New Sony M43 Sensor Coming in 2021 (early rumours)

[RichardC]

If it's not that difficult, then why did Olympus end up making $200M loss with this business in one FY and ended up dumping everything to first passer-by?

Because it suited them not to make the loss anywhere else in the organization.

 

[JonSnih]

If it's not that difficult, then why did Olympus end up making $200M loss with this business in one FY and ended up dumping everything to first passer-by?

You could count the number of interested parties in Oly imaging on a two finger hand of the old seafarer from the 15th century.

More serious answer would be: this was a long-term plan (to get rid of imaging unit) based on previous JIP interest. Also Oly reorganized and upgraded the manufacturing facility for future/new legal entity. There had to be a reason. Why would they invest such money with intention of closing the imaging business?

 

[pdk42]

Well, I'd be surprised if anyone here really knows the true position. My best guess is that JIP have a go-forward plan that involves keeping the brand alive (even if it's not called Olympus). However, I strongly suspect that the plan involves serious downsizing and cost cutting. Innovating in the midst of all that is going to be difficult because the best engineers will be rattled (or indeed, left behind in the Olympus Medical division) and the R&D budget will be smaller.

Hopefully there'll still be some investment in the future and perhaps they'll find an inspired leader who pulls them through it all. I'll be gunning for them, with all my fingers crossed!

 

[John M Flores]

They could follow Pentax. They were struggling and purchased by Hoya, then sold to Ricoh. The pace of development lags Sony and other leaders, but they've got a niche that they continue to serve.

 

[BDR-529]

You and the other poster here are suggesting JIP can't produce cameras at all, even when they got R&D from Olympus.

Doom mongering in full glory.

If my opinion was that JIP can't produce cameras at all, then that's exactly what I would have said without any ambiquity.

This question is not even relevant because JIP would not have touched Olympus camera business with a ten foot pole unless they believe that they can manufacture (at least one or two) Olympus cameras at profit "as is" untill they become obsolete. Or sell the whole business in a couple of months to real buyer who has been hiding in the shadows all the time. JIP is a financial engineering company and their only raison d'être is to make a quick killing.

Just manufacturing existing model or two at profit is still a far cry from sustainable camera business because that requires so huge income from operations that money is left over to finance continuous development of new camera models and technologies which future cameras must have.

Olympus, with their 84 year experience in camera business, engineering resources and financial muscle was not able to pull that one off and I'm failing to see a single reason why JIP would fare any better if they try to run what we remember as Olympus camera business or even something vaguely similar.

I'm still confident that JIP has a grand plan to make a profit but this might not have anything to do with introducing new m4/3 camera models which are again on par with mirrorless FF competitors, being only lighter and less expensive. I'm more than curious to see what JIP is going to do but future of m4/3 ecosystem is now entirely on pannys hands.

 

[RS86]

If my opinion was that JIP can't produce cameras at all, then that's exactly what I would have said without any ambiquity.

This question is not even relevant because JIP would not have touched Olympus camera business with a ten foot pole unless they believe that they can manufacture (at least one or two) Olympus cameras at profit "as is" untill they become obsolete. Or sell the whole business in a couple of months to real buyer who has been hiding in the shadows all the time. JIP is a financial engineering company and their only raison d'être is to make a quick killing.

Just manufacturing existing model or two at profit is still a far cry from sustainable camera business because that requires so huge income from operations that money is left over to finance continuous development of new camera models and technologies which future cameras must have.

Olympus, with their 84 year experience in camera business, engineering resources and financial muscle was not able to pull that one off and I'm failing to see a single reason why JIP would fare any better if they try to run what we remember as Olympus camera business or even something vaguely similar.

I'm still confident that JIP has a grand plan to make a profit but this might not have anything to do with introducing new m4/3 camera models which are again on par with mirrorless FF competitors, being only lighter and less expensive. I'm more than curious to see what JIP is going to do but future of m4/3 ecosystem is now entirely on pannys hands.

Quick killing by JIP, you really made me laugh. They have tried to quickly kill VAIO since 2014. Are you suggesting the company is a torturer, or just bad at quickly killing?

I can't really bother going into this doom mongering discussion more than this. Check my first post to this thread and take a laugh if you can.

This is about the rumoured new M43 sensor, any company can use it. I bet you guys can find your path back to the end-is-nigh threads, plenty around.

I mean if you have nothing else to contribute but Olympus doom mongering offtopic. We will see.

