Setting up new E-PL6

Guy Parsons wrote:

Helen wrote:

alexisgreat wrote:

One thing I dont like about Olympus is their naming scheme...... E-PL5, E-P5, I always confuse them! And OM-D E-M1/5/10, I just call them EM1,5,10. Also the way the numbering scheme is, at least theoretically, the higher up you go in number the more advanced the camera should be, with the "EM's" the reverse is true.

I see what you mean - I'd never noticed it before, but the Pens have "rankings" for family position implicit in the letters, with the numbers being more of a generational/chronological indication within their particular sub-group, whereas the OM-D cameras are all E-M, with the number indicating more their position in that range (I think it harks back to the OM film cameras, where the single digit models were higher up the range than the double-digits).

Easy naming...... maybe.....

"E-" denotes system cameras. They used to have "C-" and "D-" for other lesser lines but only the "E-" class name survived.

The Pens have "E-Px" for the top model, "E-PLx" for the Lite model with lesser features, "E-PMx" for the Mini models of the Pen. New of course will be the "Pen-F" so the naming has gone off in a new direction.

The DSLR lookalikes are the OM-D models, a real mess.

The very first one was the E-M5 as a nostalgic nod to the OM-4, last of the pro OM film cameras. That was brought out too early in a time of total company stress when they really desperately needed a hero product to save their bacon. Good camera but oh, the number of firmware updates.

Then the flagship OM-D camera with E-M1 just to tell us that it was the #1 camera in the line.

Next the E-M10 came as the "beginner" OM-D and a bit of a nod to the old OM film camera naming, where the more digits, the "lesser" the model.

Yonks ago they had the film OM1/2/3/4 "for professionals", OM10/30/40 "for general users" with OM707 and OM101 thrown in there for confusion, and there was even an OM2000 which was a simpler body made for Olympus by Cosina but of course mounted the Olympus lenses.

Back to today..... then the fun really starts as the naming has been abandoned for the addition of Mark 2 to the names, so the E-M5 "replacement" became the E-M5 Mark 2 instead of the probably more logical E-M6. The E-M10 became the E-M10 Mark 2 instead of E-M11, and presumably next September we get the E-M1 Mark 2, instead of the E-M2.

OK the Mark2 stuff saved them from an obvious early numbering/naming collision, but that could have been largely avoided by starting the numbers properly in the beginning.

Maybe they should go choose flower names, let's have the Daisy, Petunia, and Freesia for a start.

Regards........ Guy

Wow, lots of history with Olympus! I've owned their Camedia line, compact cameras with a dignified history too.  Back in the early 00s, Olympus and Nikon used to compete at the top of the compact market- that was the golden era of compact cameras, before they were cheapened and dumbed down and superseded (for the most part) by cell phone cameras (except for superzooms of course.)