A very lengthy, but informative interview with Haruo Ogawa and Toshiyuki Terada from Olympus. The bullet points cover the key points, but the lengthy autofocus and sensor discussions are interesting. I imagine they will eventually design chip based instruction sets to speed up some operations, while reducing power consumption, but it will most likely come from Sony when it happens.
- Olympus OM-D Mark II Doing better than expected
- Kumamoto Earthquake delayed the launch which was originally intended for Photokina
- Most OM-D Mark II users are previous owners or people upgrading from E-M5/E-M10
- Olympus is the original manufacturer of dust reduction technology and builds their cameras to be incredibly robust
- The Olympus OM-D Mark II AF was designed with 18 AF scenarios in mind, but rivals only design their cameras for 10. The OM-D Mark II performs 1.5 better than the original OM-D at these 18 AF scenarios. There is still room for improvement.
- One of the 8 extra Scenarios is a bird taking off, where an OM-D Mark II performs better than the competition thanks to their stabilization system because everything is in motion.
- The Olympus OM-D Mark II is has two quad core chips.
- In five years the system will be able to do 4x as much.
- They discuss core functions of the camera into the chip to reduce energy consumption and how Samsung was working on it before exiting the camera market.
- Sensors noise levels might be approaching their physical limits.
- Output devices are a limiting factor for bit depth today.
- They are planing for the wider dynamic range and resolution of 4k and 8k displays.
- GPS and a compass could be used to get even more stabilization beyond 6.5 stops in the future.
- The more stops of stabilization you want the bigger the body has to be to allow movement so not all models will be capable of reaching 6.5+ stops of stabilization.
- TG-series successor in the works.
- Olympus 12-100mm f/4 and 25mm f/1.2 have been well received by fans and reviews and they couldn’t have been built 2 years ago.
Now is also a great time to pick up an Olympus OM-D Mark II with the current trade in coupon that can be used without trading in a camera.
Via Imaging-resource
