Now Olympus has officially registered the EM1MK2 successor or their new flagship camera above the EM1 series.
But their bigger and more expensive super fast camera will be able to solve any of their current problems ?
Well it won't , we can already see it clearly since it is more expensive than what most of typical Olympus users want to pay for a camera. And it is also too big for them.
We have had to listen to our customer voices and we've been sending what our customers saying about each camera and system to the manufactures since about 2011.
And I have been reading many Olympus forums although I am not an Olympus user. So I think we know a bit about what many m43 people want and they definitely not want to go even bigger than the GH5 or the EM1MK2, most of them are eagerly waiting for a true EM5MK2 replacement with much better video just like an Olympus or Panasonic X-T3.
Olympus must do something for that market , they have been waiting too long. The EM5MK2 was announced in January 2015. So most of their core customers are still waiting for something to replace their worn-out dated camera......
And Fuji has just released an almost ideal camera for those people. They have been telling us they may sell everything they own to move to Fuji if they hear nothing from Olympus by CP+. There is nothing they want to buy in the current m43 world.
The new 3000 dollar(maybe even 4000) expensive Olympus pro camera will not solve this problem for Olympus. And while Panasonic will not move away from this market completely, just yet, their main focus is clearly the new L mount and pro video camera releasing in that mount now.
It seems like they have never learned anything from their completely failed original 43 business.
I mean how they will be able to sell a big heavy and expensive over 3k US m43 camera when the Fuji X-T3 and upcoming A7000 will only cost about 1400 US?
I think Olympus is killing the m43 system themselves by ignoring the majority of their customers.
Why m43 is now dying 29(updated 12):
I must wonder which one will die out first the remained D-SLR guys or m43 duo?
Sadly the reality is Mirrorless is not becoming any more popular than it was in 2009,let alone 2016. It seemed to have peaked out in 2012 or 2013, and then mirrorless sales suddenly went down to the original before 2011 era state.
Canon, Fuji and even really Sony weren't shipping MILC's. Sure the MILC to DSLR shipment ratio has changed as the sales volume of the D-SLRs is down significantly.
But mostly only in Sony and Fuji's case it has changed for better (this accounts for around a 2-5% net change by itself) because the E has eaten a bit of the A mount sales, but not given dramatically serious damage to Canon and Nikon yet............this is the reality of the ILC market at this point of 2018.
Also important to note: As the trending has shown over the past two years, we're seeing specific regions for shipment increases which tends to suggest that it's not "evolving", it's more "targeting" at specific segments of the market, and in most cases, they still remain to be a stable niche. The smaller the sesnor system the more severe damage it gets from both the matured never growthless market with really overwelming market saturation and the rapid advancement of smartphone cameras and One inch sensor cameras.
The only area mirrorless is doing anything but evolving is perhaps in Asia, but that seems to be more stock dumping. It's the entire world vs Asia plus Japan in terms of growth in marketshare. In fact, mirrorless(except the A7 line) is only successful in Japan, Korea and SE-Asia, not even in entire Asia since the Chinese(excluding HK and Taiwan) and the Indian market are not pro mirrorless yet, and I think this is something to do with the Chinese way of thinking: the bigger the always better mentality, and this mentality almost always dominates throughout the Asia except Korea, Japan and some SE Asia nations like Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.
So, I kind suspect the current style of the excessively small size with a bit better video and EVF is the only one big advantage over the same generation D-SLRs kind of mirrorless are not doing well in China and India, and I think it will never do well in that specific markets(Hong Kong and Twaiwan are very different, though). In fact, I think I have the data to prove it. In mainland China, Canon still dominates the market with about 45.6 percent of the entire market share. In India , Nikon is still the top but I do not remember the exact number here at this moment.
Remember, in most part of Asia, except Japan and Korea, the bigger the always better more powerful, more worshiped, etc. This means Mirrorless will be suffering even in Asia except Japan,Malaysia, Thailand ,Korea and maybe Singapore and Indonesia.
Anyway, percentage of growth on marketshare is meaningless without context.
For instance if you graph out the marketshare in NA(North America) and project "when" Mirrorless will finally overtake DSLR based upon current growth, we end up being 2 decades down the road. And do you think it is any meaningful? The old saying .. 10% of nothing is still .. nothing. Yeah right...
