Oly is still having problems

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Greg Beetham
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Oly is still having problems

Unread post by Greg Beetham »

According to this anyway http://www.sansmirror.com/newsviews/oly ... sults.html it is all a little bit strange, Olympus cameras aren’t that bad the EM5 and EM1 models are good and people do buy mirrorless if you believe the sales stories about Sony NEX models and possibly the Fuji ones so what’s the deal with Oly? Is it the 4/3rd format that’s the problem?
In Thom’s other article http://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/whe ... ssing.htmlhe scrutinizes the inscrutable way some manufacturers are doing sums these days.
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classiccameras
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Re: Oly is still having problems

Unread post by classiccameras »

From what I read in a trade journal some time back, the M/4/3 market is more or less static world wide, but for the far East where its more popular than the West.
I think the rather negative reviews of the older 4/3 system for IQ and noise has left a legacy, rightly or wrongly. Most review sites seem to prefer APS-C.
Time and time again I have read the summery in a review where they keep saying M/4/3 have come a long way and are 'almost' up with the APS-C cameras now. This must have some sort of effect on the readers.
The new OMD-EM-10 seems to get a good review but not every reviewer is that taken with it.
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bakubo
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Re: Oly is still having problems

Unread post by bakubo »

Someone posted that link on dpreview. I got a chuckle out of some of the doom and gloom there. Felt like I was on a Sony forum. :lol: I couldn't help but respond in that thread and I wrote the following stuff. I think I may have annoyed a few of the perpetual sky-is-falling crowd. :lol:

If Olympus and Panasonic get out of the m4/3 camera business then don't worry. Get an adapter and use your m4/3 lenses on a Pentax Q. No IS, no AF or MF, and can't set the aperture. No worries. Gives more opportunities to use your imagination to come up with interesting photos using your fixed focus, fixed aperture m4/3 lenses on the Pentax Q. :lol:

I just got back from about 4 weeks of traveling in Turkey. If I added up all the Olympus, Panasonic, Sony, Fuji, Nikon, Canon, Pentax, and Samsung mirrorless cameras I saw being used it would be less than the number of full size tablets being used to take photos. Clearly m4/3 is too darn small! DSLRs are too darn small! Lots of people want really big, catch the wind like a sail cameras. Especially when they travel abroad. :lol:

Seriously though, this is what I wrote in 2012 and it applies to any photo gear I get:

http://www.photoclubalpha.com/forum/vie ... off#p73345
peterottaway
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Re: Oly is still having problems

Unread post by peterottaway »

With Olympus sales and losses the way they are, it would seem prudent for the Board to merge the camera division with a stronger player in the market whilst the brand still has value.

So Olympus by Sony anyone ? The Olympus engineers are all ready in some form of arrangement with Sony so it may well simply mean a change of letterhead and the signs in the parking lot.
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Greg Beetham
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Re: Oly is still having problems

Unread post by Greg Beetham »

Olympus is strong in the medical field apparently and they probably do scientific instruments as well. I heard they make a beautiful zero backlash focus rack and they make microscopes too. http://olympusaustralia.com.au/Product/ ... Microscopy

I don’t think Oly as a corporation is in imminent danger as a whole, they probably trade on the stock market themselves like Sony does with their financial arm so they could be quite ok in some parts of their business.
It would be a shame to see the camera division go but even that might not happen in one fell swoop, the compacts might but I can’t see the ILC’s disappearing quickly.

I heard Panasonic wasn’t in wonderful shape either, but at least they have the same mount interface as Oly, as far as I know, I have no idea how well an Olympus lens would work though.

I see that arch enemy Samsung just got a huge fine for transgressing on an Apple patent, they’ll probably appeal and it’ll drag on for years.

