Micro Four Thirds Digital Lenses

Olympus and Panasonic’s Compact Interchangeable Digital Lens System

Aug 9, 2008

Olympus and Panasonic announce a Micro Four Thirds System standard for digital camera with interchangeable lenses, aiming for significantly lighter and compact cameras.

Olympus and Panasonic already cooperate on their current four-thirds system cameras and lenses and the new smaller system aims at photographers put off by the size of some DSLRs. The boom in compact digital point and shoot cameras has reduced the market share of interchangeable lens (SLR type) cameras to 7% since the switch from film cameras.

Canon and Nikon dominate the digital camera market and the Olympus - Panasonic co-operative aim to create a new market niche for themselves. Rather than taking on the DSLR heavy weights they are attempting a flanking maneuver aimed at the super zoom fixed lens digital cameras. Olympus has a long history of producing compact SLR cameras beginning with the OM-1 back in 1972. Compact digital cameras offer an expanding range of features and performance, and market surveys indicate customers choose compact models because they find digital SLR cameras to be "big, heavy, and difficult to operate”.

One problem with fixed super zoom lenses is that they are stuck with a bulky lens all the time. The new four-thirds system allows more compact general-purpose lenses for convenience and compactness with the option of longer focal length zooms only when needed. The system still uses the same four-thirds digital sensor from the full size Olympus and Panasonic DSLR cameras to ensure the same high quality images.

The new micro four-thirds standard has a 6mm smaller outer diameter lens mount and halves the distance from the lens mount to the sensor, or flangeback distance. This significant reduction in the flangeback distance probably means there is no room for the traditional DSLR movable mirror. New cameras based on the micro four-thirds system will probably use electronic viewfinders or the LCD screen. The lack of a quality optical viewfinder system will not worry most prospective buyers, as the target market is photographers moving from compact digital cameras where the only view they get is on the LCD screen. Olympus and Panasonic cameras are industry leaders in features such as Live View and contrast-detection auto focusing systems for interchangeable lens type digital camera systems.

To give owners of the new system increased flexibility there will be an adaptor so full size four-thirds lenses are useable on the smaller lens mount. Future flexibility is also catered for with electrical contacts between the lens and camera body increasing in from 9 to 11. These are unused the moment but allow engineers to add additional functions as they are developed.

The Four Thirds System standard is an open standard that enables bodies and lenses produced by participating manufacturers to exchange information and be used interchangeably with one another.

Panasonic releases the first digital camera for micro four thirds lenses [more..]

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