Also,you have to,again, realize this is shipments versus sales. shipments by nature of the quality of the MIrrorless vendors will be more consistent on an annual basis and YoY than the more longer release cycles of basically the two dominant camera companies .. Canon and Nikon.. And I expect that the real sales numbers of mirrrorless cameras are even worse based on our and other many large camera retailers inventory socks.
Despite of the LL, IR, DPR,etc selling internet myth that the A7 series is the king of everything in this closed small market, the A7R3, the A7M3, the A9 are all just doing OK , not selling extremely well like DPR, IR, etc, say. Sure the A7MK3 did well when it was very new for about 2 months , but now it is not selling well. Every where you can just order it and get it immediately. No long waiting for it at all. The A7R3 also did very well for about 1month but it was never backordered and never outsell the D850........it is surprising but it is the fact.
The fact is the Sony's bestseller camera of all time has been already discontinued NEX5 series and its successor the A5100. And their next best seller of all time camera series is the A6XXX. So the A7X is not the best selling Sony camera of all time as DPR and those paid artisans working for Sony want you to believe.
We all know that Sony seems to want to increase per unit profit rather than total sales even at the big cost of some market share, so what they have been doing is not really bad or anything, but just not increasing their share, they want it or not.
In the end ,mirrorless sells more or less is stable in EU and NA across the last two years. Spin how you want but it is the fact, even the excsssive Sony internet shill marketing through Youtube and DPR hasn't changed this much............ and most of those mirrorless guys losing money due to the excessively disproportionately huge amount of money they have been spending for shill marketing and those silly Youtube morons. Maybe they've helped Sony , Olympus and Fuji increase a bit of sells by value, but what they have spent on those shills is still a much bigger amount of money than that a bit of sales increase that the YouTube and rumor sites shill marketing have generated for Sony, Fuji and m43.
Remember Panasonic and Sony have been hiding the fact that they've lost some big money in ILC still camera business by merging their weak performing DSC(stills)business with the very strong DCC(digital cinema camera)business.
Of course this will all change in a heartbeat once Canon or Nkon adopt mirrorless fully into their existing product lines.
However, usually D-SLR haters(including I used to be) think that's unlikely anytime soon because it would be akin to the emperor admitting he has no clothes. They're all in on DSLR's and perpetuating the myth of their superiority with old dated lenses. I think all of us agree that mirrorless is the future, but when it will match the D-SLR in all ways , is the question, and none of the current mirrorless including the super high end ones like Leica SL, the high end ones like Sony A7R3and A9 are not even close to the high end D-SLR in terms of general operation speed and C-AF. What I mean by operating speed is not just how many frames they can shoot per second , but card writing speed, formatting speed, start up speed, and wake up time from a long sleep, etc. All kinds of general operational speed.
And none of mirrorless makers've shown any proof in being able to produce a MILC that matches the high-end D-SLR competition in general operational speed and still produces a profit in any case, other than the Leica's super expensive SL and Sony's flagship A9 remotely matching it on paper.
Really be honest, considering the fact how long the mirrorless companies such as Sony, Olympus and Panasonic have been saying how mirrorless is smoking the D-SLRs even the most expensive ones or how their cameras changing the game...... has any Mirrorless company really actually proved that and successfully demonstrated consistent profits in their respective mirrorless business?
We can't even say Sony has , because they lump it all together and massage the numbers until they look good to naive people at online forums. Or we still can't say Fuji has done that just for the same reason for the Sony case.
That all said, Sony or Fuji is not a real loser here, but IMHO, m43 is now really really doomed, the inevitable loser here.
The elephant in the room is the massive install base differences in between a Canon and a Sony.
Many m43 fans writing something like this,"Sony is well recognized among the MILC crowd for being woefully inadequate in its line of lenses. It's in m43 that a full range of current lenses designed specifically to take advantage of the format (small and light, with a few Pro exceptions) has been best realized."
Oh really? according to DXO no, not at all true. And I think many of m43 fans do not understand why their best lenses on the tiny sensor rated so bad compared to the supposedly terrible Sony Zeiss or venerable Nikon 2007 era lenses on a FF.
Because, it is simple, m43 lenses have to resolve 4 times more details to match terrible FF lenses on a decent FF body level(in resolving power). And it is simply impossible. So, it does not matter how good a m43 lens is at a lab without a sensor, it will never perform as good as the worst Sony lens on a A7X in real world. So, in this sense, DXO is the only really reliable lens system resolution test site, and thus they deserve more sincere respect for what they've been doing there for free for us. Testing lens alone is meaningless since it does not show the real life lens performance on a particular sensor type that the lens supposed to work with.
