Archive for the 'Olympus' category

What can be forecasted of the most important (in my eyes ) announces expected before the Photokina fair in Koln.

Beware: We said announces, not releases.

Already done:

Beware: This will be updated as often as needed. This may lead to repeated publications in the RSS feeds and some publication date changes.

According to IDC, the sales of photo cameras progressed by 24% in 2007 to 131 million cameras. The global market is in the hands of several companies:

• Canon: 24.5 millions (18%)
• Sony: 20.9 millions (16%)
• Kodak: 12.6 millions (10%)
• Samsung: 11.7 millions (9%)
• Nikon: 11.4 mililons (8.4%)
• Olympus: 11.3 mililons (8.3%)

For the SLR market (Single Lens Reflex), two companies are overwhelming:

• Canon: 43%
• Nikon: 40%

Canon looses some ground to Nikon, but the margins were going down thanks to added competition.

Olympus launches a new digital photo SLR for the 4/3 format. This already produced a small flood of tests, analysis and commentaries on the Internet. Here is my selection:

• Olympus E-3: assurant et rassurant (DigitLife – Français)
• Olympus E-3, enfin (DigitLife – Français)
• DPreview (English)
• Photography blog (English)
• PopPhoto (English)
• Think Camera, commentary (English)
• Think Camera, unveiled (English)
• VR Zone (English)
• ePhotozine (English)

The newest pro SLR camera from Olympus appeared shortly in Korea. So, you may find a few interesting bits at:

• slrclub.com
• bbs.danawa.com

Really not much to see, but this was probably not a mockup.

Olympus has now two excellent products in its 4/3 family of digital single lens reflex (D-SLR) cameras: Evolt E-410 and Evolt E-510. Let’s list some of the most prominent tests/reviews published recently on the web.

• E-410:
  • The Imaging Resource
  • Photography blog
  • Think Camera
  • DPReview
• E-510:
  • The Imaging Resource
  • Photography blog
  • Wrotniak.net
  • MegaPixel.net

Reviewed cameras

Canon 30D, 5D, Digital Rebel XT (350D), Digital Rebel XTi (400D), 1D Mark III , 1Ds Mark II

Nikon D200, D2Hs, D2Xs, D40, D40x, D80

Fuji FinePix S5 Pro

Olympus Evolt E-510, E-500, E-410, E-330

Pentax *ist D, K100D, K110D, K10D

Samsung GX-1L, GX-1S, GX-10

Sigma SD-14

Sony Alpha DSLR-A100

This is not everyday that a web site makes the effort to compare 26 Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) cameras in one single article/review. Nevertheless, this is what GearDigest (affiliated to the excellent Tom’s Hardware of good fame among PC enthusiasts) does today. This is an orgy of cameras between $600 and $7000 (around 600-7000€)! Are missing though: Panasonic and Leica for being late and the Fuji S3 pro that is -surprisingly- considered a specialty camera for infrared.

The guide contains several pages of explanations and of theory on the advantages of the specificities of the SLR and DSLR cameras (the journalist visibly does not expect its readers to know much about that photo technology and compensates with the clarity of his writing).

unfortunately (but this is understandable for a general public audience – rather than photo enthusiasts), the comparison is done essentially at the limited level of technical characteristics. Nonetheless, this is a very wide review of the photo DSLR landscape of available products and it will ease the initial sorting between the many offers.

Link.