Olympus is ditching the entry-level DSLR in favor of its Micro Four Thirds mount PEN line of EVIL cameras. In an interview with Fotopolis, Toshiyuki Terada — the Product Manager of Olympus’ SLR Planning Department — is quoted as saying,
We do not have concrete plans to replace the E-620 and other recent SLRs. The entry level SLR class can be completely replaced by the Pen system in terms of performance.
Later in the interview, Terada seems to say that leaving the DSLR market entirely is one of the company’s goals. Read more…
Nice. The For Dummies series just added a Olympus PEN E-PL1 book to their extensive collection of digital photography instruction books, the first in the series for a Micro Four Thirds camera. Too bad they didn’t name the book “EVIL Photography for Dummies”, (though someone should write one with that title!).
Olympus’ new commercial for the Olympus PEN E-PL1 is pretty typical, except that it has an interesting twist at the end. It’ll probably make you want to watch the commercial twice.
Olympus just launched a new online publication called “PEN – The Magazine“. It’s available through a Flash viewer online (sorry iPad users), or as a PDF you can download. The first issue features six users of the Micro Four Thirds PEN system, and also an advertisement for why you should be using the system too (gasp!). Now all the other camera companies need to release free online magazines for their camera systems as well.
By the way, yesterday Olympus launched the “PEN your story competition“. All you have to do is submit a proposal through YouTube for what you would do with a PEN camera and a $5,000 budget. Judges will select 6 videos from the top 20 most “thumbs uped” by the community, and those individuals will receive the camera and money to bring their vision to life.
