A translation of an interview with Haruo Ogawa, Olympus marketing division director has been posted on the dpreview.com forums and points to an exciting future with Olympus now that the corporate issues appear to have been addressed.

The key points in the interview seem to be:

Olympus are working on a new style of Micro Four Thirds camera which will target advanced photographers and have a superb built-in EVF at last.

The current PEN range without built-in EVF were apparently designed to market to the “camera joshi,” [literally, “camera girls”] who want retro styling.

But as I have said many times on my blog, I want a built-in viewfinder – I do not like composing and taking photos using the LCD screen – so maybe at last they will come up with a very innovative camera more to my liking.

Olympus are also working on a successor to the E-5 dSLR.

This is fanatastic news as personally, I believe they do not upgrade their high end dSLRs rapidly enough and they fall behind the competition too quickly.

That said, there is nothing in the Canon or Nikon world that gives me the same features of an Olympus E-5 with a ZD 50-200mm f/2.8-3.5 SWD lens – this is just a brilliant combination giving a much lighter 100-400mm wide aperture zoom than is possible on Canon or Nikon and it is weathersealed and has closer focusing. Plus you can use a EC-20 2x teleconverter to hand hold with the built-in image satbilisation of the body a 200-800mm f/5.6-7 zoom in which AF still works.

The news is also great because many have feared Four Thirds is looking like a dead end, but while the keep progressing the high end dSLR at least, there is good reason to stick with it for those who have already invested in the lenses.