Why so little in body image stabilization?

This is true. While  Canon had patents on doing lens based stabilization with prisms, and Nikon had patent son doing it with pairs of positive elements, Oly had a patent on doing it with a positive and negative lens together.

So, why didn't Oly use their own technology for four thirds? look at the design of the original Oly 50-200mm f2.8-3.5. There's a huge, empty space in the rear design that was obviously intended for that stabilization system. But they yanked it at the last minute, without redesigning most of the lens, leaving them wit a larger, poorer performing lens than they might have had.

Why? I'm guessing they were so disappointed in the high ISO performance of their first Kodak sensors that they panicked and adopted a system that they could say helped on all lenses. Not patents, at all.

--
Rahon Klavanian 1912-2008. Armenian genocide survivor, amazing cook, scrabble master, and loving grandmother. You will be missed. Ciao! Joseph www.swissarmyfork.com