HOT!!! Olympus surprise: We will do the hybrid FT and MFT camera by end 2013! No classic FT E-7 camera anymore!
Miquel Àngel Garcia, manager of Olympus Spain (Image courtesy Quesabesde).
I am really surprised to read a clear statement like that! Miquel Àngel Garcia just said in an interview at Quesabesde (translation here) that the E-5 successor will be a hybrid FT and MFT model capable of using both lens ranges with their full potential! So there will be no “Normal” Four Thirds E-7 but rather a native Micro Four Thirds cameras with a 100% compatible FT solution. He didn’t specify if there will be a sort of integrated or external adapter or a modular approach. The camera is definitely coming in late 2013 (he said!). Miguel didn’t unveil the name and the specs. He says that this is a camera for “those who want the feel of an SLR and at the same time take advantage of a small system“.
In summary:
1) no “classic” Four Thirds E-7 coming! You should expect a hybrid high end MFT camera with full FT support.
2) That camera is coming in late 2013
3) Development started back in 2009 and the camera cannot be compared to anything Olympus released before that.
UPDATE: Also DSLRmagazine (translation here) got a confirmation from Olympus(!) that the info about a hybrid MFT and FT camera is correct!!! They also added that the project name started back in 2009 is “Kasei”. And a selcted and secret group of 13 members worked on the project!
Sounds amazing!
Now let me enlarge the discussion to some key features I think that camera should have:
1) Full compatible AF for any MFT and FT lens. This means have phase detection AF…likely on sensor like the latest Sony NEX-5r and Sony NEX-6 cameras
2) I am still one of these guys in that like to use optical viewfinders. E camera aimed for both FT and MFT users should in my dreamworld have a hybrid EVF and OVF solution like (and if possible better) the Fuji X PRO 1.
3) A pro camera has to feel like a pro camera. So it shouldn’t be too small.
4) The FT component of the cameras should be detachable. A modern version of the Leica Visoflex (here on eBay).
What are yout thoughts? Comment your posts with your suggestions and I may start a poll on this soon…
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Olympus E-5 at Amazon, Adorama, B&H, J&R, eBay.
Leica Visoflex auctions on Slidoo.
amalric
6 months ago |Basically I agree with Anonymous (why don’t you get a nick? It’s confusing). M4/3 thrives with lighter cameras, Western populations are getting older, more urban, we’ll need less car driving, hopefully.
4/3 was part of a different world. I can visualise a redneck with his cars full of long zooms shooting a deer from his car window, and then riding on.
Those beautiful lenses are almost useless now. Will you stick your 50-200 under the nose of a gansta in the metro?
Instead the old Leica design of a pocketable camera with pancakes enjoys a new life. So for me the rumoured hybrid camera, is just paying back the debt to those who spent thousands for now obsolete lenses.
I am not really interested, much more curious is a RF type of camera comes at the end of Jan 2013. I am not a birder after all, I don’t want to put a distance between me and my subject. A 300 mm eq. is more than I will ever need.
Can you imagine HCB shooting teles? In the end I think that m4/3 will keep proving its worth like an ‘always with you camera’. Other formats will cater to more specialised tasks.
Having an additional 30 lenses in one stroke however is no mean thing. It’s good however that Oly never forgets what made 4/3 a flop and m4/3 a success story.
Le frog
6 months ago |I suspect you refer to me. Should be obvious that it was a response to the replies to my previous comments – but still, I should not have forgotten to add my nick. Sorry!
bart
6 months ago |I rather like the compact e-m5 and the wide array of primes, but to suggest there is no need for long lenses is maybe true for you personally, but absurd in general.
See, people get kids, those then go to school and at some point often take part in school sporting events, musicals, theatre shows and such. Most parents want pictures of such things, to just find out that all the advice they got for buying a camera made them buy things that won’t do the job.
And no, that is not a cornercase, but an extremely common situation.
See, long lenses have more uses then birding, and actually have good uses also for city dwellers.
And on another note, many do not agree with your opinion on why 4/3 wasn’t a success, and your opinion isn’t exactly a fact.
amalric
6 months ago |There has been a paradigm shift also in sales. Mirrorless penetration in the highest in Japan and South Asia countries, urban people who couldn’t care less about American School sporting events, pets (they eat them) and other niceties of the American Way of Life (AWoL).
I am afraid that you are still not realizing what is happening to you, and your very limited view of reality.
We couldn’t care less about AWoL
bart
6 months ago |Blahblah, sorry Amalric, but I’m European, living in a city, and talking purely from a European city-dweller perspective. See, schools overhere also do sporting events, musicals, theatre shows and such. So why the need for your ridiculous argument about Americanism, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with anything.
I could spend a day a week just taking pictures of the kids of my collegues during their swimming exams, sporting events etc. Some of the collegues I trust borrow my E-3 and 50-200 for that. And this is in a company with less then 200 people.
Yes there has been a paradigm shift towards mirrorless, and I wasn’t anywhere saying that that wasn’t happening
I was SPECIFICALLY AND EXCLUSIVELY commenting on your absurd statement about people no longer needing long lenses just because more people live in the city, and if you ever get out of your mother’s basement and go mingle with people who have real lifes, you’d be able to find out yourself why your statement is totally ridiculous.
