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.”
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.
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.
Lastolite by Manfrotto (since 2016), previously known as Lastolite when it was acquired by Vitec in 2011 is rebranding again. This time, it’s dropped the Lastolite branding completely and will now become part of the Manfrotto brand. The company says that the rebrand is “in response to industry and consumer behaviour changes over recent years as still and moving images continues to converge”.
The Lastolite by Manfrotto section of the Manfrotto website has already been modified to reflect the change, pointing users to the newly branded products. Although, for a while, they say that you may still receive products with Lastolite by Manfrotto branding.
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