And, unlike Sony and Zeiss primes on A7X, all those amazing MICRO43 lenses are heavily relying on full software corrections to make them look good, it is nothing like the new Zeiss Melvus 85mm f1.4 on my D750, or the cheap Zeiss Batis 85mm f1.8 or the Sony FE85mm f1.8E on my A7MK3 or even the venerable A7MK2(the A7MK3 and MK2 sensor level IQ is identical anyway), let alone the Canon 35mm f1.4 LMK2 on the 5DS-R, or the Samyang 35mm f1.4 E on the A7R3.
Another m43 fan says ,"Many of the lenses in their "extensive" line-ups are long in the tooth or redundant or both, as Thom Hogan has described as it relates to Nikon in ByThom.com articles."
Well, it is true, but as I explained even the worst Nikon, Sony and Canon lenses do better on their respective FF bodies than the best m43 lenses on the best m43 body, period.
They cannot beat the basic law of physics.
Plus, actually when you have a stable of 60+ lenses, you don't update them all at once. many of m43 lenses are expensive and rely heavily on software corrections to correct obvious design compromises to make them small enough to be attractive to the target market.
In fact, doing a quick look .. Canon has updated 1/2 of it's lenses in the last 10 years, so have Sony and Nikon.......... so game over. There is nothing m43 does better than anything else, but it is an expensive system for what it does, especially after normalizing DoF of all systems in question here.
As m43 fans say many times Thom wants DX lenses and keeps complaining about it .. but Thom, even though is a resource I love to read and respect, has some very specific biases needs that most of people do not share. Hey, my A6500 takes all my FE lenses, my D7200 takes all my FX glass, so what is the issue here? In an ideal perfect world they may want to develop a full line of dedicated APS-C lenses, but in real world both Nikon and Sony have very limited R&D money and so they cannot completely duplicate their FF lens lineup with DX or APS-C line lenses. I think if their budget is unlimited , yeah they would try it. But it is an expensive task.
m43 fans like to put Canon Nikon into the same league as Kodak was in, and they tend to use a car analogy-usually GM or Nissan. They think Canon Nikon are next GM, Kodak, Blackberry, etc........
"GM was the strong dominant player in the car market a couple of decades ago, but now where are they? They failed and failed in many markets and once even legally bankrupted.
And Canon Nikon fan base are very old increasingly graying old men just like that of GM fan base a few years ago. "
Many m43 fans tend to think this market this way and expect others to agree that Canon Nikon are quickly becoming next Kodak.
But this is not logical, simply stupid. Mixing up camera market with car market is really wrong, camera business works more like PC or Mac than car. If you have too many Windows only programs that you must need for your work, you can not easily cross over the fence to go Mac, or vice versa..........Camera system works similarly. Many of us have too many lenses for a particular mount to move out of the system easily as Thom pointed out a few weeks back.
So, Canon Nikon Sony do not become like GM or Kodak, but they are kinda MS of camera world.
Then, m43 fans say:
"Then, why do you think mirrorless got to be this popular now? older people that couldn't handle the weight of DSLR at first and slowly moving into m43, did you guys realize that?"
On paper, it may be correct, but in reality that's too much of a generality.. I know from walking around and observing in many places .. and also tourist places in Japan, Thailand and Korea.. DSLR's are being used by all generations, and I rarely see a mirrorless in the field. In fact, I have never met any m43 users in real world out side of forums or my camera mall. I saw a few Sony A6500/ A7/A7R , or EOS M5/100, etc , users and a few Fuji shooters in real world but really never saw any one serious with a m43. I've seen far more supposed to be dying Nikon D-SLRs than m43, period. I think m43's real rival is not Sony or Fuji or Nikon, but Pentax. That is the bitter tough reality.
Actually, no camera forum denizens realize it but we have to face the fact that all ILC cameras are big to most of NORMAL non-photographer people, and they are very intimidating to most of NORMAL people(I mean regardless of mount type or sensor type).
I have written about this a few times already but I must repeat it again here:
I never realized it before but while walking around down town Fukuoka with one of my long time non-photographic friends here forced me to understand it. A friend of mine told me below:
"I really thought all your interchangeable lens cameras huge and intimidating. It is always annoying!