 

[BDR-529]

Quick killing by JIP, you really made me laugh. They have tried to quickly kill VAIO since 2014. Are you suggesting the company is a torturer, or just bad at quickly killing?

I'm happy to bring some joy to your life which seems to be tad on the negative side otherwise.

And about your question: all evidence points to the latter option you suggested. JIP has managed to eventually water down the once prestigious VAIO brand and turn it to an indifferent name slapped on the cover of a generic ODM laptop on a half-hearthed attempt to sell it at premium price.

This very same company is now holding rights to Olympus consumer products, including their m4/3 cameras and lenses. Since I like a good laugh too, please do give your predition about what will happen next.

 

[Mike Wingate]

Well surely JIP must get someone to manufacture something to sell. Existing products have the Olympus name on them, so that is not a new product under the new ownership. If JIP have factories and workers, there must be designers and engineers. There must be ideas. Maybe they have a panel of Olympus users who have given them all the necessary info to produce goods that are going to meet expectations. Pen F II 47mp, twin card, with 150-400mm f2.8 lens as the first kit.

 

[Photon]

I suspect JIP will be interested in a new sensor. There is a relatively large Olympus user base they will want to take advantage of.

I do suspect the number of camera bodies will decrease (I think Olympus sells 5 different bodies currently).

 

[RS86]

I'm happy to bring some joy to your life which seems to be tad on the negative side otherwise.

And about your question: all evidence points to the latter option you suggested. JIP has managed to eventually water down the once prestigious VAIO brand and turn it to an indifferent name slapped on the cover of a generic ODM laptop on a half-hearthed attempt to sell it at premium price.

This very same company is now holding rights to Olympus consumer products, including their m4/3 cameras and lenses. Since I like a good laugh too, please do give your predition about what will happen next.

We have a telepath here, great stuff! It's an awesome skill along with your crystal ball gazing.

You said: "JIP is a financial engineering company and their only raison d'être is to make a quick killing." You're wrong, there's no way around it.

If you're that clearly wrong about JIP, then we can wonder how much we should listen your views about the situation.

I'm not going to follow your offtopic like I said, which you seem so adamant on. You really should go to the threads that talk about JIP & Olympus.

 

[John M Flores]

[Mod hat] Let's take a deep breath everyone and stick to the topic at hand without rancor. [Mod hat]

 

[wyk]

I don't doubt for a moment they can make an m43 with a big pixel count. The issue is, at 20MP, it's already about to challenge the resolution of the better lenses. FF is about 3.8X the area of M43(2.5X that of APSC). This means if the m43 chip was upscaled, with the same pixel size, it would be a 75MP FF sensor and a 33MP APSC sensor(assuming I got those numbers right). Would the average FF lens resolve for 70mp? We have already seen how the 32MP Canon M6MKII APSC system show the flaws in their line of lenses vs the 24MP mark 1, and this is with Canon designing the lenses knowing they were gonna eventually stuff their 32mp sensor into those bodies. You are not likely ever going to see a higher MP M series. Then there's the scaling for video, arguably the largest market for m43 now.

 

[Dad for 2]

Out of interest I downloaded some GH5s raw files. The noise performance is very good, as is the DR. Pity that they decided to omit the IBIS. Although I'm not sure I could live with only 10.2Mp - the loss of fine detail would eventually frustrate me.

Totally agree. A GH5S with IBIS would likely allow HR mode that could double or triple resolution (at least for static subjects). This could be an interesting stills camera if given an IBIS upgrade.

 

[wonglp]

would love to see a Pen F.2/pro setting the new directions for OM Digitial solution, just as it paved the way for the era of 20MP sensor. Ok, i'm a biased Pen F lover

 

[Mike Wingate]

Great, temptation and rumours. This would make for a very expensive m43 camera, but surely a security camera with this sensor would not be expensive. New cameras with 32mp on their way soon?

