Posted on Tuesday, September 23 2008 @ 18:59 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Olympus showed off a retro-style Micro Four Thirds camera at Photokina 2008. DP Review
says the concept features an interchangeable lens and measures only 120 x 65 x 32mm.
Olympus Imaging Corporation (President: Masaharu Okubo) today announced that it has begun development of an interchangeable lens type digital camera based on the "Micro Four Thirds System."
Development of the camera will bring dramatic reductions in size and weight to the Olympus E-System, and will comply with the new Micro Four Thirds System standard jointly announced with Matsushita Industrial Co., Ltd.(Panasonic) on August 5.
From September 23 through 28, a concept mock-up of the camera will be exhibited at "Photokina 2008", the world's biggest trade fair for the photographic and imaging industries held at Köln Messe, Cologne, Germany.
The global market for interchangeable lens type digital cameras is growing steadily, but still only accounts for a 7% share of the total digital camera market. Considering the much larger share held by interchangeable lens type digital cameras when film was the dominant imaging medium, it seems that there is still ample room for sales growth in this category. Market surveys, however, indicate that more than a few customers choose compact models because they find digital SLR cameras to be "big, heavy, and difficult to operate."
The Micro Four Thirds System standard was established to meet this need by enabling the development of radically more compact and lightweight interchangeable lens type digital camera systems. The camera currently under development will be the first Olympus camera to comply with the Micro Four Thirds System standard, and interchangeable lenses that comply with the standard are also moving ahead. In addition, users will be able to mount existing Four Thirds System wide-angle, telephoto, and macro lenses on Micro Four Thirds System bodies via an adapter.
Product name, launch date and retail price of an interchangeable lens type digital camera based on the "Micro Four Thirds System" are not determined now.
