Ergonomic Roundup November 2013, Olympus

Climbing Mount Olympus ? Kilimanjaro in fact, but hey, it's a mountain.

 

Foundations    The Corporation was founded in 1919 although the name Olympus was not adopted until 1949. According to Wikipedia the Greek mountain was chosen as a name as it is the home of the gods in Greek mythology. Apparently the gods left home sometime this century because in 2011 Olympus was hit with a massive financial scandal which almost led to it being delisted from the Tokyo Stock Market.

Olympus' main business is medical and technical imaging, involving endoscopes, microscopes and similar. However the company has a long history of making cameras which it started producing around 1936. In it's heyday, in the days of film, Olympus had several big sellers, including a series of cameras branded Olympus PEN, another series called Olympus TRIP and a series of compact SLR's designated OM- and a numeral.

Olympus struggled with the advent of the digital era, but it did survive, unlike many of it's peers which fell by the wayside.  Olympus joined the Micro Four Thirds group and started selling M43 cameras in 2009.

My Experience with Olympus Cameras  Many years ago I owned a very small film compact called an Olympus μ-1, pronounced mew-1. It was impressively small, had a neat clam shell design and made pictures of reasonable but not excellent quality.

Last year I  acquired an OMD-EM5 body, battery grip and a selection of lenses. I reported on this camera  here.

DSLR's   Olympus and Panasonic  joined forces to make DSLR cameras to the [Four Thirds] standard. Panasonic soon pulled out of this venture leaving Olympus to carry on bravely but eventually without ongoing success in the marketplace.

Compacts  Olympus has been making compact cameras for many years and continues to do so. Some of these have drawn favourable reviews, others a range of less favourable comments, mainly on the issue of ergonomics and the user interface.

Olympus'  latest compact venture is the Stylus -1 with a small [approx 9.3 mm diagonal] sensor, a built in EVF and a constant f2.8 lens with a diagonal angle of view of  75 degrees at the wide end to 8.2 degrees at the long end (equivalent to 28-300mm on a full frame camera). This is a highly attractive specification set and is very much a move in the direction I think camera makers need to go.

Micro Four Thirds  Olympus' first M43 camera, the  PEN  EP-1,  was released in 2009. This was followed by 7 further PEN branded M43 cameras, none of which had a built in EVF. I regard this as having been a major problem for Olympus as cameras without an eye level viewfinder are very difficult to use in bright sunlight or with long lenses.

At last in 2012 they introduced the OM-D E-M5 with a proper, and as it happened very nice, built in EVF. The E-M5 ticked almost all the boxes [except for the missing built in flash] for a desirable interchangeable lens camera of compact dimensions, good picture quality and performance. It was an instant hit and may have helped rescue Olympus' camera division from oblivion. A large stake by Sony in Olympus no doubt also helped, as did Sony's sensors which lifted M43 imaging performance considerably. My own experience with the E-M5 was mixed, my main difficulties with the camera being in the area of ergonomics, the user interface and user experience.

Olympus' follow up to the E-M5, the E-M1 (Go figure, the M5 comes before the M1. There must be some kind of logic to that somewhere) appears to have rectified most of the ergonomic deficiencies of the E-M5. It has a well shaped built in handle, the thumb support allows the thumb to angle across the camera a bit more and  the buttons and dials are better laid out. It looks like a winner and most reviews are very positive.

The Crystal Ball   Olympus' camera division has thus far managed to survive a very dark and bumpy road through life. Apparently it is still making a loss, like most corporations' camera divisions, but there may be light on the horizon. The latest OM-D M43 cameras with built in EVF are very appealing and competent. The Stylus-1 superzoom venture could also be a winner if they get the details right. Olympus might just manage to stay and prosper. Maybe.