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flamin lib

(14,559 posts)
Wed Sep 9, 2020, 01:41 PM Sep 2020

For those interested in the business side of the photographic industry

there are rumors and rumors of rumors.

Up front disclaimer* This is all speculation based on my personal experience and biases.

Various sources that I monitor are reporting things that may portend further changes to the enthusiast camera side of imaging. Forgive me if I offer a distillation without specific links but I'm watching 43rumors.com, fstoppers.com and digitalcameraworld.com (and where various articles lead me).

JIP again makes a statement that it will NOT sell off the Olympus camera division. Instead they reiterated that they will concentrate on high end gear and find new markets not served by Olympus at this time. One prime market is private label manufacturing of lenses. Most manufacturers do this but you never know as such agreements are as secret as anything the Pentagon has going but Olympus has a number of full frame lens patents. They are looking at areas such as industrial, surveillance other unspecified segments. The video market is one segment that Olympus has ceded to Panasonic and an area that JIP is interested in BUT the video team at Olympus was moved from the camera segment to various places in the parent company a few years ago so as to keep them for medical equipment development. It seems that JIP is negotiating changing that. JIP also reiterated that they will use the Vietnam facility which further muddies the situation as the medical and camera division share production equipment.

Now comes new rumors about Panasonic. Rumblings are that Panasonic will abandon the 4/3 format in favor of APSC L mount. In some ways this makes no sense at all (I think there's an island the pacific named that--the Nosense Atoll) as the cost of R&D and manufacturing at a time of market downsizing is hard to justify. On the other hand if there is a partner out there looking for video experience in a 4/3 format they might be able to off load that division at a break-even point (pure speculation on my part but *cough jip cough*). The rumors include pressure from Sigma to go APS as the market for that mount is much larger than either full frame or 4/3.

As I posted earlier there are more than 40 companies dedicated to 4/3 equipment. There are advantages to the small sensor that larger sensors simply can't overcome such as inertia for image stabilization and DOF. These are of particular interest in video applications. Further the smaller sensor makes for faster data transfer rates. Even as technology for FF improves it will never keep up. Cost is another advantage for industrial applications. The format is here to stay.

The big 3 (Canon, Nikon and perhaps Sony) are entering a new round of Pixel Wars. Pixel count is nothing more than a marketing ploy (my opinion). The difference between a 30x40 inch print made from a 10 meg and a 50 meg is negligible at normal viewing distances. Add in that image usage is increasingly moving to digital presentation no one can see an improvement over 1 meg anyway. Our contest entries are under 900k pixels. This new war will just suck more money out of profits as the R&D and sensor costs increase. Consider that image re-sizing combined with AI erases the difference between a small sensor and a large one anyway.

Beyond that the entire camera industry was rocked by the Olympus move to offload cameras to JIP. None of the major brands are more than a few % of the parent company. Olympus was only 3% of the overall company. That's good news/bad news for camera divisions: poor sales are not a major drag on company profits but dumping that division won't hurt overall performance either. Olympus/JIP seems to be just the beginning.

Que Sera Sera.

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For those interested in the business side of the photographic industry (Original Post) flamin lib Sep 2020 OP
Thanks for the info ... ya dun good MichaelSoE Sep 2020 #1
Thanks! nt flamin lib Sep 2020 #2

MichaelSoE

(1,575 posts)
1. Thanks for the info ... ya dun good
Wed Sep 9, 2020, 04:31 PM
Sep 2020

I always appreciate all the research you do for me

I agree with your opinion on the pixel wars. A 30 x 40 inch print is not to be viewed in that manner; close enough to try to determine if the pixel count was high enough. It would be like looking at a 4 x 5 foot painting from a foot away to determine if the artist used a big enough brush.

Carry on

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