It certainly has been a roller-coaster 18 months at Olympus.<\/p>\n
In 2011, it looked like it may have been all over for them as an independent camera manufacturer with all the now well documented financial upheavals which have apparently been a blight of the profit sheets for some 20 years.<\/p>\n
Their innovative Four Thirds camera system<\/a> was looking like there was zero future.<\/p>\n Their quite successful PEN series of Micro Four Thirds cameras<\/a> still didn’t have the functionality and image quality to attract enthusiasts like myself who wanted a high end camera with a built-in viewfinder.<\/p>\n Their innovative waterproof, shock-proof, everything proof TOUGH cameras were losing their attractiveness due to better performing competition products which nudged in on this market, while the need for such cameras were diminishing given that most had a camera phone now.<\/p>\n Then all of a sudden, out of no where, they introduce, arguably, one of the best cameras ever made for the non-professional photographer, the brilliant Olympus OM-D E-M5 Micro Four Thirds camera<\/a><\/p>\n The E-M5\u00a0 has lived up to the hype because,\u00a0 for the first time in a mirrorless compact system camera, it combined almost everything most people need and want:<\/strong><\/p>\n For the first time that I can recall, Olympus Australia at least, has gone all out to promote a great Olympus product, for too long the enthusiast camera world marketing has been dominated by the 2 big players – Canon and Nikon that it would seem Olympus didn’t really exist in this market.<\/p>\n Along with Panasonic, I think the Micro Four Thirds system will continue to dominate the mirrorless world as it gives the perfect combination of lens size and image quality for most people’s needs whilst still allowing shallow depth of field imagery when you want it, while being close to the perfect size for high end movie production.<\/p>\n Nikon has gone the small ladies camera route with its Nikon 1 system<\/a> but with very limited ability to get narrow depth of field and limited lens range as yet, which will seriously forever limit it’s attraction to the enthusiast photographer and will perhaps struggle to compete with the likes of the Sony RX-100<\/strong> fixed lens wide aperture zoom 2.7x crop shirt-pocketable compact cameras.<\/p>\n Canon has joined the plethora of APS-C mirrorless cameras and will be stuck with no built-in image stabilisation and larger, heavier lenses, and stragely, they do not seem to have developed super fast AF yet according to current reports of the EOS-M camera<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n This leaves a brilliant opportunity for Olympus and Panasonic to really make great strides in their dominance of the compact system camera market and to bring life back into their Four Thirds system which makes a nice complimentary camera system in the interim for those wanting fast AF tracking for fast moving subjects, and this would help placate many patient long-suffering Four Thirds users frustrated by the lack of direction in recent years.<\/p>\n\n
So what would I do if I was running Olympus?<\/h3>\n