on 7/14/01 6:58 AM, Tris Schuler at tristanjohn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> I'd love to see what an OM-5 turned out as today. It'd knock your socks
> off, I bet.
>
You can look at what they came out with later to find clues... I think we
would have seen Zuiko lenses in an AF mount, maybe with ROM chips and the
ultrasonic motors. New faster, lighter, smaller, with the advances in optic
design in the last 20 years incorporated i.e. aspheric elements, ED glass,
etc. Lenses would be smaller than Nikon, Canon, or Minolta AF lenses.
The body would have TTL flash, OTF metering, built-in auto film load/rewind,
motor. Probably also offer a booster motor for 5fps or more. The viewfinder
would be a brighter, big image, with interchangeable screens. The whole
thing would be smaller and lighter than the N/C/M competition, as that is a
core Olympus value, but I suspect it would be bigger than the OM-1 to OM-4
series. I suspect Olympus would try to have some backwards compatibility of
lenses, probably with aperture priority metering and manual focus... perhaps
via a special adapter along the lines of the one that mates OM Zuiko's to
the Pen F/FT line. This would preserve the zuikaholic's big investment :-)
The real direction of the Olympus camera of the future is digital as we see
now, due to whatever insanity prevails at the Olympus executive level. They
are a leader in the digital camera field (except at the very high pro-level
stuff). A shame some of that design ingenuity couldn't be devoted to
extending the OM series again. Leica continues to refine the M cameras...
why doesn't Olympus continue to develop OM? I suppose at Leica prices they
might...
--
Jim Brokaw
OM-1's, -2's, -4's, (no -3's yet) and no OM-oney...
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