News Olympus Sells Imaging Division

I love Olympus, great cameras and great lenses. In fact they are so under appreciated, despite making some of the best lenses. Their Olympus PRO primes really put to shame anything Sony produces and all their cameras are so feature rich.
 
Of course an unfortunate event - but the writing has been on the wall for quite a while. :(
I certainly thought/hoped they'd keep the business in the style of Ricoh/Pentax... But maybe Olympus' imaging division was too big for that kind of 'hobby approach' - and too small to be competitive...

Ah well, my Olympus system will do me well for quite a few more years (still using a lot of four-thirds lenses and some four-thirds cameras :) )

I felt like this for some time now:
I'll keep using m43 until all my stuff "breaks" - which will easily be a few more years. And by that time I'll have a better idea of which of the big players' systems suits my needs (and which system didn't go anywhere :) )
 
As I said on Mu-43, this is just going from one corporate overlord, answerable to one group of investors, to another. Given that Olympus as a whole has seemed pretty unhappy with their camera division for quite a while, and the new guys actually wanted to buy it, it could actually be good news.
I read somewhere that the buyer is some kind of liquidation company. In any event, the future of R&D looks bleak. Fortunately for mu43, Panasonic just released a sort of blogger camera that DPR TV didn’t like. 🙄
 
Hopefully Olympus camera will turn around, but new investors will not bury lots of money unless they see a return in the future. It was different with bigger corp. I am sure they will cut costs including R&D... Also I was saying finally Panasonic brought upgraded evf/lcd in a small package similar to G1X III size, then they crippled other things... I see a point with m43 being small, but lately they lost that view a little as they try to become more pro oriented, but the competition is tough... I guess eventually we will have cell phones and high end pro gear... Camera sales are returning to the levels before the digital...

I read somewhere that the buyer is some kind of liquidation company. In any event, the future of R&D looks bleak. Fortunately for mu43, Panasonic just released a sort of blogger camera that DPR TV didn’t like. 🙄
 
Will the team in charge of designing Olympus menus find jobs elsewhere? I wonder. Meanwhile I love my EM1ii (except for you know what). They had a great run, but competition in the photo world is brutal.
 
One good thing though for those that are patient and not opposed to buying used is that of this is a tech liquidation, then there will be a s panic to all the m43 gear, with a subsequent drop in the value of used gear, so you could eventually get an em1.2 per inexpensively.
 
I can’t believe it has no IBIS. That is a great advantage of mu43 since it is easier with a small sensor. It was a pre-production model, but the comparison photos and videos against the equally new Sony zv1 weren’t even close.
Yeah, it is too bad it doesn't have IBIS, but the shutter is also the tiny unit from the GM1 which is still in the GX850. Space is obviously at a premium, and IBIS needs extra space.
 
I read somewhere that the buyer is some kind of liquidation company. In any event, the future of R&D looks bleak. Fortunately for mu43, Panasonic just released a sort of blogger camera that DPR TV didn’t like. 🙄
Any references for this? I'm sure they are going to do some consolidation. But I haven't heard JIP being referred to as a liquidator.

I still plan on buying the recently released 12-45 f/4 Pro and (while not the telephoto I want) I could make do with the 100-400mm that has been rumored to be the lens registered last week. On a plus side if there aren't any new bodies I can keep using LR 6.14 and not have to worry about finding something new.
 
I was heavily into Contax when Kyocera shut it down... But it is different world we live in and the Pandemic is trouble for photography. The millinials and beyond love their mobile phones. I wonder which camera systems will be able to adapt and survive. I fear Olympus is just the most recent to fall.
 
Any references for this? I'm sure they are going to do some consolidation. But I haven't heard JIP being referred to as a liquidator.

I still plan on buying the recently released 12-45 f/4 Pro and (while not the telephoto I want) I could make do with the 100-400mm that has been rumored to be the lens registered last week. On a plus side if there aren't any new bodies I can keep using LR 6.14 and not have to worry about finding something new.
I’ll try to remember. It might have been a comment, and thus wrong. ;)
 
Any references for this? I'm sure they are going to do some consolidation. But I haven't heard JIP being referred to as a liquidator.

I still plan on buying the recently released 12-45 f/4 Pro and (while not the telephoto I want) I could make do with the 100-400mm that has been rumored to be the lens registered last week. On a plus side if there aren't any new bodies I can keep using LR 6.14 and not have to worry about finding something new.
I read it on a thread over on the mu43 forum. For some reason the link won't work. I googled JIP and it appears they buy pieces of others companies, like Sony's Vaio laptop division, and tires to make money with them. That's better than I thought. OTOH, the R&D budget for this new company will probably be considerably smaller than Olympus.

Edit: JIP: Will it go the "Vaio" route or will it just sell the business? - 43 Rumors
 
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