I even feel kind of embarrassing to walk around with you when you have a big camera with a big lens on you. And it is really pain-in-ass to use any ILC, it does not matter a m43 or a FF, but if I must buy and use a ILC, I will go all the way up to FF. No matter how cheap the lenses are , I do not want many of it, only one lens the best and the fewer lenses a system requires , the better it is, period!"
I guess a big lens annoys people more than a big camera......I never saw it his way but I got his point and respect that. So I decided to carry my tiny Sony RX100M4 when I just walk around the city area with other people. If I am alone shooting something, then I usually carry my big camera, and I think it does not matter it's a m43, a FF, an APS-C, it is all big to most of NORMAL people, anyway. They all hate us with a big ILC and annoy us anyway, we must be bold and aggressive or miss many shots......
Then why not just go all the way up to FF or at least APS-C?
Another important point most of mirrorless(especially m43 fans) tend to forget is most of NORMAL people cannot tell any difference between m43 IQ vs One inch compact IQ.
My Chinese friend says he thinks SOOC image of the decent One inch compact seems better than that of any of current generation m43 cameras. This is a really huge minus point for the m43 duo.
The m43 system was attractive when there was no other serious mirrorless systems or their lens selections were still very very limited back in 2010-2012 period.
And they were always ahead of the rest in terms of feature set, so they could survive this long even with the well known sensor quality related disadvantages.
But now the rest of the camera world have finally caught up with them in the feature set department and lens selection.
In case of Sony, they may be already better in lens department. Fuji does not have as many lenses as m43 does, but arguably their lens selection is much more logical and better than that of m43.
Now many thirdparties like Sigma, Samyang, Tokina, Zeiss and others begin to ignore the m43 duo, and I think it is an alarming sign of declining popularity of the system...........it is really hard to deny the duo may be repeating the same mistake that they did in the last few years of their SLR 43 era.......
m43 is attractive only when it is much smaller , cheaper , or more feature rich than the rest(with a bigger sensor). But by making everything more expensive and big , Pana Oly are just killing their own charms.
So maybe the one really doomed system is not Nikon F or Pentax K or Sony A but m43?
Historically, Nikon and Pentax have had very enthusiastic and even fanatic core shooters and they are usually too old to adapt themselves fast to new EVF based gear even if they understand the mirrorless is the more logical choice for them as they are aged and getting weaker every year.
And there are also many many young kids that think very mechanical analog-looking old Nikon as cool or better than those dinky toy-like m43 cameras..........especially in Asia there are many of those kind of kids , as I already mentioned in the very first part of this post , many Chinese and Indian boys are after more pro looking cameras than smallish m43 kind of cameras. And this is a clear trend in China. So in China , Sony,with its FF sensor and AF-capable Zeiss primes , is doing very well there now, Canon is still doing well as their 5D series is very popular there, Nikon is not doing as well but at least their D850 and D750 are doing quite well in that market too. In India, Nikon has been the no 1 choice for serious shooters for decades.
So D-SLRs guys may survive as antique camera or professional camera manufacture at least in Asia, but m43 ? I think they will die out soon, m43 has no IQ advantage over the One inch compact (unless you are willing to invest into one of their pro line primes that'd cost you over 1500 US each)and m43 has lost the size advantage over Fuji X. And it is a huge loss.
UPDATE: Now we know the actual sells numbers for this month and the last month at our shops and the rival shops here and the results are really surprising.
The no1 selling camera now is the D750 especially after the price for the Z7 announced. And the A7MK3 is selling better than before too, maybe because people got hugely disappointed with the new Nikon pricing strategy?
Another important trend I have write about here is that we have got so many A7R3 and A7R2 cheap from the people moving back to Canon or Nikon mirrorless for D-SLR system.
Also, now at the discounted price, the 5DMK4 is also doing very well.
After the last series of FF mirrorless announcements in last month, actually DSLR sells seems to be increasing quite a bit, and I think this is a sign of many people thought the Nikon Z7 and Canon R were a huge disappointment.
I do not think the camera itself was so bad , actually good, but the lens lineup is really lousy. And the Z7 is really overpriced. It is about 500 US more than the D850, and it has only 3 lenses currently. And the biggest issue with the Z7 as a system is the new adapter does not work well with many F mount lenses.
So how can Nikon expect to sell that body?
