Soothsayer

[davidc]

I must admit I did giggle at this -

Fortunately, the system is so light and compact that I was able to carry other cameras, so all was not lost.

and this

There will be reports.

My first thought was that the camera was TOO light and you felt the subconscious need to carry some proper cameras to give that reassuring SLR feel.

Doing a quick google it sounds like a stuck shutter on all of the OMD models is not unheard of, though given the only people who post about it are the ones who experience the problem, it can be hard to know the exact scale of it.

While googling for errors, one very unusual thing on the Olympus site I did read was that if you copy an image onto the card that is not basically SOOC - i.e. you take the photo on the EM-10, edit it in PS and copy it back to the card - the Olympus cameras will then not be able to progress past the image and will corrupt the memory card & the images on it. Maybe an uncommon scenario but still one worth bearing in mind.

[Mike Farley]

I must admit I did giggle at this -

Fortunately, the system is so light and compact that I was able to carry other cameras, so all was not lost.

and this

There will be reports.

My first thought was that the camera was TOO light and you felt the subconscious need to carry some proper cameras to give that reassuring SLR feel.

I had my Panasonic G3 and a compact with a prime lens with me with me, so used those instead. The Panasonic will be converted for use with infrared at some point, but the weight of the m/43 kit does make carrying more than one body and a raft of lenses a more practical option than with a DSLR. These days, my 7D feels so heavy and bulky, although I will admit to adding the ECG-1 grip to the E-M10 to improve its handling.

Doing a quick google it sounds like a stuck shutter on all of the OMD models is not unheard of, though given the only people who post about it are the ones who experience the problem, it can be hard to know the exact scale of it.

I would not expect any make of camera to be totally free of faults, but I am struggling to find many reports for the OM-D model. The few instances I could find for a stuck shutter mainly relate to a lock-up problem which seems to affected early E-M5s, presumably now fixed with a firmware update as there do not seem to be any more recent examples. Where there was a physical fault with the camera, some of the symptons are similar, but it is difficult to know whether or not a failed shutter is the cause of the problem. Perhaps I will find out when Olympus get the camera for repair.

While googling for errors, one very unusual thing on the Olympus site I did read was that if you copy an image onto the card that is not basically SOOC - i.e. you take the photo on the EM-10, edit it in PS and copy it back to the card - the Olympus cameras will then not be able to progress past the image and will corrupt the memory card & the images on it. Maybe an uncommon scenario but still one worth bearing in mind.

Gosh, fortunately I have never done that, nor would I think to, but a useful warning. I found it on Olympus' American site, the UK one being completely silent on the matter.

[Mike Farley]

Thom Hogan has published a useful, albeit somewhat flawed, summary of the Photokina announcements.

http://www.sansmirror.com/newsviews/pho ... corec.html

He fails to mention either the Nikon D750 or Panasonic launches and why does Pentax, which unlike Canon and Nikon did not have anything that was really new, get awarded a D while the two DSLR manufacturers only rated a F?

[Mike Farley]

Thom Hogan has published a useful, albeit somewhat flawed, summary of the Photokina announcements.

http://www.sansmirror.com/newsviews/pho ... corec.html

He fails to mention either the Nikon D750 or Panasonic launches and why does Pentax, which unlike Canon and Nikon did not have anything that was really new, get awarded a D while the two DSLR manufacturers only rated a F?

I should have read the headline of Thom Hogan's article more closely where he clearly (although not to me, obviously) states mirrorless scorecard. Doh.

[Mike Farley]

This is the article which I thought Thom Hogan had written. There was a slew of announcements on the day before the show opened and I lost track of the new products being launched. For anyone interested in what is coming to the shops soon, at the end of the article there is a useful summary of all the new gear seen at Photokina. That said, the Leica 35mm f/1.4 Summarit and 50mm f/0.95 Summarit lenses look like reporting errors to me. Those apertures would be called Summilux and Noctilux respectively using Leica's normal naming conventions. It looks as though Hogan lost track as well, inventing a couple of non existent lenses.

http://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/the ... okina.html

[Mike Farley]

For a bit of fun, I compared Thom Hogan's predictions with what actually happened at Photokina. For some manufacturers he was on the money, but was way off for others, Fuji in particular. Speculation that Fuji would move to 24 MP proved unfounded and the X-Pro 2 joins that mythical group of products which include the replacements for Nikon's D300 and D700 cameras, and Canon's 100-400 lens for which there is unrequited clamour on the internet.

I would also have reviewed Amateur Photographer's forecasts, but the article appears to have gone AWOL during its recent website redesign. Not out of embarrassment, surely?

[Mike Farley]

DPReview has an overview of Photokina. What is most interesting is the statement at the beginning about the two most significant launches at the show. Digital imaging started out with cameras which were effectively digital versions of film cameras. That has been changing and it is more than probable that in a few years time the equipment we will be using and the way that we capture and process images will not be anything like what we have today. Already, point and shoots have all but disappeared. What's next?

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/899554 ... ignificant

I note that both Canon and Nikon have indicated that they feel the time is fast approaching when they will get into mirrorless in a bigger way than hitherto. Will they end up being behind or ahead of the curve?

[Mike Farley]

I went over to Richard Frankfurt's* yesterday and chatted to him about Photokina as he had spent a couple of days there. He said that it is smaller than in earlier years, when the plane would be full of people going to the show. This time the plane had no one else travelling to Photokina, although there were still plenty of people there.

* He put my my purchases into a Nikon bag. Oh, the shame of it.