About 10 days ago, Olympus announced the fact that it is in talks to sell the camera division to JIP. This prompted some nonsense about that being the end of Olympus. Nothing could be further from the truth. As I said on the day of that announcement, it’s gonna be business as usual.
Let me edit that to read “business as usual PLUS some new stuff even I didn’t previously know about!”
Olympus is announcing the newest updates to the lens roadmap, including a new 8-25mm F4.0 PRO and a telephoto macro lens! Also the upcoming M.Zuiko Digital ED 150-400mm F4.5 TC1.25x IS PRO lens is scheduled to be released this winter – along with a first-ever Bird Intelligent Subject Detection AF firmware update for the E-M1X.
Many of you contacted me regarding the intelligent subject detection feature in the flagship Olympus bodies. You wanted birds added to the list. Well, birds just got added to the list. At least for those of us who have the OM-D E-M1X. I haven’t tried it or seen it yet, but I am hopeful it works as well as the other intelligent subject detection stuff. (For those asking why this feature isn’t being added to other cameras, my assumption is that it’s because the other OM-D cameras only have one backend processor. The “X” is the only model with two processors and the intelligent subject detection feature is very processor intensive. But that’s just my guess.)
Also, while we don’t have any details, we see that Olympus is going to deliver an alternative to the Panasonic 100-400mm zoom. For bird and wildlife photographers who don’t need the f/4.5 constant aperture 150-400mm lens with built in teleconverter, the 100-400 from Olympus will be a good alternative. No pricing yet but the 100-400mm lens is absolutely bound to be much less expensive than the 150-400mm lens so stay tuned.
Counterpoint these facts with some of the nonsense you were hearing a week ago. It must be surprising to those who said there’d be no more Olympus lenses. Oops!
In all seriousness, if you are reading the camera forums and treating that as news, you should not. On any given day, 90% of what I read there is at least partially false or deliberately misleading. Olympus is planning on selling cameras and lenses. It’s just that they may have different bosses, but same idea.
More info at: getolympus.com/development
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6 Responses
Even in the worst of the Internet prognosticators predictions came true, our Olympus cameras will continue to produce excellent results for years. Who knows in 4 or 5 years Sony will figure out how to do RAW files and ergonomics, Nikon will pick up on what a mirrorless camera can really do, and well Canon who knows with them 🙂
I have no intention of switching and I’m looking forward to see what happens.
I’d bet $1000 that Nikon (as we know it) will be out of business by then.
It’s reasonable to assume that JIP would not buy a business unless they thought they could make money doing so. The obvious way to do that is to support the business you just bought.
As to the bet, sorry Scott, I have a terrible track record for bets. I do hope you’re wrong though.
As to JIP, without knowing details about the transaction, which if I understand right haven’t been made public, its all speculation at this point. We’ll find out within the next year what direction they’ll be going. Until then, I intend to go out and make some images.
Hi Bob I hope I am wrong too. I really do. But the pandemic is putting lots of pressure on all the camera companies and unless Nikon finds a buyer like JIP I fear they will be gone. As for JIP there are no details to share. This is the due diligence phase. Negotiations are ongoing. I do know that more lenses are coming from Olympus either way.
I went through this before when Ricoh took over Pentax a few years back. It worked out great for Pentax users and it is looking the same here for us Olympus users, yay!