A Truly New Micro 4/3 Camera! OM System OM-3

First of all, there's no Film Friday this week. Sorry. I've had another one of those mysterious glitches where a bunch of comments I thought had been moderated are no longer live. I haven't tracked down this glitch, which has happened infrequently but repeatedly—I don't know what happens when it happens, and I don't know if it's my fault or something in the system. Sometimes I think I have it figured out (it's complicated) but then it happens again. Anyway the priority today is going to be to get the kitchen cleaned up (er, wait) and the comments cleaned up. One goal for the day in reality and quotidian life; one goal for virtual reality and life online.

Meanwhile, I am delighted to welcome the new Micro 4/3 camera we've all been waiting for for weeks. It's the OM System OM-3, a compact (but not tiny), light, weatherproof, beautifully retro-styled Micro 4/3 camera with a 20-MP sensor, and nothing held back—no holds barred when it comes to including the company's better technologies. And it's right down our alley (and by "our" I mean "my") in type and style and kind. I'm especially impressed in that it's OM System's first true new camera on its own—not just revised versions of older Olympus cameras. OM System, as you probably know, is the satellite spinoff of Olympus Corp.'s former camera division, made possible by Japan's bankruptcy or going-out-of-business laws in some complicated way I've never fully understood. It's also the first all-new good Micro 4/3 camera since...well, in a while.

So this means OM System is a real camera company, in my view. Makes me happy.

The internet is saying that the new OM-3 (above) is styled like the old OM-1, which is dopey. It looks more like the old OM-3, duh.

We'll do a deeper dive on the new OM-3 in due course. The old Olympus OM-3 was a fairly rare all-mechanical version of the Maitani OM camera bodies when that system was at its peak in the early to mid 1980s, with no auto exposure modes and a fully mechanical shutter—prized, expensive, and hard to find for years afterward; OM-3 is a name with resonance in the Olympus / OM System heritage.

Housework! I'll announce it when the comments are groomed and live, and I apologize for the delay to those whose comments have been delayed in appearing.

I've moderated almost 300,000 comments since 2005; you'd think I'd have learned how to do it by now. I can say with honesty and transparency that all TOP comments have been moderated right from the beginning, which is one reason why we have such a genteel and convivial ecosystem here. It's not that hard, because a good environment attracts good people with good manners, and, indeed, that has manifestly been the case at The Online Photographer.

Ice fishermen. Looks too dark here but okay at full size.

I went photographing yesterday, which I haven't done in quite a while, and got a nice new shot for my local life series, which grew out of test shots with my monochrome camera and has become a full-blown project. Go see the larger version, with a write-up, here.

And go see the OM-3 as well—real, actual camera fun, like in the old days of the early to mid 2010s. Ah, nostalgia.

To work!

Mike

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Featured Comments from:

Comments

[William Lewis]

Um... Seems to me to be just the same 20mp sensor, same EVF and nothing really new to me other than cosmetics. The last "New" camera from what was Olympus was the Pen F and that's why I'm shooting Pentax these days.

This is a body that should be $600 that they're trying to palm off to as many as possible for $2000 before shuttering the company for good, I fear.

[Thom Hogan]

Hmm. As far as I can tell the OM-3 is a redesigned and cheaper to build OM-1 Mark II (single slot, lower EVF resolution, etc.). The electronics, et.al., are not unique. I see this as more the perpetual redesign type of thing we see from Pentax as opposed to a "new camera." Ditto for the three lenses: all mechanical redesigns and rebranding exercises.

[BG]

Nice! If I started from scratch with a new digital camera system, I'd seriously consider the Olympus m4/3 system. The "full frame" enthusiasts will spout all sorts of technological reasons why m4/3 is inferior or does not have adequate pixels or whatever, but these Olympuses are great picture taking machines.

[Eric Rose]

Can't you walk out on the ice to get a better shot? Like they say if your shot sucks, you're probably not close enough.

