Olympus OMD ?

After the big splash of the Fuji X Pro1 - it will be a commercial success I'm sure, bit slow AF @ 1700$ and no manual focus assistance for a camera taking M mount lenses is a splash in my book - Olympus as some leaks and we hear of a digital OM all over the Internet.



What is an OM originally ?

About a decade after Nikon and Canon created a range of SLRs (all the Fs for Nikon and the likes of the A1 for Canon), Olympus launched the OM1, followed by many more, as a directly competing line up of SLR cameras. This was good stuff (long story short). Getting one these days wouldn't cost you much, and with the proper film and a negative scanner, you'd be able to do some pretty cool work.


What about the OMD?
Surfing the trend of "let's use our historical line up names and add a bit of vintage to sell very expensive  compacts", Olympus is on the edge of announcing a digital OM. 

Now let's cut the crap from the beginning: unless they make it with a SLR viewfinder and a proper sensor (I'm not even daring to hope for full frame), the only thing from the OM will be the name.

Fuji has really opened a market niche with the X line up (Fujifilm X100 , X Pro1). Those products, even if far from perfect (slow AF, poor ergonomics) are indeed something to the landscape: some of do us want premium compact with terrific built quality. 

Unfortunately, prices for those cameras are ridiculously high and unjustified. At 1200$, the Fujifilm X100 offers only 35mm and slow operation. It is excellent image quality wise, but not enough. The X Pro 1 has some major flaws (to be updated once I have one in my hands) and costs really too much (1700$ body only). 
Most of all, Fuji is alone in that segment, Leica not having launch anything in that field recently. I welcome a new player in that niche !

So far features of the OM D are pure speculation, but 43rumors has that list:

  • "Camera has a classic OM design
  • It has a magnesium body
  • It is weathers sealed
  • weight 373 g (body only).
  • 16 megapixel sensor optimized for High Dynamic Range
  • 200 up to 25.600 ISO
  • Built-in electronic viewfinder 1.44 million dots (positioned in the center of the body liek the old OM optical viewfinders and same resolution as the external VF-2 viewfinder (Click here to see on Amazon).
  • 610.000 pixel OLED swivel 3 inch screen.
  • Five-axis image stabilizer in body.
  • FAST AF and 3D tracking
  • Comes in Balck or Silver.
  • Price: Around $1.100 in USA or 1.000 Euro in Europe."

 Of course it's missing sensor size. Electronic viewfinder? Really? Well let's wait and see, should be fully announced by the 8th of February.






2 comments:

  1. Oh. My. Dog. I wish this leads to a decent compact body some day, I have and 30+ year old OM-1 with 4 lenses and right now, since the body's shutter has failed a few times in a couple of years, I'm gonna retire it and set up a small camera museum at home with all my Olympus gear.

    And OMD *might* rescue these lenses out some day... but I doubt it, because I already have Nikon's equivalents for all of them (24, 35, 50, 100) and 3 good FX bodies (D700, F90X, FM-2n) so... I'm afraid Olympus will be late for this one. I wanted that body 5 years ago :D

    ReplyDelete
  2. You should have asked to Nicolas to let you borrow his OM-1, it's a niece piece of a camera!

    Cheers

    JH

    ReplyDelete