Olympus Full Frame

[kye]

I see two major trends in this sector, convergence of stills and video, and computational photography.

I don't see computational photography being ready for some time and there isn't really a market leader (Apple perhaps? Hardly a likely partner), leaving video as a potential direction.

Olympus has deep stills experience so maybe they partner with a video only company, like Red or Arri. I have no idea how likely that is, probably almost zero, but it would make sense from a certain perspective.

The cinema company would get a partner who does lenses, has deep stills history, and is in the consumer market. Olympus would get a partner who can give experience designing bodies built for huge data rates and image processing.

The not-so-distant future of imaging belongs to the smartphone for mum and dad, the cinema camera for the big screen, and the hand-held run-and-gun setup for small-screen and cashed-up amateurs. Adding AI and computational photography to the mix would best be done by acquiring a third partner down the track once we've moved forward a bit.

[webrunner5]

47 minutes ago, kye said:

I see two major trends in this sector, convergence of stills and video, and computational photography.

I don't see computational photography being ready for some time and there isn't really a market leader (Apple perhaps? Hardly a likely partner), leaving video as a potential direction.

Olympus has deep stills experience so maybe they partner with a video only company, like Red or Arri. I have no idea how likely that is, probably almost zero, but it would make sense from a certain perspective.

The cinema company would get a partner who does lenses, has deep stills history, and is in the consumer market. Olympus would get a partner who can give experience designing bodies built for huge data rates and image processing.

The not-so-distant future of imaging belongs to the smartphone for mum and dad, the cinema camera for the big screen, and the hand-held run-and-gun setup for small-screen and cashed-up amateurs. Adding AI and computational photography to the mix would best be done by acquiring a third partner down the track once we've moved forward a bit.

I don't care what most of them do. Some of them are going to be screwed. There is no room for all these camera company's anymore. Just about all of them now have the same stuff in them, and what is missing is of no real concern to 99% of the people in the world. Sure we want 10 bit, 98% of the people don't even know what the hell that means.

I have no clue how they are Ever going to sell all this stuff, or even who the hell needs most of what is in them. Like everyone is going to buy Resolve and edit all their stuff, and Vlog? Their phone does all most every thing they need. These camera company's are living on borrowed time in a dream world.

[nigelbb]

54 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

I don't care what most of them do. Some of them are going to be screwed. There is no room for all these camera company's anymore. Just about all of them now have the same stuff in them, and what is missing is of no real concern to 99% of the people in the world. Sure we want 10 bit, 98% of the people don't even know what the hell that means.

I have no clue how they are Ever going to sell all this stuff, or even who the hell needs most of what is in them. Like everyone is going to buy Resolve and edit all their stuff, and Vlog? Their phone does all most every thing they need. These camera company's are living on borrowed time in a dream world.

+1

I am on holiday in France at present & the other day we visited Mont-St-Michel. I decided that I didn't want to lug my Sony RX10IV up the steep streets so took my Sony RX100VI (which I use most of the time anyway unless I really need the RX10's 24-600mm FF equivalent zoom lens). Towards the end of the visit the battery ran out & had left spares in the car so I was reduced to using my iPhone 6s Plus. When I got back I uploaded my images I was surprised how well the quality of the iPhone photos & video held up. It's a bummer to have a single fixed lens instead of a zoom but TBH for snapshots as mementos I can see why the vast majority of people find their smartphone is good enough.

I can't see how all these companies producing $2K+ FF cameras with $2K+ monstrous lenses can possibly make a profit. I gave up FF when I gave up shooting professionally. I have been happy with Sony 1" RX series bridge cameras for the last few years. I might be tempted with a MFT as I miss ultra wide angle & fisheye but it would need to be small. My ideal camera at present would be an OM-D EM5 with the EM1 II sensor & 4K video. The G9, GH5 & OM-D EM-1 II are great cameras but are getting to be FF size. In which case I would prefer an A7III or a Z6 or some other FF mirrorless instead of a big & heavy M43.

[Chrad]

30 minutes ago, nigelbb said:

I might be tempted with a MFT as I miss ultra wide angle & fisheye but it would need to be small. My ideal camera at present would be an OM-D EM5 with the EM1 II sensor & 4K video. 

GX9?

[kye]

2 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

I don't care what most of them do. Some of them are going to be screwed. There is no room for all these camera company's anymore. Just about all of them now have the same stuff in them, and what is missing is of no real concern to 99% of the people in the world. Sure we want 10 bit, 98% of the people don't even know what the hell that means.

I have no clue how they are Ever going to sell all this stuff, or even who the hell needs most of what is in them. Like everyone is going to buy Resolve and edit all their stuff, and Vlog? Their phone does all most every thing they need. These camera company's are living on borrowed time in a dream world.

+2

We'll see huge consolidation and what happens now will decide who will be the new Canon and who will be the new Pentax in 5 years.

The reasons that I think the third category is small-screen and enthusiast content is that more and more people are producing video content for online and many of those will need multiple cameras for interviews, and even if you can use your phone for one of them you're probably not going to buy two other phones for the other two angles, although you might just use last year's and the year before that. Everyone wants a wedding video, an engagement video, there are now clandestine proposal videos being shot by photographers hiding in bushes nearby (I kid you not) and this trend will continue as the first world economies change from manufacturing to services economies. Social media and human vanity and sentimentality aren't going away.

