Whither Olympus SP-100

Henry Falkner wrote:

With 600 mm maximum range, I am very much outclassed now for moon shots.

I never got into moonshoots, but it is perhaps a good use of the focal length.

Other than that - a pocket zoom causes less whiplash when doing videos of our Morris dance gigs as I am playing the accordion the P&S is mounted on. I admit, there are a lot more people doing moon shots than taking videos of their gigs as they are performing.

I suspect most people who record Morris dances do it from the audience. I can imagine being mounted on the accordion stresses any stabilization that the camera offers.

While in my heart I am a still photographer, I do spend 2 weekends a year acting as the official videographer at two small renaissance faires. At each faire, I did around 8 hours of recording over 2 days (17 gigs of data, using my JVC camcorders). Unlike you, I'm recording from the audience.

I am not so concerned about the SP100. I am concerned about the scarcity of Olympus cameras this year. This is one of the motives for collecting three very similar SH models. They work reliably for me - which is not what you expect from a P&S that costs up to three times less than an enthusiast compact.

Well I do think the Stylus-1 is over-priced, and I was surprised when it came out, as I thought the enthusiast market had all but dried up.

But now that you mention it, Olympus has weeded out most of the P&S camera lines it used to sell (SZ, VR, VH, XZ). I imagine most of the P&S cameras have been replaced by cell phones, except for the 3 niches:

• Weather sealed: TG-4, TG-860
• Long zoom: SH-2, SP-100
• Enthusiast: Stylus 1s

And the Pen line is also looking kind of dead with the E-PL7 being the last Pen, announced over a year ago.