A few days ago, OM Digital tweeted out a little teaser that something was coming this week. The tweet doesn’t really give any hints as to what it’s going to be, but then a live stream popped up on the Olympus Live YouTube channel, set for Friday, April 2nd at 10am UK time (that’s 5am for US East Coast if all your clocks have gone forward).
It doesn’t sound like they’ll be announcing any new gear, although perhaps we’ll hear at least something about the new camera OM Digital registered a few days ago. Instead, it seems that the stream will be a discussion of the future of Micro Four Thirds between OM Digital and Panasonic.
There still hasn’t been another tweet posted relating to what’s coming on Friday, but since the live stream placeholder popped up, we have a bit more information about what we can expect to see. The description for the video reads (Google translated)…
In 2020, the Micro Four Thirds system achieved the No. 1 share of the number of units by lens mount in the domestic market. In commemoration of “Four Thirds Day” on April 3, photographer Koichi Akagi will cut into the manufacturer’s product planning manager under the title of “The charm and future of Micro Four Thirds”. Live Streaming Date: April 2nd (Friday) 18: 00- Performers: Photographer Koichi Akagi Panasonic Corporation Product Planning Department Toshiyuki Tsumura OM Digital Solutions Co., Ltd. Product Strategy Eiji Shirota
It also appears that the stream will be in Japanese, given the text on the thumbnail and the fact that the description is also written in Japanese – and that the entire rest of the channel’s content is in Japanese. Let’s just hope that YouTube’s algorithms are able to subtitle it well enough in realtime for those who don’t understand Japanese.
Even though it’s unlikely that we’ll hear any gear announcements, I’m very interested to hear what both OM Digital and Panasonic has to say about the future of Micro Four Thirds. The Olympus situation is still pretty muddy, except for a lot of promises that may or may not pan out, but Panasonic’s been mostly pretty quiet about Micro Four Thirds since launching their full-frame S series cameras.
Although, there is a Panasonic GH6 on the way so maybe we’ll hear one or two bits of info about that as well.
Whatever they say, as somebody who shoots with five Micro Four Thirds bodies (for video, anyway), I’m definitely very interested to hear where the two companies see the format going over the next few years. It’s been somewhat neglected of late with all the full-frame mirrorless hype.
[via 43Rumors]
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