[You can see why not, I think. I'm above the level of the lake. If I were down on the ice, the dark tops of the huts would be in a tonal merger with the dark shore in the background. As it was, I went to the highest ground on the shore and stood on a bench to keep that from happening.

Oh, and the shot obviously doesn't suck. --Mike]

[Arg]

Maybe Mike will fall for the OM-3 hard enough that he stops pining for the GX8!

[MikeR]

For the first time, I don't feel a need to buy ANY camera. I don't feel a need to carry any camera, except for special situations. I feel that my new smartphone has more camera than any that I carried in the 60s through the early 2000s. It's a liberating feeling.

[jp41]

I had high hopes that OM System's new camera introduction would mark the return of the PEN-F, this time with a 25 MP sensor. One can always dream.

[s.wolters]

... party like it's nineteen ninety-nine!

[psu]

To me this feels more like a re-packaged OM-1 in a smaller body with slightly worse ergonomics (no hand grip).

What I've wanted from Olympus/OM for ten years is a competitive modern autofocus system (semi-automatic subject detection and tracking). Even my Sony RX100 compact does this better in many ways than my OM-1 Mark II.

Oh well.

[Moose]

"It's also the first all-new good Micro 4/3 camera since...well, in a while."

The OM-3 is not at all new, inside. It's a repackaged OM-1 II. OTOH, the OM-1 is quite recent, and wonderful. If retro looks and the loss of a proper hand grip is new and wonderful, I'm happy for you. (Lack of hand grip was the first thing I noticed. Can't see it easily, but the film OM-3 has at least a little hole on the side to screw on a (too small) hand grip.)

I was lured away from Oly partly by the Panny Gx7, then fully by the GX9, still a favorite for ergonomics, but sadly obsoleted.*

Then the Oly E-M1 II lured me back. To me, that's when Oly/OMS started a run of innovations. The E-M1 III added a couple of improvements, that I skipped, although in retrospect, I would have benefited with some shots I didn't get.

"So this means OM System is a real camera company, in my view. Makes me happy."

How did it cease being so? Spin-off = same folks, doing the same work of developing photo gear. There may have been some disruption, but clearly development has continued.

My impression, based on products actually fully used, not internet blather, is that development has been continuous, at least from E-M1 II to OM-1 II.

The OM-1 introduced several innovations, while the OM-3 adds nothing functional but a little dial on the front, an idea cribbed from the Pen-F.

A big innovation, and good restart for OMS, is the completely revised menu system of the OM-1. Oly had been using the same menus from the beginning. As they added functions, it got creakier and creakier. I was used to it, so thinking a change would be troublesome. But no, it's way better organized and easier to find things.

But wait - there's more - they added a My Menu top level menu. I've gathered there just the items I regularly need from the other menu groups, so I never need to go into the full thing, anyway. Sounds to me like something that might make even someone like Mike find peace.

To my mind, OMS has been a real camera system from the OM-1, but welcome to the club. Makes me happy, too, in a practical, thousands of shots way.**

* Just pulled out my one remaining GX9; what a cute, easy to hold and use little thing it is. I know you liked the GX8. Opinions vary - I liked the GX7 and 9. The 8 was too big, to no discernible to me purpose.

** With electronic shutter and comp features such as focus stacking/bracketing, HR Mode and ProCapture, exposure counts have lost usefulness.

[Stephen S.]

William Lewis said "Seems to me to be just the same 20mp sensor, same EVF and nothing really new to me other than cosmetics. The last "New" camera from what was Olympus was the Pen F"

The Pen-F had a 20mp CMOS sensor that only did contrast-detection AF and ran at 20 Hz, which limited both autofocus and continuous shooting speeds.

The OM-3 has an 80mp stacked BSI-CMOS sensor with a quad pixel Bayer array that allows cross-type phase detection AF across the entire frame, and 20mp photo output. It runs at 120 Hz, meaning autofocus and continuous shooting are both 6x faster.