The other segment of this market is cashed-up enthusiasts. Every office building has a dozen or more people who own a 5D and 24-70 F4, not because it's got the FF look, not for the low light, but because they earn 100K a year, like photos and want "the best" or "what the pros use". It will take a long time for the answer to those criteria to be "use your phone". Don't forget that photography is an art that people think comes from the camera.

"That's a lovely photo, you must have a great camera".

This alone might be Canons entire profit margin - selling the same camera that took the lovely picture to the person that wants to buy the ability to take similar ones on holiday or at the park.

[nigelbb]

1 hour ago, Chrad said:

GX9?

Thanks for the suggestion. I had an OM-D EM5 & loved everything about it apart from the soft 1080p video. Ergonomically it was great. A used OM-D EM5 II is a similar price t a used GX9 but of course lacks the 4K video. If the GX9 IBIS is as good as the OM-D EM5 then I would be very tempted to try a GX9.

[nigelbb]

2 hours ago, nigelbb said:

Thanks for the suggestion. I had an OM-D EM5 & loved everything about it apart from the soft 1080p video. Ergonomically it was great. A used OM-D EM5 II is a similar price t a used GX9 but of course lacks the 4K video. If the GX9 IBIS is as good as the OM-D EM5 then I would be very tempted to try a GX9.

Oh dear. The GX9 looked like a contender then I saw that 4K suffers a 1.26x crop. Maybe the OM-D EM10 III is the one?

[CyclingBen]

@nigelbb The E-M10 Mark III doesn't have a crop in 4k.  I've been messing around with mine for the past two weeks and it's been a good experience. 

There are a few annoyances as far as controls go; No way to zoom in to check focus and have peaking on at the same time, no way to zoom in to check focus while recording, you have to assign peaking to a button and it's not on by default so you have to turn it on each time you turn the camera on, have to use the touch screen to change ISO once recording, no way to do custom white balance in movie mode, there is a splash screen that comes up every time you switch to movie mode and you have to select a mode (HD, 4K, Slow Motion or quick clips).

Otherwise I personally like it a lot, IBIS is great, the autofocus for photos is really good (not great for video) and surprisingly the battery lasts for a quite a while. The 4K that comes out of it is beautiful with some excellent colors.

 

[Trek of Joy]

11 hours ago, Robert Collins said:

I actually think Fuji is positioned to do very well. APSC ILCs currently make up about 75% of ILC sales and Fuji is the only company that has a focused strategy and complete system in this format. Canon, Nikon and Sony seem to give scant regard to this format and are busy chasing the 'pro' FF market.

In terms of image quality, yes you can get better image quality with FF but only if you are prepared to go for heavy and very expensive 2.8 zooms and 1.4 primes, a route many people dont want to go down.

Yes, APS-c dominates thanks to casual shooters buying cheap plastic DSLR kits, but that's still mostly CaNikon. Fuji is a small niche brand with very little in terms of retail presence. CaNikon is literally everywhere, and that visibility is a large part of the reason they own ~75% of the market. Olympus is in the same boat, no real visibility to casual shooters. Fuji's race to the bottom with multiple low margin entry level bodies that undercut their top models isn't a sound strategy either. Like m43, they rely on basically one sensor to cover the entire range, so there's no difference in IQ between models. Casual shooters don't care about 10-bit and 60p, things like AF and ease of use are the driving factors in the entry segment. I like what the XT3 offers, but I'll wait for the inevitable XT30 that gives me the same spec for 1/2 the price.

The Tamron 28-75/2.8 is lighter than my 16-55/2.8, and combined with the a7III its a much better low light combo. My 28/2 and 85/1.8 aren't larger than Fuji equivalents like the 23/1.4 and 56/1.2 - and no Fuji can get you 42-45mp like current FF offerings. You don't have to use F/1.4 primes and 2.8 zooms, to get the equivalent image with FF you can easily just go with f/1.8/2 primes and f/4 zooms to stay smaller and lighter. Same applies when comparing to m43, and that's the problem m43 is battling on the high end, cheap FF glass combined with the larger sensor gets you better IQ in a comparably sized/priced package. M43 has the small size advantage with the tiny primes and smaller zooms, at the cost of light gathering and ugly noise with higher ISO's. Pick your poison.

Chris

[sanveer]

Unless someone says something remotely incriminating, this may be just shooting in the air, but I feel the reason why Olympus didn't join the L-Mount Alliance, may have something to do with Leica dictating the lens and other specifications in unsuitable or non-negotiable ways. Sigma apparently makes lenses for both Panasonic and Leica. But Olympus is not really a contract manufacturer for anyone. I think the exact specification of the Olympus FF lenses would shed more light on why Olympus isn't joining the Alliance. It is very likely that the cream of lenses will remain Leica Lenses (super fast lenses for instance) according to the negotiations with Leica (making them prohibitively pricey), something Olympus wojld not have agreed to, since they make some superb fast lenses. 

Hopefully the first quarter of 2019 will highlight both the roadmap of Olympus' M43 and its FF Dream. 

 

https://www.reddotforum.com/content/2018/09/photokina-2018-details-on-the-l-mount-alliance/