 

[apete]

Whatever the sensor is going to be, there will be plenty of negative comments and "M43 is dead" theories. Either it is going to have too high resolution (47mp) or too low (24mp), as some may want 33,3333333mp or 37 and 2/3mp. It will not be BSI or stacked. Or it will not be capable of reading 120FPS. Maybe it will not be multiaspect, which will be disadvantage. Or it may have most of that, but it will be too expensive which will be huge disadvantage. Or the first body with the sensor is going to have too big grip or too small grip. The first camera using it will be too videocentric, or too photocentric. It will be rangefinder, which will be disadvantage, or it will not be rangefinder, which will be disadvantage as well

 

[Mike Wingate]

Whatever the sensor is going to be, there will be plenty of negative comments and "M43 is dead" theories. Either it is going to have too high resolution (47mp) or too low (24mp), as some may want 33,3333333mp or 37 and 2/3mp. It will not be BSI or stacked. Or it will not be capable of reading 120FPS. Maybe it will not be multiaspect, which will be disadvantage. Or it may have most of that, but it will be too expensive which will be huge disadvantage. Or the first body with the sensor is going to have too big grip or too small grip. The first camera using it will be too videocentric, or too photocentric. It will be rangefinder, which will be disadvantage, or it will not be rangefinder, which will be disadvantage as well

Granted, but will it have a joystick?

 

[doady]

I think it would be cool to have a slightly larger sensor for full resolution for multiple aspect ratios. 4:3, 5:4, 3:2, 16:9.

My dislike of the 3:2 aspect ratio basically reduced my choices to m4/3 and Fuji GFX when I was shopping for an interchangeable lens camera. It had to be 4:3 or 5:4. A fixed aspect ratio should be a thing of the past in the digital era. The Panasonic LX100 and GH5 series are good example of what modern cameras should be.

 

[hazydave]

I don't doubt for a moment they can make an m43 with a big pixel count. The issue is, at 20MP, it's already about to challenge the resolution of the better lenses. FF is about 3.8X the area of M43(2.5X that of APSC). This means if the m43 chip was upscaled, with the same pixel size, it would be a 75MP FF sensor and a 33MP APSC sensor(assuming I got those numbers right). Would the average FF lens resolve for 70mp? We have already seen how the 32MP Canon M6MKII APSC system show the flaws in their line of lenses vs the 24MP mark 1, and this is with Canon designing the lenses knowing they were gonna eventually stuff their 32mp sensor into those bodies. You are not likely ever going to see a higher MP M series. Then there's the scaling for video, arguably the largest market for m43 now.

Olympus and, more recently, Panasonic have been designing lenses to work well with hires modes for some years now. You can't get more resolution out of the optical system with any kind of high-res computational magic. But you can get all the resolution that's there. The fact that, even going back to the E-M5 Mark II, results were comparable to those of the Nikon D810 at the time, that alone tells you it's been real this whole time (I used it, both regular and HHHR, but some folks don't quite believe it). So, in short, there are plenty of lenses that have the resolution for ~50 megapixels on M43.

Canon was different. The EOS system began in the film days. The typical 35mm film emulsion was good for about 12 megapixels of equivalent digital resolution. Sure, some got you a bit more, but that was one of the targets Canon was using when making lenses in those days. They held together pretty well going to 24 megapixel digital, but when Canon came out with the 50 megapixel 5DS, they retested everything and produced a list of lenses recommended for 50 megapixels -- telling us all that those not on the list were not delivering. But of course, modern lenses for the R system are likely targeted at 100 megapixels or more.

It's different with the EOS M system too -- they don't have any professional lenses for EOS M. It was never intended as anything but a consumer system, and yeah, it's wildly popular in Asia. If Canon did some L-class glass for EOS-M, you'd have your 32 megapixels and certainly better than that. You don't get any better resolution out of an Olympus or Panasonic kit/consumer level lens in hires modes, either.

 

[hazydave]

Great, temptation and rumours. This wold make for a very expensive m43 camera, but surely a security camera with this sensor would not be expensive. New cameras with 32mp on their way soon?

I'm betting that, if these do show up in M43 cameras, there's some reworking of the design on the way from Industrial to Consumer grade sensor. For one, the dynamic range/color resolution is pretty weak for these. But if you look at Sony's latest stacked sensors, such as the chips for the A7RIV and A1, they're using M43-sized pixels and getting 16-bit color, not the 10-bit these chips are managing. That probably would boost the price a bit, but it's not as if the cost of an M43 camera is mostly the sensor, anyway. There are already electronically cooled astronomy cameras using the IMX294, some which offer a full 46.8 megapixel readout, selling for under $1000... and that's a small scale business compared to any commercial M43 camera. The IMX294 uses a quad-bayer CFA -- like many phones -- which might be a bit controversial in a conventional camera. But clearly, the tech exists for use in an M43.