N&R: Olympus, Four Thirds and Micro Four Thirds

Olympus

In news that would surprise no one, Olympus has officially stopped making four third lenses (their previous DSLR system). It's been 6.5 years since they released a camera for it.

Owners of the lenses can take some comfort that the lenses still work well with their new flagship E-M1 series of cameras via an adapter.

In other news, Olympus believes that 8K Micro 43 cameras are possible:

General Manager of Olympus Product Planning, Mr. Akira Watanabe, said: “we can assure you that there is no problem in developing sensors at 33 million pixels for filming in 8K. We started the 4/3″ saga with a sensor at 5 Mpx In 2003. Now the same sensor is at 20 Mpx with a much higher image quality especially for the management of electronic noise.”

However, one commenter hasn't forgotten:

Akira Watanabe, manager of Olympus Imaging's SLR planning department, said in 2009: "Twelve megapixels is, I think, enough for covering most applications most customers need"

I fall into the latter camp. A 12mp sensor using modern technologies like BSI could kick some serious butt and deliver 4K video. If they had a 43 sensor that could match the old Nikon D700 sensor for noise, DR and resolution*, it would be very hard for anyone to dismiss Micro 43s as a toy camera system.


* If you were to cut out the shape of a Micro43 sensor from the Sony A7R2, you'd end up with a 11mp sensor. If they could squeeze in a tad more pixels to get 12MP, but with Sony A7R2 dynamic range, you could have a serious little camera.