Olympus's Teaser Campaign

Olympus has [apparently] started a teaser campaign linking the [alleged] upcoming Micro 4/3 camera with the 50th anniversary of Maitani-san's famous half-frame Pen camera. It looks like it's going to be a long, hard slog before we get to real information, so just keep telling yourself "they could be telling us nothing, they could be telling us nothing..." as we go along, and try to enjoy it....

Mike
(Thanks to Adam McA.)

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Featured Comment by Ray Bullen (Ow, Dept.): "Surely it's an Olympus Pen-Ding for now...."

Comments

[Eolake Stobblehouse]

Yes. Like a five-hour striptease.

[Jim in Denver]

Try to enjoy it? No problem! That's a very well done commercial, and a few more in the time-being will be a pleasure to watch.

I just hope that the actual Olympus pen-D (or whatever they wind up calling it) is the camera of all our dreams...

[Miserere]

My favourite pen is a tax...

[erlik]

the [alleged] upcoming Micro 4/3 camera

Mike, there's nothing alleged about it. They had a billboard a couple of months ago (at PMA?) announcing there will be a big announcement :-) on June 15 in Berlin. Can't find the photo of the billboard at the moment, but it was around.

Then, there is the announcement by Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, president of Olympus at DigitalCamera.jp. Go down towards the bottom of the page. It's under 5/13 heading. He also implies (bad translation) it will have video.

Then the Olympus Twitter says the MFT camera is coming soon, although without a date.

What is alleged is that another MFT camera will come before this year ends. If this announcement thingy is true, maybe that's also true.

BTW, Mike, my posts have been losing HTML code lately. As soon as I hit "post". So if there's no real link, here's it again in text

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.digitalcamera.jp&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=ja&tl=en&zn=en

[Mark]

2009 has been a pretty nice year so far... Pentax K7 and now this. About time we started heading back towards small but still excellent cameras.

[Juan Buhler]

Excellent. Just when I was about to give in and get a G1. I'll wait now, I want a micro 4/3rds, but something more Olympus-y and less Panasonic-y.

[Eolake Stobblehouse]

It seems too much to hope for, but then the same was said about the Red Sox going to the top.

[robert e]

Hm, well there has already been a Pen D, as well as E and F variants. So I guess they will have to call it Pen G; or, hey, why not "Pen G1"? (Presumably it can share lenses with the G1.) Oh, now wouldn't "Pen G1i" be a not-at-all-weird name for a camera? (Destined to be colloquially morphed into "Penguin Eye".) Yeah, it's late here; way late...

[Sylvain Goffin]

Mike, for what it's worth and your m43 craving,
www.43rumors.com

[Player]

And that's tough when you're using Viagra haha.

[mani]

Firstly, that's a beautifully executed teaser imho - charming and intriguing, too.
I confess I can hardly wait to see what's coming on the 26th - if it can be that Leica digiCL that I'd love to have with me at all times, with the simplicity and charm of the original Pen F, then I'll be buying (along with the overpriced M-mount converter, of course).

For a while I've had a feeling that manufacturers are finally catching-on to the fact that there's an enormous hunger for simplicity and 'anti-gadgetry' even in the digital realm: a massive demographic that want to return to the lo-tech, intuitive, unmediated experience of film cameras, but with the convenience and immediacy of digital. Maybe we're finally getting what we want?

[Nick]

Sweet, if the new one is ¥6,000 yen, like the original, I'm giving the Misses one on her birthday!

[misha]

I'll wager they'll call it the Pen D.

I love the system. I have two 4/3 bodies, and a complement of lenses.

Can't wait.

[john robison]

I've got one of those early one lug Pens. It was manufactured July/1960 according to the date code. It's still working and in fact I have film in it now. I can't imagine my E-410, purchased in February this year still working 49 years from now.

The film will be souped in Diafine and in our apartment's tiny bathroom I'll use an even older Durst Reporter make prints. Can you say 'forgotten camera'?

[Nick]

Olympus is so cute with their quixotic tendencies to fall in love with smaller cameras and alternative formats, I just hope this one does better than most of their offerings.

[mani]

Something I can absolutely guarantee is that the version name will *not* be the one-S.

[Mike Plews]

All this has made me want to buy some Velvia and dust of my trusty XA.
It's still a brilliant design.

[Amin]

I had money in a box marked "Olympus Micro Four Thirds". Waited and waited. Then the teasing began.

As far as I am concerned, teaser campaigns are appropriate for products which are arriving in a timely fashion. Oly MFT was announced quite a long time ago, back when the Panasonic G1 was being shown as a prototype.

I gave up waiting, pulled the money out of my box, and bought a Nikon D5000 with a 35/1.8. Great combo, and it fits in the same small bag I bought for the Olympus MFT gear.

I'll still be interested to see what Olympus manages. Samsung NX will be hot on their heels, but I am confident that the Olympus product will have unique strengths.

The "orange sardine can" concept model is concerning because there is no viewfinder. There is a hot shoe, which could interface with an external EVF and certainly can be used with an accessory optical viewfinder. We'll have to wait and see what they do.

[Jim Hart]

1969, Vietnam, in the U.S. Army (wearing green and learning to smoke, swear, and drink simultaneously) I managed to get to the PX in Vung Tau.

I scored my first "real" camera - A Pen FT half frame 35mm.

Film could be hard to get, but I managed to shoot quite a few slides (which have aged well, except that some need new mounts) and color prints (asa 64!) which haven't aged well at all. The advantage, at the time when film was short, of getting two pics for each frame was huge.

I loaned it to a friend after returning to The World and he managed to break it - something I'd managed to avoid while shooting in a combat zone.

I've fond memories of that Olympus.

But, alas, I shoot Nikon now so the new offering won't be getting into my kit.

[Ken Sky]

I spoke to an Olympus Canada employee that has seen an early preproduction model and said "think Leica M3". When I asked about a pancake lens he said there would be something a littlemore protruding than the Pen F pancake but still eminently pocketable.

[Eolake Stobblehouse]

Me, I hope it'll have no viewfinder, only a tiltable screen.

Tip: for long links you can shorten them at:
http://snipurl.com
or even better:
http://tr.im
The latter has a very useful widget for it.

[jay]

Isn't this the sexy, retro, Leica-looking little camera they exhibited at PMA? The reps claimed to know no details about it, except that it was slated for mid 2009. It looked like it took interchangeable lenses. But, the reps couldn't confirm. It was stuck away to the side in its own case, with no info, and given little attention. The unit was small... more or less about the size of my G7, I think a bit thinner, so quite pocketable, and looked somewhat like the original Pen, but in all white. I've looked around the web for a pic, but don't see it, and didn't take one myself.

[jay]

Finally found a pic of the one shown at PMA. Shows how memory plays tricks. It is actually silver with a brown trim.

http://www.image-acquire.com/olympus-to-launch-micro-four-thirds/

[Colin]

Olympus has had us wait for so long after their announcement of this camera that they are standing on dangerous ground now. A tiny miscalculation of the product could be disastrous since they have worked so hard to put our hopes up. Lets just hope they don't go the way of Sigma with their DP's and shoot themselves in the foot with an overpriced underdeveloped product.

[Ludovic]

So that bit we read in January about Oly being "days, or weeks" from an m43 launch was right after all (as long we substitute "January" for "May")? Yipeeee :)

I can't wait, myself. I can only hope they'll release other lenses than re-badged Panas.