Then there is the anti-Japanese sentiment in China at the moment too, the government there ordered that Nikon stop selling the D600 camera a while ago, maybe that was one of the reasons why Nikon brought the D610 to market and offered a fix for the previous model, which might all have been for the best anyway, for Nikon.
Greg

Ps I have no doubt Henry you would have done a fine job ruffling a few feathers with that Pentax Q suggestion, I guess they wouldn’t pick up right away they were getting their leg pulled well and truly. :roll:

I suppose those taking photos with tablets are kind of cutting out the middle man, no downloading from camera to computer involved just take the computer with you and take the photos with it directly.
Actually it could make a good funny video if there was a tour group with tablets and someone recorded their antics with a go-pro or such. :lol:

I know it’s popular to say that Minolta abandoned their MF customers when they brought out the AF camera mount, but in reality it was the customers who abandoned the MF mount, Minolta kept making SR mount cameras right up until 2001 so there was always a new body for the lenses if anyone needed one.

It was rather strange behavior actually, AF lenses didn’t have an f-stop ring so they were very propriety but that didn’t keep many Minolta customers away from the allure of new AF mount, some of whom later complained that Minolta had dumped their former MF mount…funny that.

Minolta lost the plot after they introduced the first digital A-mount camera the RD175 in 1995 by deviating off with the non A-mount RD3000 then they got back on track with the 7D and 5D before finally throwing the towel in…maybe they had a good crystal ball after all…the camera industry isn’t in very good shape right now.
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bakubo
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Re: Oly is still having problems

Unread post by bakubo »

Greg Beetham wrote:Ps I have no doubt Henry you would have done a fine job ruffling a few feathers with that Pentax Q suggestion, I guess they wouldn’t pick up right away they were getting their leg pulled well and truly. :roll:
Me? Would I do that???? :lol: Actually, one of the points that is always made on the m4/3 forum and the NEX forum is that it is easy to adapt old lenses to use on m4/3 and NEX bodies. I just used that same point to tell people they could do that with their m4/3 lenses on a tiny sensor Pentax Q. Adapting old m4/3 lenses may not have been nearly as appealing to people on the m4/3 forum though. :lol:
Greg Beetham wrote: I suppose those taking photos with tablets are kind of cutting out the middle man, no downloading from camera to computer involved just take the computer with you and take the photos with it directly.
Actually it could make a good funny video if there was a tour group with tablets and someone recorded their antics with a go-pro or such. :lol:
I remember several years ago I was surprised to see a tourist on the top of Diamond Head in the strong wind using a a big tablet. Not sure how she managed to keep it from flying out of her hands. That was my first time to see it being used as a camera for general use. Since then they are ubiquitous. Here is a photo from a few years ago of a woman on the beach in Hawaii taking photos of her kids in the water:

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Greg Beetham
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Re: Oly is still having problems

Unread post by Greg Beetham »

Henry that’s a classic, love it. :lol:
Greg
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Birma
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Re: Oly is still having problems

Unread post by Birma »

It will be a shame if Oly slow down on their m4/3 stuff. It strikes me as a strong product line and that is good in driving forward innovation and improvement across the industry. If I wasn't bought in to Sony and Nex then Oly would probably be my next bet. M4/3s has a good lens line up and the choice of two body providers is handy. The name is plain weird though :)

I think the Pentax Q is sort of cute. There is a lot of choice out there which is good.

I will not lose sleep what ever. I'll only worry when tablets are my only option for taking pictures - where would the tripod mount go? :D
Nex 5, Nex 6 (IR), A7M2, A99 and a bunch of lenses.
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bakubo
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Re: Oly is still having problems

Unread post by bakubo »

Birma wrote:It will be a shame if Oly slow down on their m4/3 stuff. It strikes me as a strong product line and that is good in driving forward innovation and improvement across the industry. If I wasn't bought in to Sony and Nex then Oly would probably be my next bet. M4/3s has a good lens line up and the choice of two body providers is handy. The name is plain weird though :)
Yes, more competition is good for us. I am not concerned though. If I was contemplating spending lots of money on new lenses then I might be hesitant, but I have all that I want that I bought 2 years ago. The only thing I have added in the last 2 years is the cheap Olympus 9mm fisheye bodycap lens (paid about $92 in Tokyo last month). I used it in Turkey and I like it. Better than I expected.
Birma wrote: I think the Pentax Q is sort of cute. There is a lot of choice out there which is good.
I see people out and about with their Pentax Q from time to time. Seen in Nepal, Turkey, Bali, Japan, and Hawaii. I don't remember for sure, but I think they were all carried by Asian people.
Birma wrote: I will not lose sleep what ever. I'll only worry when tablets are my only option for taking pictures - where would the tripod mount go? :D
I have seen people attach their smartphones and tablets to tripods. Just yesterday on a NHK TV news report I saw someone in a video clip at some sort of conference or seminar sitting at a table with a small tripod on the table in front of her and an iphone mounted on it. It appeared that she was videoing (is that a word?) the speaker.