UPDATE2: Now we all know Thom Hogan is actually a avid Nikon fanboy at his heart. He seems to be strongly biased towards Nikon, I think his new articled called, 'The FF lens race' has just proved that.
In that article , he says Sony has just 26lenses and their lens lineup will grow to about 60 by 2021 or so, and it is including Zeiss Batis and Loxia line. In comparison he says Nikon will have the total 18 and they have the F mount catalog of total over 60 lenses that will work flawlessly on the Z. It is a huge lie, and not very fair to fair to Sony , Pana and Canon. Since the FTZ adapter does not work as well as Sigma or Metabones plus Canon EF on Sony. Or Canon's own ETR adapter, which really works well without any issue with their EF lens lineup, plus it has a drop-in filter.
He also says Canon will have 12 lenses or so by 2021, and it is what he is guessing. I think if Nikon can crank out an incredible set of 18 lenses in just a matter of a couple of years , then Canon will make more lenses than that since Canon is about 13 times larger than Nikon.
If anyone thinks otherwise, I think he/she cannot deny he is a Nikon fanboy, or fangirl, at least as with many famous camera commentators, he/she is strongly biased towards Nikon.
In addition to that, Mr. Hogan also says both the Canon R and the Nikon Z can just use their respective old mount existing lenses flawlessly.......it is not true.
Canon can do that, but Nikon Z needs new more sophisticated Sony A to E type adapter with SLT tech or something similar to fully utilize all the past Nikkor lenses with mechanical aperture lever in the mount.
And he really underestimates Panasonic Leica team, and he definitely thinks they will be a less interesting or less influential mount system than the Nikon Z.
I do not agree with him on that at all, the Panasonic has tremendous potential with the new organic sensor, which will come in their Pro body sometime in 2019 or 2020.
Plus, unlike Nikon, they have global shutter and 8k tech in- house and it is a huge edge over Nikon since Nikon is the only one in the FF mirrorless players not have it or have no access to it.
Global shutter is the next biggest thing in FF mirrorless game and Sony , Pana and Canon all have it in-house and Nikon does not. If he is honest, he should not call CN or CaNikon since Nikon is just too small to call a rival of Canon now.
If his 'the lens race' article had been written in the early 2009 or so, I would have understood why he used the term,'CN'.
Nikon was huge at in late 2009. But they have failed to keep that huge 32 percent market share they got with the D700/D7000 duo.
I mean Nikon's ILC share is just 23 percent globally today and Canon over 49.3, and they are about 13 times larger than Nikon in terms of revenue.
This CN or CaNikon notion Nikon fanboys push through over a decade or so is really an outdated term and should not use the term any more. It is now Sony vs Canon vs Panasonic L mount alliance, and it is really difficult for Nikon to compete well with those much bigger companies than they are.
Any even a bit rational person can see it. Of course, Thom knows it, he is not stupid. But he has chosen to dismiss it because most of his readers are Nikon fans and so is he himself.
When Sony was the only one in the game, he said no adapters or adapted lens solution would not do anything for any serious work, and all the adapted lens solutions for the E mount system. But now he is saying the Nikon Z already has over 60 plus lenses(at the very launch of it) because it can take all Nikkor S and E lenses. Isn't this logic very contradicting to what he has been preaching about Sony lens lineup? He has said, "Any one buying into the E mount eco system should focus on the native lenses, any adapted lens solution is just a temporal thing." But prizing the Nikon Z for its easy adaptability of the Nikkor legacy lenses.
If Sony or Canon or any one needs an adapter solution, he trashes it. But if it is a Nikon, then forgiven or even prized for it. It is really amazing how contradicting he has become and some other Nikon fanboy reviewers like Lloyd Chamber has also saying similar things over and over again.
They should be a bit more consistent and trying not to be contradicting.
UPDATE3: Now we all know that Canon Nikon new FF mirrorless cameras are both doing not that great , as many of us predicted. Nikon has already started discounting the Z7 price and now it is about 20 percent cheaper than it was in the second week of the last month October 2018.
Even after the usually fast huge discount, it is still not selling well here. The Canon EOS R is also not moving fast because most of potential EOS R buyers now know they will announce something bigger more interesting at CES or CP+ show next year. But at least the Canon is selling better than the Nikon Z7, as opposed to all those DPR spec sheet obsessed experts predicted.
