Hi,
It's appears that Olympus is just trying to confuse the market
into believing that their consumer grade digital cameras are of high enough
quality for professional imaging.
Hmmm, I didn't interpret John's comments this way (as there's no mention of
their _consumer_ camera). Look:
"As we designed these for the film market we also have the same
dedication to the digital market. This unfortunately means
that lenses designed for film are not really usable in the digital
world. I know many of our competitors are offering this
functionality, we feel we can do better. "
One thing is clear now: it seems there will never be an Olympus body
accepting OM lenses. :(
This of course, is a pity (at least for us for the time being), but the way
I'm reading John's words is that Oly is working full bloodedly on their
digital cameras. Furthermore, even though they don't mention this in so many
words, maybe Oly is even working on a digital system camera, a la the OM
system, outperfoming their competitors' "patches" (i.e. using film lenses on
digital bodies)...
It seems to me that it's just not in Oly's vision to come up with patches as
solutions (just like you can't use Pen lenses on OM bodies), but that they
want to build the system the "right way".
Having said that, it can of course also be a little bit of a marketing thing
where they can soon sell all of us a whole digital system, rather than just
a digital body and an "OM2digital" adapter...
Lenses are designed to produce an image form light falling on to flat
plane ... digital or film. Sure the field of view may be different using
the same lenses for digital vs. film, but that's about it.
This, of course, is a valid enough statement, but I really think that Oly
isn't looking into whether it's _doable_ or not, but rather that they are
asking themselves whether it is the _right choice_ to come up with a patch
for a handfull of dedicated OM users, instead of doing it the right way and
develop a whole new system from scratch (using valuable knowledge gained
when making the OM system).
As frustrating as it may be to see the OM system getting discontinued
completely, I can also look on the bright side of the matter: if Oly can
once more live up to their reputation, in some 5-10 years we will have a
truly high quality innovative digital Oly system camera, that will
outperform the other system cameras available on the market. I, for one, am
excited by that idea, and will simply use my OM gear until that day has
come...
Only time will tell....
Cheers!
Olafo
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