I'm behind Olympus

Over at the Online Photographer, Mike Johnston calls on Olympus supporters to unite.

I'm not much one for brand wars. I was once active in various Flickr groups, and occasionally in the DP Review forums - but I got tired of the general focus on minutiae of technology. (Special pointer to the E-System Group on Flickr, though - there's a community that knows how to stop stupid arguments by pointing out that you could be doing something worthwhile photographically, rather than hammering the keyboard with your latest whinge.)

I take photos these days. More, if truth be told, than I have time to process.

More, if truth be told, than I have inclination to process. But my aversion to post-processing is a tale for another day...

But I suppose I may as well stick my head above the parapet. Mike's right, Olympus deserve better than their management have given them.

The guys who make cameras and lenses are superb. They've taken risks that other companies have shied away from. And that's putting it mildly. To this day, you still hear about "full frame" as if anything smaller is somehow lacking - when what was lacking all along was vision.
35mm sensors have their place - mostly replacing medium format and video cameras, at the time of writing. But the market has seen what APS-C can do, and is moving towards it - as Kirk Tuck observed only in the last few days.

(And I count Four Thirds in APS-C, by the way - the charts on the Wikipedia page show pretty simply that it's closest to the various APS-C sizes.)

I have loads of Olympus kit, so would naturally like them to survive.

I'm not fussed if Four Thirds dies, as I can migrate to Micro Four Thirds and Panasonic bodies. I'm in no real danger of losing my investment here, it seems.

What I don't want to see is a company that innovated so effectively have to leave the marketplace. Olympus, like Pentax and Sony, were truly different from their larger competitors because they had no existing customers to try and "protect". (Image stabilisation in the body? A decent range of lenses for APS-C? Why would the incumbents bother with such things, when they can make you spend more on "upgrading"?)

Olympus is more than cameras. As a company, their medical imaging division is their main business. Which, I hope, is a fairly stable market even in this economic downturn. But if Olympus can't make it through, I hope they at least find a buyer for their photographic division.

I truly believe that Photographers are better off for Olympus having been in the game, even if they weren't using Olympus gear. So here's hoping that they can continue...