Here is just one device to mount a tablet on a tripod:

http://www.amazon.com/Charger-City-Excl ... B008UH8SRM

Mounting a full size ipad or other tablet, putting a towel over your head, and composing your Ansel Adams-style landscapes might be sort of fun. That huge display and it isn't even upside down or reversed. :lol: Tiny sensor though. I wonder if the Sony QX100 can be used with a big tablet? No raw mode and few manual controls though. If there was a Sony QX1000 with raw, big sensor, full controls, and that you could use with a big tablet then I could see that for some applications it might be very cool. That big display does look very nice. I have seen people taking photos with tablets and the big display does give a different feeling.
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Re: Oly is still having problems

Unread post by classiccameras »

Photography and picture taking 'devices' are evolving very quickly as it seems photo technology is in the fast lane of development. I don't think Olympus is going under in the camera section, their OM-D range are very popular especially in Asia and that includes Panasonic G cameras. These two companies sales are quite small but sustainable, however, there is some evidence to suggest there is a small increase in world growth of M/4/3 but nothing to shout about. I think the dark horse in all this is Pentax K mount, they are small no doubt about it but their fan/user base is growing and they stand up well when put up against the Canikon equivelants.
Its hard to put any kind of prediction on Sony products, as Winston Churchill said about Russia during WW2, they are a mystery wrapped up in a riddle inside an enigma or words to that effect.
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Birma
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Re: Oly is still having problems

Unread post by Birma »

Thanks for the info. Henry - I can see now that there is nothing in the way of me migrating to tablets! ;)

I have thought about taking my iPad with me when I am out taking pictures as this would provide a good way of checking out focus etc. more easily than using the rear screen on its own. I have one of those wifi SD cards in the A99 but it is too fiddly to connect-up. I should persevere. Everything since the A99 has had wifi built-in, but Sony doesn't seem as slick as other makes in making wifi work with external devices (e.g. my Nex 6). (Canon, Oly and Panny seem to do a good job.)
Nex 5, Nex 6 (IR), A7M2, A99 and a bunch of lenses.
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Re: Oly is still having problems

Unread post by bakubo »

Apple Explores Adding a Lens Mounting System to the iPhone

http://www.macrumors.com/2014/03/13/app ... ens-mount/

Don't know if this can be used with a big ipad too or not.
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bakubo
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Re: Oly is still having problems

Unread post by bakubo »

Someone on dpreview made an interesting post. Here is just a bit of it:

These are very hard times for the entire industry. The pie is shrinking, and it is shrinking fast. The paradigms are shifting.

Just three years ago in 2010 CIPA reported over 121 million cameras shipped. For 2013 the total was only 61 million... almost half as many. This is a huge decline in market during a relatively short period. For the first quarter of 2014, CIPA is reporting only 6.4 million cameras shipped. This means 2014 could end up with the total being under 30 million.

Stop and think about that.

2010 - 121 million shipped
2011 - 115 million shipped
2012 --- 98 million shipped
2013 --- 61 million shipped
2014 --- 30 million shipped? (based on first quarter results)


http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/53685615
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Birma
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Re: Oly is still having problems

Unread post by Birma »

Wow - that is a big change. Oly's figures don't seem so bad now - every maker must be hit by this.
Nex 5, Nex 6 (IR), A7M2, A99 and a bunch of lenses.
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bakubo
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Re: Oly is still having problems

Unread post by bakubo »

I had heard people say that camera sales have dropped a lot in the last few years, but I had no idea the drop was as big as this.
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