Our new motto: LIBERATE THE MA-1
===========================
My goodness, there have been hundreds of posts on this subject. A simple
logical summary:
1. Oly was quite successful in the MF SLR market, although they did
themselves no favor with some of the failings of the first version of
the OM-10 by irritating a lot of retailers and customers.
2. Oly just plain failed with their AF SLRs with models that proved to
be uncompetitive in the market. Part of the problem was serious
reliability problems. They lost a lot of money and much of their
reputation with both retailers and buyers. They did not do this on
purpose just to 'get' their loyal old MF customers. With the worn out
tooling, a decilning MF SLR market and no AF SLRs to sell their old
customers forward into, they eventually abandoned the SLR market.
3. Entering the DSLR market with a camera using MF lenses would be
intentional suicide, but Oly had no AF bodies and lenses on which to
build digital bodies. So they started out with a clean slate and
designed a DSLR system from scratch. I think it was the right decision.
Whether their detailed implementation will be a success like the
original OMs or a failure like the AF SLRs remains to be seen.
4. Do you understand that NO DSLR manufacturer (other than the Nik*n D1
??) supports their old MF lenses other than in stop-down mode? That's
because all of them communicate with the lenses electronically and
include no mechanical mechanism to stop down the old lenses. All of them
have already modified their mount systems for AF. The other major SLR
manufacturers have been able to use their existing AF lenses on their
DSLRs. None of them provide serious support for their old MF lenses.
Can*n MF lenses don't fit on the EOS series without adapters. With
adapters, Can*n provides the best MF metering support of any brand, and
for almost any brand of MF lens. Nik*n provides no metering support
whatsoever for their old MF lenses on their DSLRs except the very
expensive D1 series. Sure, you can mount many of the MF lenses, but you
need a separate meter to use them. Pent*x provides very limited support
for screw-mount MF lenses, not as good as Can*n with an adapter.
5. So, the loyal 35mm users that these manufacturers have really
supported are their AF system users. But Oly never had any such users to
choose to support or not!
6. It looks like the E-1 has metering support about equal to the Can*ns
from a body function point of view. An E-1 with OM adapter would rank
with Can*n's for support of both Canon FD and Oly OM lenses, ahead of
the D100 and F*ji DSLR support of Nikon MF lenses and ahead of the
Pent*x *istD support of their old MF lenses.
7. Thus, the single intentional way in which Oly has abandoned us loyal
old MF users any more than other DSLR manufacturers is in deciding not
to market the already designed and manufactured OM adapter. That seem
ungenerous and short sighted to me, but easily reversable, either by a
policy reversal by Oly or the inevitabel 3rd. party adapter. Once the
adapter is available, the E-1 will have better MF support than much of
the competition.
Remember, all those loyal users being supported by the new 35mm
body/lens based DSLRs ALREADY abandoned their MF equipment and made the
investment in AF bodies and lenses. So we get to skip that step and save
the cost of those intermediate purchases! :-) <=== Notice the big
smiley face here, no flames please!
Complain as we will, very few of us would be happy doing most of our
photography in stop down mode. Whatever DSLR you choose, new AF lenses
are in your future for all but fairly specialized uses.
Does that answer your question? ;-)
Anybody up for a raid on an Oly warehouse to liberate the OM adapters?
First we need a spy to determine where they are stored. Any volunteers?
Moose
Danrich wrote:
E-1 4/3 vs. full sensor:
Could someone tell me why Olympus having the time to think about it, why
in God's name go to a sensor that would reject all of the Zuiko's?
It's not the sensor that rejects OM lenses, the camera mount does not
accomodate OM mount lenses. The new E-1 lenses are Zuikos
Nikon and Canon's sensor's are large enough to accept older lens.
Again, sensor size is not the issue.
Can anyone explain this logic of abandoning loyal photographers using Zuiko's?
I tried.
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