When is the Oly m4/3 out?

[FA Limited]

anybody know? i've been holding my seat tight waiting for this and the Pana 20mm 1.7

[back alley]

no one knows, oly has not announced when yet.

[Trius]

Sometime this year. :D

(ducking and hiding)

[DonaldL.]

I hope they manage to put a view finder on it. With all this talk about the G1 and old manual focus lenses, I imagine it would be difficult to focus with just the rear lcd screen.

[johnastovall]

I hope they manage to put a view finder on it. With all this talk about the G1 and old manual focus lenses, I imagine it would be difficult to focus with just the rear lcd screen.

You are correct. Without an EVF it's just another P&S. I hope Oly puts an EVF on the left side like the Pen.

[fdigital]

Apparently it'll be coming somewhere around the 2nd half of the year. I doubt very much it will have an optical viewfinder sorry guys - too much expense and 99% of people don't care or want one. I could be proved wrong though.

I think it will be very good though.

[Photon42]

Apparently it'll be coming somewhere around the 2nd half of the year. I doubt very much it will have an optical viewfinder sorry guys - too much expense and 99% of people don't care or want one. I could be proved wrong though.

I think it will be very good though.

I doubt that as well. An quality EVF (like the one from the G1) would do in my opinion. Eye-level is crucial, I'd say - and even for that we don't have any indication.

Ivo

[sebastel]

When is the Oly m4/3 out?

my crystal ball is sent in for CLA, so i cannot start divination on your questions for the time being.

[George S.]

When a product is ready, they usually announce an availability date as approx. 3 months in the future, so no announcement yet = summer or later availability. Since it's only been a couple of months since they showed the mock-up, and it was only kind of a concept and not an actual camera that's going to be put into production, I'd say definitely LATE 2009.

I'm dying to see it too.

[.ken]

i wonder if they ever thought of a snap on finder but one that integrates into the body and doesnt stick out...

[JeffGreene]

Apparently it'll be coming somewhere around the 2nd half of the year. I doubt very much it will have an optical viewfinder sorry guys - too much expense and 99% of people don't care or want one. I could be proved wrong though.

I think it will be very good though.

I sincerely hope you are wrong, and that Olympus is reading these pages. Lack of the eye-level viewfinder is a deal-killer for these old eyes. This rear LCD stuff with tiny digital point and shoots doesn't work for me! If that's the case, then I'll probably go with the G-1 or its successor.

[Zenjitsuman]

The Vegas photo show is usually early in the year maybe they will announce in advance of that show.

I hope it has an HD lcd vf in a more rf style plus in camera image stabilization so it can stabilize our mf legacy lenses.

I am looking forward to using an 85mm Nikon f/1.4 as a 170mm lens and a Pentax 135mm f/2.3 as a 270mm lens. That would be great for all new for me territory in theatre or sport photos indoors.

[JoeV]

If you read the 4/3 consortium website about the format's features, it sounds like it's an EVF/LCD-only camera format from the ground up. See this link (http://www.four-thirds.org/en/microft/whitepaper.html), which has the following quote:

"(2) To develop a standard with a basic structure that can deal with changes over time such as acceleration of the need for further size reduction or advancement of Live View photography style.
- Live View dedicated specification with a structure eliminating the mirror box."

The thing that makes the G1 so nice is Panasonic's use of their state-of-the-art viewfinder technology from their Pro HD video camera division. The problem here is that Oly doesn't have a pro video division, so they'd have to source an EVF system from a third party, which means that it may, or may not, be as good as the G1's.

I keep saying this in various forums: the success of the G1 is not intrinsic to the u4/3 format, but rather to Panasonic's specific engineering decisions in the implementation of the G1. It IS possible for some other model to completely suck. But I hope not.

~Joe