{"id":468,"date":"2013-09-13T12:32:28","date_gmt":"2013-09-13T16:32:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chasinglightphotography.com\/blog\/?p=468"},"modified":"2013-09-18T10:44:26","modified_gmt":"2013-09-18T14:44:26","slug":"should-olympus-go-full-frame-no","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chasinglightphotography.com\/blog\/?p=468","title":{"rendered":"Should Olympus Go Full Frame? No!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Olympus<\/a>

Olympus 12-40 f\/2.8<\/p><\/div>\n

September 13, 2013<\/p>\n

The crowds are lining up for the newly announced E-M1. Immediately after the announcement the camera vaulted to the Number 1 Best Seller ranking in compact system cameras on Amazon, and Amazon issued a high demand warning <\/a>indicating the company may have difficulty meeting demand when the camera becomes available in October. Early reviews<\/a> of the new 12-40 f\/2.8<\/a> lens are also very promising.<\/p>\n

As I mentioned in my last post,<\/a> I’m excited about the new camera. The E-M5 is so good that it would take significant improvements for me to feel the need for the E-M1. In that regard, I think Olympus has hit it out of the park. The main limitation for me of the E-M5 is it’s continuous autofocusing ability. According to reports emerging over the last few days<\/a>, the C-AF on the E-M1 is very good. It won’t beat a state-of-the-art DSLR from Nikon or Canon, but it seems like it will be adequate for my purposes.<\/p>\n

So now that Olympus has delivered another outstanding mirrorless camera, what next? The talk of the mirrorless world is that Sony will launch a full-frame mirrorless camera in the near future<\/a>. \u00a0This has led some to speculate that Olympus needs to develop a full-frame mirrorless camera<\/a>. I hope that Olympus is not that foolish. Olympus needs to double-down on the micro four-thirds format and fill out the holes in the system as quickly as possible. As I’ve argued before (Part 1<\/a>, Part 2<\/a>), the size, weight, and, yes, DOF advantages of the smaller sensor make the M43 ecosystem a powerful force in the industry. Investing scarce resources in full-frame development efforts would be a mistake for two reasons.<\/p>\n

First, Olympus has little to add to the market with a full-frame mirrorless camera. Who would buy it? The switching costs for photographers are prohibitive. Nikon and Canon already hold over 70% market share in the DSLR industry. The target market is highly invested in glass and other accessories from Nikon and Canon. For example, if I wanted a full-frame camera right now, I’d just buy it. I already have most of the glass I would need to fill out the system (Nikon 17-35, 70-200, 200-400, 300 f\/4, and several primes). Why would I invest in a completely new system just to get a mirrorless camera that may be marginally smaller, but doesn’t have quite the autofocus performance of a DSLR? It just doesn’t make sense. Sony may have the deep corporate resources necessary to play the long game and create an upgrade path for APS-C NEX users, but I don’t see Olympus or Panasonic having that luxury.<\/p>\n

Second, moving to full-frame cameras negates the advantages of the the M43 system. As I’ve mentioned before, while waiting for the illusory Nikon D400, I considered a full-frame camera. I rejected it because I was tired of carrying the load of large DSLR cameras. The performance of M43 is excellent and I gladly accept the tradeoffs inherent in the smaller sensors. Given what I read and what I hear from my readers, most people that have moved to the M43 system are happy with the tradeoffs. Most M43 users are not sitting around waiting for a full-frame mirrorless camera. The E-M1 seems like it will give us almost everything we want in a camera. There are some improvements we’d love to see, but a larger sensor is not one of them.<\/p>\n

Next: What We Need Next from Olympus<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

September 13, 2013 The crowds are lining up for the newly announced E-M1. Immediately after the announcement the camera vaulted to the Number 1 Best Seller ranking in compact system cameras on Amazon, and Amazon issued a high demand warning indicating the company may have difficulty meeting demand when the camera becomes available in October. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":472,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-photography","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chasinglightphotography.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chasinglightphotography.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chasinglightphotography.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chasinglightphotography.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chasinglightphotography.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=468"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/chasinglightphotography.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":504,"href":"http:\/\/chasinglightphotography.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468\/revisions\/504"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chasinglightphotography.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chasinglightphotography.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chasinglightphotography.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chasinglightphotography.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}