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E-5 Article on Zone-10

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Thank you for the link. That was a great read.
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Done my first 10,000
 
Thanks for the link!
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Bluephotons
Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now. Bob Dylan
 
A very good read and esp so on Oly's camera making and marketing history. One thing that did jump to mind when reading it was the lack of any real mention of Pana other than as a sensor manufacturer and i do find that strange considering how well its written.

HarjTT
 
there are some interesting points but I can't help but think this is a bit of a fanboy article. I really think that Canon/Nikon and especially Sony were mischaracterized.

And more importantly makes me realize very vividly again, how little all this talk has to do with photography and it's more about football teams trying to beat each other.

Not that by itself that's wrong, but sure there a lot of confusion by many between these two very different activities. And I have been guilty at times of it too, more so in the past than the present.

PS: micro four thirds isn't an extension of four thirds. It's pretty much Olympus future.
--
Raist3d (Photographer & Tools/Systems/Gui Games Developer)
Andreas Feininger (1906-1999) 'Photographers — idiots, of which there are
so many — say, “Oh, if only I had a Nikon or a Leica, I could make great
photographs.” That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life. It’s
nothing but a matter of seeing, and thinking, and interest. That’s what
makes a good photograph.'
 
Couldn't disagree more about this micro 4/3 being the future for Olympus. While I think micro serves a specific target market, it's far from the only market.
 
mnhiker said:
Couldn't disagree more about this micro 4/3 being the future for Olympus. While I think micro serves a specific target market, it's far from the only market.
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I think that when a few boxes get ticked , better EVF, better AF and a few higher grade lenses that mFT has the potential to easily unseat FT as for me anyway it delivers on the smaller lighter mantra promoted by Olympus. If you are a company making several products and one line is hugely outselling another it seems only prudent to follow the cash , with perhaps a tweener camera to bring long term users along. I am hoping for a GF1 EP2 sized camera with built in high res EVF and a bit better AF which will hopefully come fairly soon.

--

 
I would agree with you. Olympus is in the business of earning money. It is this money that pays for salaries of employees and dividends to stockholders. Micro FourThirds has been an extremely successful product line. Wildly successful, actually. Legacy FourThirds not so much on the high end, moderately so in the E-4xx and E-5xx lines.

It only makes sense for Olympus to continue to develop new products for where sales are strong, but without a flagship model (and product line), there is less gravitas to the brand name and without this gravitas, Micro FourThirds would be dead.

I'm of mixed feelings about how successful Olympus will be with the E-5. Personally, I didn't upgrade to the E-3 and only recently augmented my FourThirds equipment with a second-hand DMC-L1. Both the DMC-L1 and E-1 fulfill most of my professional photography requirements and where they don't I've been successfully using film. It would have to be quite the advancement for me to spend the money for a camera which is just barely an incremental improvement.

Ken N.
http://www.zone-10.com
 
It's not the future unless they can fix all of the problems with it.

Right now it's got point and shoot reliability and speed. Pretty much good for static portraits and landscape work. There are so many other types of photography that require DSLR performance. Until they can bridge that gap they will lose if they try to put all of their eggs in one basket.

There are only so many people who will buy a pen, and after that dries up people will look to more advanced models.

Maybe in a few years they can get the performance up to snuff, but it's just tolerable right now. I got caught up in the Pen hype, and I like it, but I can't do anything serious with it. Can't shoot my son's football games with it, or baseball games. Still need the E3 for that stuff. Definitely can't use it for any work stuff.

All that being said I love my E-P2. But it's definitely a complimentary system and not the entire system.

I'm rooting like hell for Olympus to make their mark. Hopefully they can make the best of both worlds very soon.
 
It's going to blow the L1 and E1 out of the water performance wise. I mean, the E30 and E3 already do.
 
My favorite part of the article was probably this:

Battery Power : Aaah, now that is an interesting question. There can only be the BLM-1 or the BLS-1.

Ken goes on to say that the decision will probably be decided by the E-5's size. But what about other considerations? If Olympus' intent is for Four Thirds to be the domain of a single, flagship body for Micro Four Thirds users to upgrade to, perhaps they would use the BLS-1 and make sure that the battery grip has the power needed to move SHG and HG glass around quickly. If the E-5 is just a hold-over until the modular camera in 2011, maybe they'd stick with the BLM-1 to keep high-end Four Thirds users from rioting. If their intent is to keep an E-xxx or E-xx body in the Four Thirds lineup, perhaps choosing the BLM-1 for the E-5 would mean an E-xx refresh on the way (BLS-1? maybe an E-xxx).

Perhaps somewhat Vizzini-esque (think "clearly I can't choose the glass in front of me" from Princess Bride), but at least it's speculation with some reason behind it.
 
stimmer said:
It's going to blow the L1 and E1 out of the water performance wise. I mean, the E30 and E3 already do.
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Oh, most definitely. But at some point we've reached the point of diminishing returns. However, that really depends on your own specific needs. What works for me won't for somebody else. Fortunately, in most things photography there is more than one solution to any problem. High ISO not clean enough? Use a flash. And so forth.

There are reasons to pick a camera beyond just performance specifications. You can have a technically perfect camera that just misses it in other regards. The E-1 stinks at high ISO and lacks much needed pixels, but at the same time, it is one of the rare cameras which is nearly silent in operation and has color tonalities and dynamic range which the E3- and E3 can only dream of having. Each photographer has to pick those things which is most important to him/her.

Ken N.
http://www.zone-10.com
 
HarjTT said:
A very good read and esp so on Oly's camera making and marketing history. One thing that did jump to mind when reading it was the lack of any real mention of Pana other than as a sensor manufacturer and i do find that strange considering how well its written.
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hey Harj
yes you are dead right
most of what E5 is about will need to be a strong step up in sensor performance

theyre going to need to cover more Mp, less noise, more DR, better highlight range and a less intrusive AA filter, and then provide video as well

not easy

still i cant help the feeling that we are on the road to change that needs to better differentiate us from micro. There are a few things i can speculate
  • 4/3rds is kept on idle with a body a year
  • 4/3rds gets ditched when micro EVF and CDAF surpasses it
  • they introduce a Super 4/3rds that carries the lens suite on a larger sensor
  • they perfect Trine, which has more than 3 stops better noise performance, which incidentally they seem to still be filing patents for, suspiciously the research on Trine hasnt stopped
--
Riley

any similarity to persons living or dead is coincidental and unintended
 
Because? The article is about Olympus and the specific development path of the E-x series of cameras. Likewise, there was little mention of the E-XXX models. I can understand why you'd question this, though, because Panasonic appears to be a major part of what Olympus is all about these days. But appearances are often times deceptive.
 
--
Raist3d (Photographer & Tools/Systems/Gui Games Developer)
Andreas Feininger (1906-1999) 'Photographers — idiots, of which there are
so many — say, “Oh, if only I had a Nikon or a Leica, I could make great
photographs.” That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life. It’s
nothing but a matter of seeing, and thinking, and interest. That’s what
makes a good photograph.'
 
That would be a great thing in the e5.

Hopefully it's so good we can't help but buy it.
 
a micro four thirds top pro model :-)

It's only a matter of time.

--
Raist3d (Photographer & Tools/Systems/Gui Games Developer)
Andreas Feininger (1906-1999) 'Photographers — idiots, of which there are
so many — say, “Oh, if only I had a Nikon or a Leica, I could make great
photographs.” That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life. It’s
nothing but a matter of seeing, and thinking, and interest. That’s what
makes a good photograph.'
 
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