That's what we are... everybody on the list... we are the apple fans of
the camera world. We hold our breath; and hope for some miracle.
Apple has been making great inroads; now that Steve Jobs is back at the
helm. It's possible. It is possible that Olympus screws up so badly,
that Maitani stands back and wants nothing to do with the company...
And the company heads give up, and hand the entire company back to him
(a la Steve Jobs) and he turns the company around.
For Apple, Steve is not going to get screwed a second time out; he knows
the Motorola platform is about to die, I hope he does the smart thing
and just jumps the x86 platform completely and codes against the likes
of the new AMD 64bit architecture.
The Olydak is a good concept; we really don't know what it's going to be
like when it's launched, it might be a slight of hand trick by Olympus;
who knows. There are skeptics, and I am one of them, there are those
who are disappointed, I am definitely one of them; but I will say this;
This is the company that produced the OM3Ti; it's just plain incredible
how much they packed in there... These are the guys that produced the
smallest professional SLR's; they are the reason we have a list; so
anything in history worth repeating, might be repeated.
Who knows? All I know is, R&D for a camera system is $$$$, and I don't
see short of really specific rangefinders like the Hexan line from
Konica (but they still take Leica mounts) but I don't see Olympus
introducing the line with anything less than 5 lenses; with someone like
Tamron under contract to produce another 2-3. I think for a line to
stay alive, there will be a minimum lens count and coverage. Here's
what I see as minimum requirements for a lens system;
(in 35mm equiv)
A wide
(24mm f/2.8)
A normal wide
(35mm f/2)
2 normals
50mm/f1.8 50mm/f2.8 macro
A portrait/macro
90mm/f2.5
A telephoto
200mm f/3.5
A wide zoom
20-35mm f/3.5-4.5
a standard zoom
28-80mm f/3.5-4.5
a telezoom
80-200mm f/3.5-5.6
That's 6 primes and 3 zooms. This is the minimum setup to introduce an
SLR line. Also, a 16mm or 18mm or something like a superwide should be
in there also. A mirror 300mm would be great also.
If they are going to release an SLR line, they will commit a few tens of
million to it; they are not going to bet the farm unless they think they
are going to win.
They went up against Canon and Nikon, and didn't have the marketing
firepower. So the picked the P&S market, which they dominate. Nobody
even comes close. They are capitalists, they pick markets and battles
they think they can win. If they have decided this is the battle field,
that means they have crunched the numbers and they think they can do
well in this market. If Kodak is along for the ride, then someone has
sold them on the same idea to get them on the same page and in the same
boat. That in and of itself, speaks volumes of the future..
I see it like the Xpan system of Hasselblad. Everywhere else, it's a
Fuji. There were skeptics, but people love it. We are the harshest
critics. Remember, the N*kon heads all think an F5 is a regular sized
SLR! We are the only ones that complain about size; because we have
been way spoiled by our OM's...
Albert
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