Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Back in 2020, Olympus sold its camera and imaging business after a series of rumors. In 2021, Olympus’s imaging business belonged to OM Digital Solutions, and word started to spread that the company would fully rebrand from Olympus.
And now, it’s happening, OM Digital Solutions has announced that Olympus is no more. Other than the upcoming gear, even the existing models will from now on be a part of the “OM System.”
Released in 2019, the Olympus OM-D E-M1X was met with a bit of a mixed response. It was a high-performance flagship – the Olympus equivalent of the Canon 1DX Mark III or Nikon D5 – but it had Micro Four Thirds users torn. It’s a big camera with a built-in vertical grip and the whole point of MFT for them is that it’s a small camera system. Not so much with the OM-D E-M1X.
Well, now, it looks like its time is ending. Japanese retailers are starting to list the Olympus OM-D E-M1X as discontinued, although it’s not listed as such on the Olympus website nor is it discontinued on the OM Digital website. At least, not yet. Many US retailers like Amazon and B&H still list cameras in stock, but when Japanese retailers start to list camera gear as discontinued, it usually becomes official not too long afterwards.
Well, there’s been a lot of speculation about what’s going to happen to the name Olympus since its acquisition by JIP was completed at the beginning of the year. In February, the newly formed OM Digital hoped to be able to keep using the name Olympus and it looked like they might for a few years.
But in August, it was rumoured camera models were expecting to be renamed and now it looks like the brand as a whole is, too. And, yes, the two previous logo trademark registrations (here and here) were correctly assumed to be the new brand for Olympus cameras. Olympus is now OM System.
Well, this is interesting. It seems that Olympus (AKA OM Digital) might be looking towards the stars. A new Japanese patent describes a new Micro Four Thirds system with a built-in “astrotracer” feature. Essentially they want the sensor to track the motion of the stars so that you can get longer exposures at night without getting blur from the planet’s rotation.
It’s a nifty sounding feature and it’s one we’ve actually seen before, although it’s perhaps not surprising that most people have never heard of it, as it was found in the Pentax K1 Mark II, amongst others. They both appear to work in a similar way, too, with the sensor moving to compensate for the earth’s rotation and keep the stars in the same part of the sensor.
OM Digital Services has announced a new lens roadmap for Olympus M.Zuiko lenses apparently scheduled to be released. There aren’t a lot of changes, but there are a couple of interesting new lenses being added, including an ED 20mm f/1.4 Pro and a 40-150mm f/4 Pro.
Olympus already has a 40-150mm f/2.8 Pro and a super low budget 40-150mm f/4-5.6 R. The new f/4 Pro would present an option that sits in between the $199 and $1,499 options, offering a lower budget option but with decent quality. The 20mm f/1.4 Pro fills a nice little hole in their primes lineup in between the 17mm f/1.2 and 25mm f/1.2 Pro lenses.
It looks like OM Digital is planning to announce a new Olympus camera at some point soon, according to a new camera registration spotted by Nokishita. The registration appears to simply be the wireless certification for a new camera, but the fact that it shows both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz WiFi suggests that it’s likely something high end.
So far, all we’ve seen from OM Digital since taking over Olympus is the Pen E-P7 – at least as far as cameras go – and that’s not even coming to a global market. Well, that and the fact that they’re renaming everything. So, this would mark their first international release of a new camera since taking over.
While the fate of cameras formerly produced by Olympus seems in good hands with the recently formed OM Digital Solutions, the name itself has had something of a question mark over it since the news of a takeover first broke. Initially, it looked like JIP were planning to kill off the Olympus brand name fairly quickly, with an official statement from Olympus that it will continue “for the foreseeable future”.
A short time later, OM Digital Solutions confirmed in an interview with Digitec that they had secured the use of the Olympus brand name and would continue to use it “for the next few years and for a longer time than we had originally assumed”. Now, though, it looks like that might changing speculation around the web prove to be true.
Swiss website, Digitec recently interviewed OM Digital’s Vice President of Sales and Product Management for EMEA, USA and Canada, Sandro Rymann. In the interview, they cover topics such as the transition from Olympus to OM Digital, the struggles of starting a new company in the middle of a global pandemic, cooperation with Panasonic and new gear.
And in a rather amusingly worded answer, Mr Rymann did indeed confirm that there is a new camera coming in the next few weeks, and it won’t be the only one to come during this fiscal year. I wouldn’t get excited just yet, though. He didn’t say what type of camera it would be. It might simply be an update to the company’s Tough line of cameras.
OM Digital really seems to have taken the initiative since taking over from Olympus. Along with the recent joint live stream chat with Panasonic, they’ve relaunched the official Micro Four Thirds website with a completely new redesign. The new website, they say, has been designed to enhance the overall user experience and now offers search and mobile-friendly features.
The idea seems to be that the Micro Four Thirds ecosystem has grown so large now that it needed better organisation for its users to be able to find what they need, including products from the 56 companies they say support the Micro Four Thirds camera system.
Well, there’s been talk around the rumoursphere lately about OM Digital possibly joining up in the L Mount alliance with some full-frame “Olympus” goodness, but that’s definitely not happening according to the joint Panasonic & OM Digital YouTube event this week. OMD’s official stance is “I will not do full size” and they won’t be joining the L Mount alliance.
The company also confirmed that they are developing new products that we can expect to hear more about soon, and Panasonic also says they’re thinking about both Micro Four Thirds cameras and lenses.
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