What is more, the mantra that most people only need a 28-105 equiv approx has been around for way longer then those mirrorless systems, and it was already wrong 20 years ago, something which many people found out to their frustration.
amalric
6 months ago |Couldn’t care less about your unphotographic family life, it’s not my family and it’s not the readership’s either.
I only notice that you are stalking me, as if you were offended. Let me therefore ignore you, as your poor social graces deserve.
bart
6 months ago |See Amalric, as soon as someone points out that your argument doesn’t work as you present it, you get personal and start making bad assumptions about the person you talk to.
In this case, I was not talking about my family life, as I don’t have kids myself. This is just as silly and unfounded an assumption as your previous one about me being American.
It so happens that people with children are a somewhat huge demographic worldwide, so it might also be good for someone who wants to sell stuff to keep their existence in mind. You are absolutely brilliant in missing the point here.
Congratulations on also missing the ‘example’ part and your total failure to see other pretty easy to understand cases.
When talking about selling cameras and what people need, you need to look quite a bit beyond your own little world, and try to imagine what OTHER people might need, and try to draw the ‘big picture’ based on that and your own preferences. Not everyone needs the same thing, and no, not everyone needs what you need.
So… try again princely ruler, lets see what bad assumptions you come up with, and what ‘creative’ ways you find to become insulting this time.
Ming Fung
6 months ago |Alarmic, you make broad sweeping assumptions. Your broad assumptions are broader than your bald forehead. Asians eat their pets? So, Robin Wong is asian and eats his pets? You have a very limited view on reality. Perhaps some travelling to far away places might be of educational value to you. Get an education before you start playing forum guru. Broaden your views to match that legendary forehead of yours. You post some valid points but the rest of your post show your ignorance. The world does not revolve around America Alarmic.
amalric
6 months ago |I was joking, not everybody eats their pets. However in Shangai or other big city of the coast I saw the pictures of pet restaurants, there was a whole street of them.
And my comment was not so much about people who do it , but about people who all they ever do with their camera is taking portraits of their brats and pets.
amalric
6 months ago |What I know is that LiveView was never a success with 4/3 users, perhaps because Oly never took the radical step of conveying to an EVF. It is presumably doing it now, and see the absurd resistance that dSLR fanboys put up, at DPR’s 1041.
Some will always take innovation as a personal offense.As if the money they had invested guaranteed immortality to them and their pyramids. Unfortunately AF systems have proven to be the most transient things.
Therefore I understand people who invest on CV and other Leica-like lenses. They at least cannot fail as investment, especially if they have a universal mount. Leica has been there for over 80 yrs. and it is still alive and kicking, despite it has only MF lenses.
If one kept to HCB’s maxim that one only ever needs a good lens, think of the savings! Mirrorless additionally makes very easy to use MF lenses, and thus conquer piece of mind.
Today every noob behaves as if he was a pro. But pros have very specific needs, very often limited to a studio. And they can recoup the investment in 2 or 3 yrs.
What we see really is people that overspent, and then are left stranded by a change of technology. Do they deserve any sympathy? I am happy that Oly will offer a hybrid alternative, but I am afraid it won’t be cheap.
Anonymous
6 months ago |24p or mine is going in the river
Maciej
6 months ago |It’s gonna sound quite silly but I can not resist anymore and I must say this: Miquel Àngel Garcia looks alike Jaws (from James Bond movie series): http://bond.neoseeker.com/w/i/bond/9/9b/Jaws.jpg
New Olympus FT to MFT speculation | 27pixelsorless
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Geoffroy
5 months ago |Well, IMOP, the only key question here is :
Do you need to frame and made pictures via prisms and lenses with the “real” light coming into your eyes to judge and decide if you will shoot or not ?
I do, at least most of the time.
The image on an screen, what ever the quality of the screen, is not the light of reality, it is a recalculation of reality. I just cannot capture a part of the reality that I cannot evaluate as such.
Photographers who can take pictures by judging light and pictures out of a screen are undoubtly happier and better served today.
All the historical reference “pro” camera whatever their size (i.e. including the small ones leica M, contax G) did allow such a “real life” view thanks to quality “real life” viewers. it is obviously the case of the Leica M, refered hereunder.
How we will be able to further use the excellent FT lenses is mainly a marketing question, not a key concern for most “pro” photographer. Indeed the FT lenses are excellent, but there are plenty of excellent lenses everywhere, including a huge choice of legacy prime lenses like the Zeiss, Leica or even Zuiko. Nor is key the question of the rapidity of the AF, it is note central for most pro protographers who still need the control of their focus and depth of field. The key question is how far we will be able to made the shooting decision looking at the real light through excellent lenses, like the FT ones.
I am really sad to read that the chances of having a real new pro DSLR are now very thin. Olympus has been used by some for decades and was rated, for some pro users, to the same level as other “great” photographic brands like Contax, Leica, Canon or Nikon. Without this “high grade level” image even the chance of evolving as a consumer, or prosumer, brand only are just reduced.
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