going to be better.

Re: Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

#345

Post by arghwhat »

sudosysgen wrote: post #315
arghwhat wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with the current sensors it's true: Things like dual-pixel auto-focus has put Canon sensors ahead of the competition for a long time. (Dual-pixel AF doesn't just give way better AF, it also avoids artifacts from dedicated phase detect pixels that other cameras have.)

Sony does make DPAF capable sensors for phones, but for some reason (probably IP!) they don't use them on their FF cameras.

The wonderful world of patents.

On an unrelated note, I do believe that Canon has also pulled a patent on quad-pixel AF. Patents being awful aside, quad-pixel AF would be awesome: every pixel becomes a cross-type focus sensor.

(For the uninitiated, focus sensors are usually either horizontal or vertical, and cannot detect features that are perpendicular to them. Cross-type sensors are a combination of the two to increase the detection capability.)

Re: Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

#346

Post by neop1x »

deaddodo wrote: post #281
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…

I mean, your same argument could be made for TVs/monitors as well. LG, Samsung and AU Optronics make the vast majority of LCD panels. You could buy an LG or a Vizio with the same LG-fabbed panel. In fact, even Samsung TV has been known to use LG panels: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnarcher/2017/01/23/samsung-f...

AU Optronics, InnoLux, Infovision, BOE optoelectronics, IVO, LG - these do laptop panels (also see panelook.com ). There is some competition in TN/IPS. But OLEDs or specialized panel situation may be different.

Re: Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

#347

Post by matwood »

stan_rogers wrote: post #270
Bud wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can actually use Nikon F-mount lenses dating all the way back to 1959 on modern Nikons. Truly incredible.

Only on the higher-end bodies. You pretty much need to be using a modern AF-S lens on the 3XXX and 5XXX bodies, between the focus drive and the meter coupling, and pre-AI won't work without modification on the 7XXX.

Good point. My first Nikon was a D60, and at the time I had a very cool older 50mm. I had to manual focus, which was actually fun, but no metering would be tough. That combo took some great pictures though.

Re: Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

#348

Post by neop1x »

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

Yes, big lens means a lot. And today they have a nasty trend of using software enhancements and machine learning. I took an aerial photo from a small airplane using Sony smartphone built-in camera app. It postprocesed trees so badly that I never used this builtin app again. I am using OpenCamera and it is "ok enough for a smartphone". And funny thing is they are very proud of this postprocessing, saying you lose their secret keys after you unlock bootloader and this magic will stop working. Soon more and more of the photo will be fake, just computed/guessed by the software. Quite sad IMO.

Re: Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

#349

Post by neop1x »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #192

I maintain that digital camera manufacturers' biggest failing is not eliminating the friction between taking pictures and video and getting them online to social networks, like Instagram. It's super frustrating.

Instagram is not the place for these kinds of photos. They compress them to 100 kB JPEG garbage with the same width and height. And videos of 1000 mbps bandwidth are limiting like crazy. I still don't understand why people use Instagram. I never used it and never will.
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