For a very long time, I’ve puzzled as to what the point of the 4/3 system was. Get a sensor the size of a frame of 110 film, and make the cameras the size of 35mm SLRs? Where’s the logic in that? The system struggled from the start with worse image quality than the competition, and no meaningful USP. From the start, I asked the obvious question – if the sensor’s that small, why not make the cameras smaller? And eventually Panasonic came up with Micro 4/3, which all of a sudden made sense. OK, the quality’s not quite as good as APS-C, and a fair way off full frame, but at last the cameras were smaller and made more sense. Olympus huffed and stamped their feet, then got on and refined the concept with the beautiful and beautifully-marketed EP-1. All of a sudden, people who hadn’t wanted an Olympus since the OM2 wanted one. And people who didn’t want a camera at all wanted one. OK, Panasonic swiftly responded with an even better (but less pretty) camera, the GF-1, but it was clear Olympus had finally woken up from their AF and 4/3 nightmare and seen the light.
Which is all well and good, but where does it leave the “main” 4/3 system? Well I strongly suspect we’ll see no more cameras from Leica or Panasonic, nor indeed anyone else except possibly Oly – but I wonder why they would bother. Sales have never been great of the more up-market models, and the lower-end ones have basically sold in box-shifters on price. That’s not a great recipe for financial success…
Meanwhile, the micro variety has been selling strongly at a premium price in the middle of a global recession. Now if I were a camera maker, would I continue with manufacturing low-margin (or perhaps worse!) models when I could be using that capacity to make high-margin product? Er, no, so I feel 4/3 is dead in the water – a victim of both the inadequacy of the original vision, and the success of the far more logical daughter system.