And we think the main reasons for that are:
1 the EOS R is significantly cheaper , especially if you just use existing EF lenses with the perfectly designed EOS E to R adapter. The Canon adapter costs only about 9800 yen with the drop-in ND filter.
2 the Canon is more practical as a system. The R can take all the EF lenses since 1987 without any serious compatibility issue. The Nikon Z cannot say the same, it can only use the E line of the expensive Nikkor without any issue. It can take the G line too, but the AF functionality and speed of the Z will be severely compromised when used with the G or D line lenses. So there are not many lenses the Z can take without any usability related issue.
3 the Nikon F to Z adapter costs much more than the Canon EF to RF adapter. And the Canon adapter comes with a clever drop-in ND filter.
4 the initial lens lineup of the R is more practical for any CN based wedding or any event /documentary photogs.
5 In Nikon land the majority of people seem to still prefer the D850 since it is more matured with many more lenses and accessories available.
Many Nikon fanboys claim how good the Z7 and the D850 really is at base ISO(at least) and many of them trash the Canon R for having a bit worse sensor with respect to sheer resolution and DR at base ISO.
But all Nikon advantages they claim the Z7 has over the Canon R are borrowed techs from Sony or Panasonic.
There is not much Nikon about it in that body, or even in the D850 that all Nikon fanboys raved about before the Z7.
And even we admit the sensor of the Z7 is better than the Canon R sensor, the difference is really minor, it is more like an academic study case rather than a practical difference.
The DR of the R and 5DMK4 sensor is just about less than a stop worse than the Sony sensor in the Nikon Z7 at the very base ISO. And from ISO 200 or so they are all basically identical in terms of DR and color sensitivity.
Also, many people read Japanese camera industry news already know it but many Western camera medias decidedly dismiss is that Canon has renewed their CMOS plants(in 2017) and expanded their production capacity(in 2017) because they know they need more sensors for automobile and robotics business they own and also for security camera use.
In addition to that, some news papers here have reported they would sell many types of sensors for industrial use including car, security, robotics and airplane.
Panasonic has also announced their first mass production organic sensor based 8k cinema camera is coming very soon.
It will be very expensive, not affordable to most of potential FF mirrorless buyers for sure. But the point is the 8k and organic sensor tech will start trickling down to consumer grade bodies soon after the 2020 Olympics.
This means now Nikon is the only one still using the borrowed sensor tech and that will severely restrict them in many ways.
If the' Nikon will start using TPSCo sensors soon' rumor is true, then Nikon will be fine, but if they will keep depending every single core tech of their cameras on Sony , then they will have no future. Plus, many online camera sites never seem to realize this very fact but Nikon is the smallest camera company of all and least diversified one, it is a big concern for them.
I think the future of the Z system looks very bleak, and I am afraid it may be ending up to be another failed attempt from Nikon just like their Nikon One system.
UPDATE4: Many people now know that both Panasonic and Olympus will go FF, but their approach to get there seems to be very different.
Olympus seems to be waiting a couple of years or so to see which one of the 4 current systems will survive. Then , they will finally decide what mount system to join or go their own- proprietary system. A big newspaper here reported that in last week. In their interview article,Olympus also says they do not know how it'll change after the dust settles, so they just wait to see how everything will change after the Leica Panasonic team work actually starts out in this winter.
And they also mentioned the new Panasonic sensor is actually more appealing to them than the Sony 45mp sensor used in the Nikon Z7 because the new Pana chip runs cooler and they think it is more power efficient. So they will have to wait to see which sensor team will win Pana or Sony or maybe Canon as they have been investing more money than any one else on sensor fabs recently. Canon has renewed their sensor fabs recently and they did many times already(at least a several times). So maybe Olympus is right, Canon may eventually win the sensor race. If that happens as many Sony fanboys and Olympus seems to be very much concerned about the Sony E mount will become the losers' system.
But even if Canon eventually wins the sensor race, Sony will always have more lenses, more flashes and more accessories of any kind since Sony has the big 5 year time advantage.
So I think both E mount and R mount will be fine for at least a few more years.
Panasonic's approach to this matter is clear they focus on a tough hybrid FF camera system and make the risk smallest possible by joining the already existing mount.
Panasonic also says they will also keep using EF mount for some pro video cameras. And everybody in Japan knows Pana and Canon are close friends and they are not close to Sony and Nikon. Olympus is close to both Panasonic and Sony. Actually, most of people here already knew that even before the news paper article. What many people do not know about Olympus is actually they are very close to Fuji and having run many joint projects in medical area.
