Olympus Interview: Aki Murata – Full Frame Doesn’t Fit Our Philosophy
Image Resource interviewed Aki Murata the new VP of sales and marketing for Olympus America during the Photo Plus show. Below are excerpts from the interview:
- Olympus has no plans to go full frame
- They have been focused on small camera bodies for 50 years
- Olympus focuses on compactness, lightweight, and “ultimate reliability” due to a mandate by Yoshihisa Maitani
- m43 fits this philosophy perfectly
- The OM in OM-1 stands for Olympus-Maitani
- Nature and wildlife photography has the most variation and is a huge market for them.
- m43 is ideal for shooting long because you save a lot of weight and size
- The companies moving towards full frame are leaving behind the photographers that care about size/weight.
- Olympus weather sealing is a cut above the rest
- They subject the E-M1 Mark II to 2.5 inches per hour for 10 minutes per side, they test 6 sides which equal 60 minutes of water exposure in all.
- After the testing, they disassemble the camera to see if it passed their testing, which requires the camera to have no water inside.
- If they find any water inside they figure out where it came from and test it again.
- Olympus is happy that the competition left them with the huge compact high-quality market virtually to themselves.
- m43 has the most expansive mirrorless lens selection so it should be fine going forward.
- Panasonic will likely slow their m43 development while Olympus continues to invest heavily.
- Olympus has the clearest strategy and arguably the most security going forward.
via Image Resource