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Olympus sells Imaging Business


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More sources:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/24/21301460/olympus-selling-camera-division-jip-vaio

Original company memorandum:
https://www.olympus-global.com/ir/data/announcement/2020/contents/ir00013.pdf

JIP,  the company that bought the imaging division, is a grave robber - they buy up zombie brands and put them on cheap products. That must be the end of Olympus cameras, and looks like half of the end for MFT.

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Sad but I guess while there is some life, there is some hope!  

I have a soft spot for Olympus, my very first 35mm SLR was an Oly Om1n and I have had a Oly 4/3 DSLR (was my dads) and an E-PL2 as a test of the M43 waters.

All their stuff has been great except Dads two HG 4/3 zooms developed known issues (I still have them though dunno what to do with them).

I keep thinking I should buy an Em-1 first version just to play with (and maybe try the two 4/3 zooms in whatever way I can).

Dad had a couple of very special Oly OM lenses I wish he had kept...I never talked about them to him but I swear I saw a 250mm f2 once (or was it a 350 2.8?).      I sold his 180 2.8 (a lovely little lens but not something i needed).

 

Ahh well, I hope it rises from the ashes.

 

 

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MFT will continue to produce fantastic images and videos for many years to come (indefinitely?). With such a rich ecosystem, it's hard to believe that it'll ever be "dead".

I suppose Olympus selling its imaging business is way better than them just closing it. Maybe, there's hope.

I currently have a lot of Olympus gear and I'm quite happy with it. I got away from full-frame stuff due to it being too big, heavy, and expensive for the results it got me. Not much better than MFT (for the money).

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Jip is not a company that will continue building cameras or lenses - they buy up brands like "Vaio" from Sony to sublicense them for cheap no-name products.

The brand Olympus will stay with Olympus for the (now) core business of medical equipment.

Olympus imaging brands such as OM-D, Zuiko and Pen will soon appear on smartphones, selfie sticks and the like, ending up like Polaroid and Rollei did before.

Olympus' camera technology is now history, like Yashica/Contax in the past.

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UH OH!!

Micro Four Thirds can still have a future, as the completeness of their ecosystem is second to none in the mirrorless world. And they can still give you a far more compact portable travel kit than anybody else, yes even more so than Fujifilm's APS-C (and no, Nikon 1 / Pentax Q systems don't count!). 

Panasonic does still have the other camera brands of Blackmagic, DJI, Yi, Kinefinity, Z Cam, JVC, etc who play a supporting role as they've been making Micro Four Thirds mount cameras in the past (plus the many many third parties making lenses and other accessories for the MFT ecosystem). However the loss of Olympus who has been there since the earliest days will be a big blow, and does mark the future look a little less rosy. 

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Funnily enough, I was going to post in the Panasonic G100 thread that Olympus had all the tools necessary to make a really good vlogging camera and might find their niche there to get some momentum back.

Sadly, with a company like JIP, we will get to see an Olympus vlogging camera but it will just be their name on an Aliexpress £40 special like this.

new_olympus.thumb.jpg.f70291e8046c0b17b32584e58a02ebe0.jpg

 

When I was a kid starting out as a photographer, Olympus was a big enough brand to be running a long running series of TV ads featuring Bailey so its sad to see it all ending with it going full circle and before long people will be saying "Olympus, who were they?"

 

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Very bad news indeed. All their best engineers will probably be leaving. What is their loss, may end up being a big gain for other camera manufacturers including Panasonic.

As for the decision to sell to JIP. Incredibly unimaginative.

There are a lot of other players who could have turned around the Olympus camera division. Chinese companies, American, maybe even Sigma or Samsung could have been interested in the assets and staff.

Whereas who wants to work for JIP?

The E-1X and E-M1 III will go down in history as the final Olympus cameras. If you buy one now, it's probably a good time to do so as they probably won't be manufactured for much longer.

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Shame. I've always liked Olympus but only ever had/used EM5ii.

Considered EM1iii's before the spec was announced. If they'd had 60p 4k, I might have gone that way, but the rumours of them not being around much longer also put me off.

Glad I stuck with Fuji, but sad about the demise of Olympus.

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1 hour ago, Andrew Reid said:

There are a lot of other players who could have turned around the Olympus camera division. Chinese companies, American, maybe even Sigma or Samsung could have been interested in the assets and staff.

Samsung has exited the camera business, Sigma is already committed to L Mount, I can't see either buying the division from Olympus. And if they did, the future of Olympus MFT would be just as grim, I'd say they're equally likely as owners to shut up shop with MFT as JIP is. 
 

1 hour ago, Andrew Reid said:

Just an eSIM could turn around the entire camera industry.

People don't want to handle the hassle/cost of another SIM card contract, embedded or not. What is needed is tighter and better integration with your phone, so that shooting with your mirrorless/DSLR is just about as seamless as shooting with your cellphone camera itself! This is the core point (along with the "buz buzz buzzzz" of repeating that Nikon needs to sort out their DX Lens Lineup!!) Thom Hogan has been going on about for years! & I fully agree. 

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I think I'll ride out the Olympus downfall and probably pick up another one or two of their cameras on the cheap as their brand devalues and their gear pops up on the used market.  I just bought a EM10iii new for a pittance.  Imagine I'll be able to do the same with a EM5III, E-M1 MII, or E-M1X in the not too distant future.

For me, I can still see using their bodies for another handful of years.  I've followed a lot of discontinued products over the cliff in this profession.

In the meantime my wife is in the FUJI space, so migrating to them for video will be easy enough.  The image/colors her XPRO2 spits out of the camera are impressive.

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The question is, how will Panasonic handle this, considering that a lot of technologies are actually Olympus technologies in the whole M43 ecosystem? Also, should M43 users and buyers suddenly be more conscious, now that development on the part of Olympus has stopped? Also, why suddenly now, since Olympus Imaging had been in losses for a while for while (3 consecutive years, as the statement says)? 

Hopefully a lot of questions are finally answered regarding why sensors haven't been refreshed in a while, why Olympus didn't get 10-bit video, why Olympus didn't join the L-Mount Alliance and many others. 

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3 minutes ago, sanveer said:

a lot of questions are finally answered regarding why sensors haven't been refreshed in a while

Well, I've often said I see no big reason, for me, to chase the latest and greatest when it comes to cameras, so maybe that's a bit why I was more forgiving of Olympus than other people.  Their products have been behind the curve in all regards except IBIS, and they only strongly held that niche for a short while about 6 years ago.

Shame they didn't have the resources to get their stuff into 10-bit and 60p4K, but that's how it goes.

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