Olympus ends production of 4/3 cameras

The company, who made a huge investment in the once-interesting and legendary 4/3 system” recently announced a sequel to the OM family, the Olympus OM-D E-M5, in effect saying that further development of the DSLR line, at least within their company, was no longer viable. No, no official announcement has been made – quite possible, and will not be made, at least not in the next year. On the one hand the E-5 came out a year and a half ago, and with all its technology and perfection, differs from the previous model not very much.

Photo: Olympus OM

Moreover, already at the time of release, the camera was not ahead of average market figures and was even inferior to most competitors, having advantages only in terms of versatility and all-weather capability as well as speed, though only in terms of focusing and only that according to the company itself . Now they took the sweetest details out of the camera and loaded the lower class camera with them, which can be considered an extension of the line, but we are inclined to believe that the company has decided to moderate ambitions and stop at a much more profitable and popular bridge segment.

Judging by numbering, the device either is the reduced variant E-5 which, by the way, is similar , or continues a line PEN in which already E-P3 is released, the next number in which will be not 4 Japanese, especially Olympus sincerely believe in an evil fate “four”, reasons we have already repeatedly given.

The model is in fact a compromise. First of all, the novelty belongs to the class micro-4/3″ which means that it is in fact part of the Pen lineup, but since it is called the OM Digital the company keeps reanimating its historic corpses, turning them into very foldable Frankensteins , it is still stuck somewhere between it and the DSLRs. It may well be that in this way the manufacturer differentiates its products so that the end buyer is aware of what he is paying a lot of money for.

To explain the new price tag, though, the device is packed full of goodies. Even the press release focuses on 5-axis image stabilizer vertical, horizontal and rotational movement of the camera in the plane of the sensor , which the company has long had, it just has never been put in any simple model.

Moreover the stabilizer is optimized for video, which is actually more useful there than in photography. Video, by the way, HD1080p format with duration of not more than 29 minutes per clip this is not technical but a political limitation – until they change the requirements for journalists, this threshold will not be passed .

The second point is the world’s fastest autofocus of frequency type a special sensor is built into the sensor which operates autonomously but is different from SLR phase which has already been tested on the Pen E-P3. The problem is, however, that only the latest lenses can allow such a fast focus speed, of which Olympus had only one until yesterday, the 12-50/3.5-6.3 EZ. The company will soon start outfitting its optics with super-fast motors, so that threatens to change. In fact the camera’s very fast autofocus will be slowed down by the alas slow motors in the glass anyway.

If you have seen in the picture above the traces of a pentaprism – these are the traces. Inside this knob is an electronic viewfinder screen with a lens. Resolution is good, 1.The 4 megapixel zoom isn’t bad either, but it still loses out optically, especially when compared to the competitors’ top-of-the-line full-frame models.

Interestingly, the electronic viewfinder is not made a dull semblance of the optical, and, like the screen, already when shooting can adjust to the parameters of the possible frame to show overexposure, underexposure, for example, and artistic filters . For black and white photographers this is a good way to see the world in monochrome, which is very important, especially for beginners.

Next on board magnesium body, rubberized wherever possible again, use special lenses for complete sealing , continuous shooting up to 9 frames per second without refocusing blocks or 4.2 with refocusing, which says, by the way, not so fast electronics architecture, despite the dual-core 6th generation processor.

By the way, the company brains managed to implement the second core processor in the photographic process: there is a new fancy mode Live bulb – when shooting night scenes, for example, the shutter speed of a minute or more, sometimes it makes sense ahead of time to understand how well you expose the frame to avoid overexposed or underexposed. By setting the refresh to, say, every 10 seconds, you can keep your hand on the pulse to press the button again at the right moment.

You can say it’s crap, but it’s not. No other manufacturer in the world offers this kind of feature that landscape photographers need. At night, however, we often have to guess if we should set the shutter speed to 2 or 3 minutes, for example… such a feature would have saved us a lot of agony.

The 610K screen is a bit disappointing as we are already used to 920K which has become a de-facto standard for good technology. But it tilts up and down not as much as we’d like, but enough even for perverts .

Today the retail price in America is not yet known, but in the West they give an estimate of $ 1000 “per head”, and that by pre-order, which means that in the future we should expect to reduce. And if the camera can not boast of ultra-compactness, the functionality is exactly at the top, in addition, today it is the largest compact series of optics, so the prospects for the model look very interesting.