So it is possible Olympus may work with Fuji, Pana-Leica team, Sony or Canon for their inevitable FF system.
One thing we all know for sure is they will never work with Nikon since Nikon always hates Olympus as it is the biggest rival in their scientific lab optics business.
As for the new FF mount sells, it is really clear a big loser seems to be Nikon. Honestly, after the Panasonic Leica Sigma announcement and Zeiss's new exciting camera launch, no one talks about the Z any more.
We've got many people canceling their preordered the Z7.
By contrast, the R is doing quite well, it is the current no 1 selling FF body world wide. But what really surprises me is that the majority of the R buyers are adding it in addition to their Canon EF system or Sony FE system. IOW, they seem to be going triple mount system to try to avoid the risk of becoming a victim of a loser's mount system.
I think it is the safest way to play the game for now,but I also think they should at least wait for the new Pana to be actually out in next Feb. I think the new Panasonic S1R will be amazing, and the Zeiss ZX1 is extraordinary, and it clearly shows us how anachronistic and wrongly designed all the current Japanese cameras are. These Japanese cameras really need a clean 21st century minded menu system.
So in any case m43 will survive for the foreseeable future, at least.
But Olympus has to wake up to see the reality that most of their and Panasonic fans do not want the big and heavy wanna be a FF replacement at the all costs kind of the direction they are obviously leading their m43 to.
The new series of rumors telling us that their new flagship camera will be a huge speed monster and may even be bigger than the Sony A9 or the Nikon Z7, almost reaching to the size of the Fuji GFX50s. If it is true, I think they will lose a lot of their current users to Fuji.
UPDATE 5: Now , Olympus has officially registered the long rumored EM1MK2 replacement camera that they call "true pro camera".
I think what they meant by true pro is something like a true sports and wildlife camera for rich amatures who do not question anything but just pay 3k or more for a tiny sensored expensive camera just because it is big and super fast.
I think everybody in this class of camera market knows how much smaller the m43 sensor is compared to the sensor of the other systems and thus it is much cheaper than so-called FF or APS-C sensor. And not many people will be able to justify the price Olympus will ask for this body. It is rumored to be over 3k US, some even say it may cost more than 4k USD.
If the 4k price is right, then it would be even more expensive than the A9(the best sports and wildlife camera our money can buy). So we think it is a very bad value........in any mean.
I am sure it is a great camera in terms of speed, reach, AF,overall usability and body quality, but the tiny 43 sensor will hurt it seriously, we all know that even before its official launch.
It will be faster than the Fuji X-T3 ,but by how much?
It will be cheaper than the upcoming D6, but how much cheaper?
It will be much more tough than anything else out there , but how much more durable ?
It will have outstanding AF that may even beat the current best AF system used in the D5, but will it be able to be also beat the future A9MK2 and D6? I strongly doubt it.
I think most of people will have hard time justifying the price or just perplexed by its price , since the current best crop camera Fuji X-T3 costs only 1300 US dollars.
Olympus is obviously choosing the bigger, faster and more expensive sports camera market as their final battle field.
And this was exactly what they did in the end of the original D-SLR 43 era, to kill that system.
It seems like they never get what most of their customers want and ask us camera shops to tell them to.
They need to focus on the EM5 line not the bigger than the EM1 line. They seriously need a loud wake up call.
UPDATE6:Now we all know the Panasonic fullframe attempt is going to be a big fail, as they set the price too high to place it outside of the normal first time FF buyer's market.
The S1 not the R will cost more than 4k USD according to Sankei news article(not the wrongly translated English version of it that Photorumors posted a few weeks back).
The news paper article clearly says the S1 is not an entry level camera like the A7MK3(which is arguably also not)or the Nikon Z6 or the Canon R. It has just low resolution sensor in order to optimize its video or hybrid part of game.
Basically, according to Sankei, it will be a fullframe version of the GH5s, thus expensive , much more so than the Sony A7MK3 , the Canon EOS R and the Nikon Z6.
The S1R will be the more still focused model like the G9, thus it will not be more expensive than the more video focused S1.
It makes sense logically, but many people having waited this long to choose their first serious mirrorless system do not think like that, to them 24mp means cheap or should be cheap or affordable. Affordable is a relative term, but I think not many people call 4.5k US camera an affordable or a good value camera.
