Olympus cameras and the future of Micro Four Thirds 27 June 2020

All the camera sites are full of discussion about Olympus’ planned divestment of its consumer imaging division to JIP, a small company which specialises in managing loss making Japanese enterprises, often by some form of asset stripping.

I actually have a kind of second order client relationship with Olympus, having had 14 endoscopic procedures, made possible by Olympus equipment.

The medical equipment business is profitable and will presumably not be affected by the loss of consumer imaging.

In the film era Olympus made a succession of  decent quality cameras and lenses the main selling point of which was their smaller size than standard offerings from CaNikon and others.

When digital imaging came along Olympus initially stayed true to their “small is beautiful” philosophy with a succession of very compact and by most reports rather likeable DSLR cameras which used the Four Thirds sensor. This has a diagonal of 21.6mm giving it an area  one quarter of the standard 35mm “full frame” size and about 60% of an APSC digital sensor.

The problem was that Olympus cameras struggled to match the image quality routinely available from the APSC models of the day.

Olympus pressed on however with a line of big, fast, expensive lenses which to some extent made up for the small sensor but were difficult to sell because the  Olympus solution ended up being just as large and expensive as APSC or even more so.

This venture failed because it was not appealing to most consumers who found they could get a camera with a larger and better sensor for the same or less money. 

Then in 2008 Olympus teamed with Panasonic to produce the mirrorless Micro Four Thirds (MFT) system which allowed even smaller body sizes but utilised the same sensor size as the Four Thirds DSLRs.

This has been more successful than the Four Thirds DSLR venture mainly I suspect because both Canon and Nikon were a bit late to the mirrorless interchangeable lens camera (MILC) party.

But MFT had and to some extent still has the stigma of lower image quality than APSC which has resulted in APSC models consistently outselling MFT.

Olympus’ response to this has been to repeat their strategy of the DSLR era with expensive professional style camera bodies and lenses which have no hope of attracting buyers away from brands which use a larger sensor.

Right now in Australia the Olympus EM1 Mk3 is selling for the same price as a Sony A7 Mk3 full frame camera.  I would not want to be trying to move that Olympus off shelves.

The Covid-19 disaster was just the coup de grace for an enterprise which had been loss making for several years.

Could Olympus have survived if they had stuck to the “small is beautiful” theme ?

I think not.

Sitting on my desk as I write this is a Canon EOS-M50 camera with EF-M 15-45mm lens mounted. 

This is smaller, lighter and less expensive than several similarly specified MFT models from Olympus or Panasonic.

It has a larger sensor and more pixels than any MFT model and a better known brand name.

This does not automatically translate to better pictures but it sure makes MFT a difficult sell when the whole point of MFT right from the start was “smaller and lighter is better”.

With Olympus’ departure from the scene will Panasonic press on with MFT development ?

I think not. They will insist they are committed to MFT but watch for new product releases.

Most of these in recent times have been L Mount full frame bodies and lenses.

It would make a lot of sense for Panasonic to consolidate to just one lens mount. If they do it will be the L mount which is  suitable for both full frame and APSC sensors.

We shall see, but I would not be surprised if Panasonic allows their  MFT venture to slowly decline in favour of  L mount body and lens development.