Panasonic will make a 100-300 tele so the likelihood of Olympus duplicating that seems slim.
--Careful with jumping to conclusions... after all, Panasonic is making their own 17mm pancake.
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/PanHChan/
. . . Is there a link to that road map?
Roadmap:
Nope. But even if they were, kit lenses are different - they must have a lens to sell with the camera they are making and if they buy it from someone else, they will lose some profit. The production volume on a kit lens is sufficient to make it worth the effort even if it causes redundancy in the system.
Sony's 70-300/4.5-5.6 is £560+
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Yes it should be a bit cheaper. I'd guess at 15-20%, much depending on how many fewer lens elements the design would use.
. . . Thanks. Looking at the prices of other Pany lenses like the 7-14, 14-140 and 45/2.8, etc. and the others that you've mentioned, I'm guessing now that the lowest likely price for the 100-300 will be in the $800 USD range but it might be as high as $1000. I'm betting it'll be closer to $800, just a hunch. Pany wants market penetration right now and aggressive pricing is helping them do that. Their other lenses are priced fairly low I think when you look at some other lense of the same quality from other OEM makers like Nikon for example. Pany is a large corporation that has the resources for this type of long range strategy.
The 14-140 isn't that unreasonable considering its high optical performance and HD functionality. But the other two, and the 20 when bought alone, are the ones I had in mind when I talked about doubled price.
This doesn't seem to extend outside the kits, though. They count on people not researching accessory prices until they've bought into the system. Or people willing to pay a good deal extra for the new, compact technology.
The 14-45 seems to be an absolute bargain. The 45-200 is affordable enough not to give much reason for complaints as long as one has kit-lens expectations.
They did very much with their digicam range, offering more than the competition for less and maybe still do. For their higher end stuff I'm not seeing that (low price for long term strategy), and it goes back all the way to the LC1 at least.
. . That 20/1.7 at $400 is a good price when you consider its exceptional IQ IMO.
. . . The only Panys that I think are a little overpriced are the 7-14 and maybe the 45/2.8. These are specialty lenses compared to some of the zooms I think and aren't considered large volume enough to matter very much to the marketing experts at Pany.
. . . That's right and the 45-200 at $300 is a tremendous value compared to the $700 range of Canon and Nikon's super zooms that don't have the same level of IQ. If you want to put it up against Canon's 100-400/4-5.6/IS-L at $1200, you see comparable IQ capability at 1/4 of the price!
. . . Maybe they learned what not to do to get market share with the LC-1. I bet there's a warehouse somewhere that has a lot of them from the first year that it was introduced. It just never took off in sales.
Normally UWA, I can walk... --
I have a hard time suppressing the thought that the Nikkor 35/1.8 DX is doing the same job at half the price.
If we disregard the expensive lenses, there are not many left, though.
Not sure what lenses you have in mind. "Superzooms" generally refers to lenses that have about 10x zoom range or more. The closest approximation to the 45-200 is the Canon 55-250 IS. From the tests and MTF curves I've seen, it's if anything better than the Lumix. And it's only 80-85% of the price. Here we see Canon's production volume advantage. Still, as a said, the 45-200 has a reasonable price/performance ratio.
I can't agree at all here. Canon had QC problems early on with this lens, but a good copy is clearly sharper at tele than the 45-200. It is also twice the actual focal length and gathers four times as much light as the Lumix. Coupled with an 1.6x body it is the equivalent to 640mm in 35FF. Put it on a 7D and crop to 4/3" and 12Mp and it is 800mm equivalent.
I don't think they expected much market share. They wanted mind share, to show that they could do a high quality camera together with Leica.
. . . I was thinking of the 18-200 super zooms that Nikon and Canon sell for about $700. Maybe not a good comparison with the 45-200 for equivalent field of view on the short end but they're more than twice as expensive as the 45-200 and can't match its IQ. The 100-400L that Canon sells is a good example of the same field of view on mFT vs FF when comparing it with the 45-200. It's a better lens but maybe not 5 times as good when you look at the price difference.The EFS 55-250 is an APS-C only lens that compares very well for price and IQ anything in its class and then some as you said.
. . . I forgot that Canon raised the price on the 100-400L from about $1300 a year ago to $1600. That makes it more than 5 times the cost of a 45-200 Pany at about the same equivalent field of view when comparing mFt with FF which is what the 100-400L was originally designed for in 1998. Of course it works just fine on APS-C cameras and you've made a good point.