Many MILC diehards think being innovative alone justifies camera makers pricing their ILC a bit higher than the rivals, and arguably Sony could do it successfully for the last 4 years or so, and many people think Panasonic is also a very innovative company when it comes to hybrid camera tech.....
Sure they and Samsung having been the most innovative camera manufactures for over a decade , but has it led their camera business to any serious commercial success?
Obviously not. The being innovative part allow does not guarantee them to be successful.
Then you might ask why Sony could get away with the "pricing everything above equivalent Canon Nikon camera" strategy? Well there are two obvious reasons for that:
1 ) at the time there was no rival cameras from CN to the Sony third gen A7X and A9. So they could price it a bit higher than they should have been with a real competitor from CN.
So as CN released their new A7R and A7 competitors, Sony readjusted the A7MK3 and A7R3 pricing , now I can get a new A7MK3 for just 178000 yen which is roughly 1470US....so I bought it again. The A7R3 is about 248000 yen now which is roughly equal to 2080 USD.....at that price , the A7R3 and A7MK3 are really a bargain deal.
2 lucky enough for them though , Sony is not Panasonic, they've never made any real home appliance such as rice cooker , coffee machine, home bar, etc, these are the things Panasonic has been making for years to make most of their main income. Most of people considered Sony as a serious camera brand especially in this digital age since they have always been one of those top cinema and TV camera makers, and their main business is PlayStation and insurance , so people do not have much aversion towards the image of Sony as a serious camera company. But many of us do have strong prejudice against Panasonic as a still or ILC camera company.
Basically, Sankei is saying Panasonic has failed repeatedly in their 20 years of digital camera business history since they 've never understood what their true pricing power is , or brand power/ recognition is in the stills camera market. So they always overpriced everything and shot themselves in the foot every time they try something new. And they do not even understand why they still want to continue this game after having lost almost 1.8 billion dollars in total.
Also the newspaper thinks there are not enough rooms for all the 6 major FF players in the so called high-end ILC world.
There may be 4 but not 6........this means some one or two companies will have to give up FF, and they think it will be Panasonic.
And another big point they have raised in the article is the current FF boom is just a bubble and will not last long.
I fully agreed on the final point of theirs, and most of rational people already with a decent FF camera will agree that the latest and greatest body with the best looking spec sheet won't attract us much any more, it is all about a great set of lenses by this point, and I do not know if the A7R4 will sell as well as the R2 or the R3, the progress advancement in one or two generations is too small to justify paying over 3k USD for a body every couple of years.
I think this is why the current best selling FF body is the A7R2, A7MK3 and used A9........not the latest and greatest.
Hey be logical , if you can get a A7MK3 for around 1500 including the tax, then why do you need to spend 1 k or more for the A7R3? let alone for a much more expensive Z7?
For me , the 42mp sensor alone worth the price, but most of people do not think like that, and this is why the best selling NEW ILC cameras are all those so-called entry level low resolution bodies. The main stream market do not want 40 or more mp. And in case of the A7MK3 vs the R3, the A7MK3 is actually a more advanced later released body, it can shoot faster and its AF is better, its video is better since its 4k is downsampled from 6k. It has better lowlight AF, etc. So unless we really need the 42mp sensor , now it is really the A7MK3 is a no-brainer for most of us now.
We are too obsessed with corner resolution and tiny bit better print quality, so we must play the chasing "the best sensor available here now" game , and we are kind of self-brainwashing what we actually want is what we need, so we think we need the best, but the rest of more logically thinking market does not play that game, instead they look for the best value body in their comfortable budget zone(1.5-2.5k range).
Panasonic could not get that and about to place their new FF attempts out side of the budget range of most people(who are interested in a new system).
And their FF will most likely fail means that they may have to just terminate the m43 system development project and focus 100 percent on the new FF system.
Also, the series of stupid comments they made about their new policies and how their new systems compared to the old system hurt their reputation as a system camera manufacture.
They used to say they would release a 8k camera in the m43 mount by the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
But now, they've been emphasizing that plan would be technologically impossible, and that was the main technological issue that forced them to go FF, etc.
They also said , 'The L alliance is like a real legal marriage. The previous arrangement [with Olympus] was more like we were just living together without any serious agreements' .
This sounds really disrespectful to the m43 users and I think this shows their true attitude towards the customers......this is why they keep failing.
