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Forum: Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Other Camera Brands
02-06-2019, 02:53 AM
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The only metric which really matters is how many pixels can you put on that thar bird at acceptable levels of DOF, aperture, speed and ISO. It’s a very practical matter, as is the thousands of dollars which unfortunately have to leave one’s bank account to achieve it. The sensor limits on the Oly will be OK for some and not for others. I would certainly rent for a week myself to see where on that scale I really was. I suspect in the end I would plump for the value/IQ compromise and go and see Mr Nikon (D500 + whatever).
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Forum: Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Other Camera Brands
02-05-2019, 04:15 AM
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Very interesting points. The main one for me is that very good 1" sensors are small enough to allow bridge cameras with huge reach on their fixed lenses - and still deliver good enough quality for a lot of folks. After that, the quality jump although there doesn't become all that distinct till one moves to much larger formats.
However, I'd guess that lens from Oly will still sell quite well. Quite a lot of long-term Oly fans would buy it just as they bought all the uber-expensive 43 items originally, and quite a few folks would also buy it while trading down from the big formats because age or infirmity have made the big stuff too much to handle. That's not uncommon so far as I can see. Sales and IQ don't always align. Provided they can keep things at ISO 1600 or below (3200 in extremis) most m43 owners of a lens like that would probably be OK with it. Of course that's limiting but I'd guess it is simply part of the trade-off.
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Forum: Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Other Camera Brands
01-27-2019, 04:24 AM
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This looks to be an extremely capable camera in some regards and those who really do need what it offers will likely buy it and like it. There won't be many but there will be some.
However, it looks to me as if an important function of the EM1X is to normalize high sticker prices for Olympus. I've seen a post from a connected guy hinting that the sticker price of any EM1 Mark III will be $2K plus and nearer the price of the EM1X if one adds a grip. One can believe this or not. It looks to me, though, as if Oly are desperate to raise the selling prices of their better kit into the $1500-$3000 bracket. Perhaps their forecasts tell them that unless they do the finances of their camera division simply won't work because compared to the big boys their sales are relatively modest. To do this, Oly seem to be concentrating on features, features and more features. The big one with the EM1X seems to be "computational photography" though no one seems entirely sure what that actually means. Thing is, it's not much more than an embryonic promise at the moment and within a couple of years all the main outfits will be offering their own takes on various computational tricks. The most successful one so far is face/eye tracking and to date that's been done best by Sony.
I like Oly kit a lot and M43 does some things very very well indeed, but I'm not sure the future looks all that bright for it at the moment. The risk is that as the FF ceiling gets lower, with entry-level FF costing less and less, Oly's pricing is going to leave them high and dry. The killer, I suspect, would be a simpler Canon EOS R model costing say $1500 allied to some variable-aperture consumer zooms which could be quite modest in size and cost. I'd guess that's quite likely within a couple of years.
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Forum: Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Other Camera Brands
01-25-2019, 10:32 AM
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I agree. Possibly mixed marketing messages here. One can understand the nod to sports in Japan because they could pull in some folks who want a good camera for the upcoming Olympics. But elsewhere, wildlife and rugged outdoorsy stuff rule, one would think. For top sports stuff I'd have though one would look for clean, quality files at 6400 or more with a fast enough shutter to freeze movement and wide enough aperture both to enable that and to enable good subject isolation. Doesn't sound as if this camera would find that easy at all, both because of sensor limits and because Oly don't have (yet, anyway) an array of fast long telephoto lenses.
It's clear this camera has some real quality features to it, though, and in some respects it is very, very capable. But my guess would be that the market just won't take to anything M43 at around the $3K mark. There's too much competition these days from the big boys and some of their wares are no more or even less costly. I hope Oly didn't sink too much money into this because it's quite hard to see them making it back.
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Forum: Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Other Camera Brands
12-23-2018, 01:53 PM
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There’ll be a storm when/if the E-M1X is released because its fancy price and features will so obviously ignore the broad middle of Oly customers who buy most of the products. In the same way, Pentax has courted unpopularity by overlooking its APS-C users for so long (no K3 replacement). Same difference. Whatever emerges from either brand will likely be technically excellent but at the end of the chain there are those fickle, infuriating, ungrateful XYZs called customers. Best to keep them happy, however you do.
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Forum: Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Other Camera Brands
10-31-2018, 03:51 PM
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The rumoured model number - E-M1X - makes it sound like an E-M1 Mark II with a turbo fitted. If so, deffo not for everyone. Most folks would likely prefer a solid midrange generalist camera with a modern 20-24 mpx sensor without an eye-watering price tag and fancy features they’ll never use. We’ll see if that turns up while the E-M1X acts as the halo/attractor unit. The rest - X-T3 vanquisher, etc - is just YouTube-style hype.
“Compact but powerful and full featured” has been the basic Olympus offer for many years now. One can argue about the exact nature of that as time and tech change but at least it’s always been clear. It’s not for everyone or for every situation by any means but if those criteria meet someone’s requirements, Oly (and Panasonic) offer a very good system imho. The accent is on system, a full and capable one by now given the range of bodies, lenses and accessories on M43.
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