In a message dated 10/18/2002 Bill Clark writes:
<< Olympus is still way behind though.....the rep was actually up here in
Canada (hasn't been around for over 6 months). I just happened to be there
and he said he would thinks it would be at least a year before the Olympus
DSLR was out. By then it will be too little too late. Unless Olympus has
some major coup hidden away I think their stuff will be overpriced and,
well, a waste of money.
If I was going to get a DSLR then it would be Nikon or Kodak (Nikon anyway),
or Fuji (Nikon anyway). >>
A person who posts on dpreview took an Olympus digital seminar in San
Francisco recently and cornered two of the Olympus reps and asked point
blank as well. They would confirm nothing, but it is generally
anticipated a prototype body will debut at PMA. That would put it
somewhere around one year from now we would see the system hit the
streets here in the US. Sounds like about the same story.
However, I'm not so sure they're "way behind" though. The OM system came
on the scene when 35mm was very entrenched. Nikon Fs, Minolta SRT101s,
and Pentax Spotmatics were the order of the day (Canon was almost
unknown at the time IIRC). Of course this is all recollection from my
early teen years when my first job was at a camera store/rental lab in
Monterey--a long time ago and many altered brain cells could cloud my
memory ;-) Anyway, Olympus came in the game with a "major coup" in the
OM system (I think we can all agree on that here). 35mm SLR market was
very mature at that point in time.
Fast forward to 2003. DSLRs for field use (sports, journalism, nature
work, etc.) will still in the "kludge" mode. The new breed of full-frame
sensor DSLRs are really only suitable (and promoted as such by their
makers) for studio use where a mondo-memory dual processor computer with
the computing horsepower of a top fuel dragster is nearby. I don't see
that changing anytime soon for the full frame DSLRs. DSLRs in general
are still in their infancy. Admittedly, though, technology time marches
far faster than the mechanical 35mm SLR era of the early 1970s.
Now if (*if* being the key word) the 4/3 format come onto the scene in
late 2003 offering high resolution, fast shooting speed, low noise, high
ISO, and great image quality, with a lens assortment from true
ultra-wide angle to super telephoto that are reasonably fast and
optically superior for digital use to 35mm lenses, and this system is,
say, 700f the physical size and cost of the kludge offerings--it will
be a (huge) "coup." Now, Fuji and Kodak are supposedly already aboard.
If Pentax joins the bunch it could open the floodgates of camera makers
other than the "big two" hopping aboard what could become "the screw
mount of digital" open lens mount system. The more camera makers who
embrace the concept, the better it will be--competition within the
format would drive quality up, and prices down. The big two "kludge
makers" would have a serious group of competitors and the DSLR world as
we know it today would radically change. Which brings me back to my
question--isn't "an APS sized sensor" around the size the 43 system is
being described too? I think Pentax joining Olympus (in 4/3) would be huge.
This is how I see it could go, and how I hope it goes. If it does not go
that way I see myself going with Canon eventually for digital work
(gasp). But, as long as there's film to shoot, and the likes of John H,
Clint, and Ken to fix 'em, I'll keep running film through my OMs as long
as I can possibly get away with it.
I think what unfolds in the DSLR world over the next year or two could
be very interesting...
Mike Veglia
Motor Sport Visions Photography
http://www.motorsportvisions.com
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