rpm40
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Senior Member
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Posts: 2,411
Re: You know, I have to really give it to Canon...
1
You're right. I have always been a fan of both Olympus and Fuji, with their classic styling, good manual controls and nice jpegs, but both have been pretty quiet on the enthusiast front.
Fuji has their x100 and x70 which are nice, but I think they are too set in their ways regarding their sensors, and the old 2/3" from their compacts doesn't excite now that the competition is cramming 1" sensors into everything.
Olympus has stagnated, with no real follow up to their nice XZ-2 and Stylus 1, and I am guessing they are facing a similar problem- the smaller sensors they are used to using are out of favor, and getting a foot in the door to get 1" sensors is a big undertaking considering the lower number of cameras they sell. I have been hoping for a long time that they would put an m4/3 sized sensor in some enthusiast compacts, but to no avail. I bet Olympus could come up with a beautiful competitor to the Panasonic LX100, and I have always thought a compact digital Trip would be very cool, with an m4/3 sensor and 35mm lens.
I think what we are seeing right now in the enthusiast space is that the brands who are able to innovate are those that have the resources and access to modern sensors in the popular sizes. The one brand that skews my theory, though, is Nikon- they have the means, and they have plenty of experience with 1". Now that they killed off Nikon 1, I have no idea why they decided their 1" enthusiast compact line was dead before it hit the shelves.