The second hit

Those who have been reading up and following the Micro FourThirds revolution will understand that the chief design element that brought their camera sizes down was its lack of a reflex mirror. This is Micro FourThirds’ single largest and most talked about benefit. Without the space-robbing mirror inside, there is much space gained and taken advantage of. Primarily the biggest improvement comes from the ability to push then lens more deeply into the body and closer to the sensor. On the outside, the lens looks and is shorter and because Micro FourThirds uses a smaller mount, it’s also smaller in size. When all these are combined together, the entire package is significantly tinier than even Olympus’ ultra-compact E-450 DSLR camera.

Having the back flange distance within a hair’s breath of the sensor opened new opportunities beyond just new M.Zuiko Digital lenses or even Olympus’ film-based OM Zuikos. Panasonic took advantage in much the same way, offering adaptors that allow for the retrofitting of Leica R- and M-series lenses but it goes way beyond all these. Much to the delight of users of older film SLR cameras, Micro FourThirds paves the way for legacy lenses irrespective of make and model. Third-party adaptor offerings made sure that you can use old lenses from Zeiss, Schneider, Voigtländer, Angenieux, Nikkor (Nikon), Rokkor (Minolta), Cosina, Takumar (Pentax), Fujinon (Fujica), Hexanon (Konica) and also Canon and many others.

The glaring absence of the once mandatory reflex mirror enables designers to move a substantial length of the lens inside the camera body, as the cutaway model of the Olympus Pen E-P1 (and 17mm lens) above shows, opening a bewildering range of choices and opportunities for users to fit a whole multitude of different lenses, contemporary and vintage.

© 2009 Olympus Imaging Corporation

And suddenly a whole new concept of an affordable ‘digital back’ now springs to mind for those who had once thought to bin their old film lenses. With Micro FourThirds, a brand new market has been created, marrying old favourite lenses to a modern digital camera body, to create unheard of opportunities for a niche user segment.

Delusion of a fad

One of the biggest surprises sprung on the industry was Olympus’ VF-2 electronic viewfinder. In the face of mounting criticisms of its long-in-use 230,000-dot LCD monitor, this was counter to expectations and perhaps another area where the industry had underestimated the company. As far as LCD monitors go, having 230,000 dots is rather agricultural but the VF-2, offered for the first time with the Pen E-P2, outputs to 1,440,000 dots. There’s every reason to believe that the E-P1 lulled its competitors into believing that anything better than its LCD monitors wasn’t going to come. At best Micro FourThirds’ competitors might have assumed that there is still plenty of lead time.

Defying critics, Olympus introduced the new VF-2 electronic viewfinder that amply demonstrates that a mirror-less setup has the viable technology to make it appealing and successful and with a bright future in hand. Now, let’s see this EVF built in the next time around.

© 2009 Olympus Imaging Corporation

The VF-2 was one of the most outstanding aspects of the Pen E-P2. It meant that users didn’t have to solely rely on the LCD monitor, which is the case with the earlier E-P1. The VF-2 created plenty of opportunities for users to exploit the E-P2’s high-definition video capabilities with its fine resolution, excellent colour reproduction and minimal video motion lag. Furthermore it offers a full 100% frame coverage and like its classic OM Varimagnifier, it is tiltable for waist-level viewing. Panasonic eventually produced their version of the same thing.

The next step from the VF-2 is to build the EVF into the camera and that’s on the cards. Expect to see a new Pen model sporting this sometime this year. And when that happens, it will further consolidate on the lead that Micro FourThirds have over any current and future competition.

Taking the game to the competition

Canon’s once daunting lead in sensor design has been eroded some years back. It all started when Konica-Minolta sold its entire digital camera operations to Sony for almost a song. As ambitious as Canon, Sony was well placed to compete directly – and aggressively – pitching its equally prodigious sensor research, design and manufacturing capacity against the market leader. And in all respects, it was the large Japanese electronic appliance giant who was the best placed to give Canon a more thorough shakedown. And so began the next phase in the real megapixel war.

As Canon and Sony traded blow after blow against one another, and in the process further escalating the megapixel count, the rest of the industry was basically struggling to keep up. With the exception of Nikon, manufacturers including Olympus were reeling from the after-effects. Interestingly at the same time, the market was gradually discovering that there has to be a saturation point beyond which further megapixels would only offer marginal improvements. That’s when consumers began to slowly wake up.

Back chatter in chatrooms and blogs across the Internet laid the groundwork for a change in direction and priorities but change wasn’t immediately forthcoming. Until only recently, the megapixel war was still in evidence with Canon, Sony and also Nikon upping their sensors in upgraded DSLR cameras. But there was no more doubt – the insane race to raise sensor megapixel count was actually beginning to plateau.

At 12.1/12.3 megapixels, Micro FourThirds picked up on the sensor used in Olympus’ E-30, E-620 and E-600. It was commercially the expedient thing to do. It was available and there was still plenty of shelf life left in it. The only thing to do was to evolve the TruePic processor to adopt not just video capabilities but also to improve its noise handling at higher ISO settings. Interestingly no one appeared to quibble about 12-plus megapixels and perhaps that’s the sign that the market was ready to distance itself from the sensor wars. And that’s a good thing for Panasonic and Olympus’ Micro FourThirds efforts.

There’s plenty of life that Olympus and Panasonic squeezed out of their present-generation 12.3-megapixel Live MOS sensor. Much improved over its predecessor, it is the mainstay of the burgeoning Micro FourThirds family but is expected to give way in 2010 to a brand new and more capable successor.

© 2008 Olympus Imaging Corporation

That does not mean that Micro FourThirds will settle on 12-plus megapixels for their sensors. Future cameras will definitely feature newly designed sensors that will carry more but the front-page story will be focused on other merits that Olympus and Panasonic will be pushing for higher prominence. These will include issues affecting colour integrity, anti-aliasing, and noise quality and high-definition video performance. And that’s just the start.

Although Panasonic and Olympus are at the forefront of all efforts pertaining to Micro FourThirds, remember that the larger FourThirds group houses not one but several other companies that are well known for their work on developing outstanding sensor designs. Any of them can come to play, seeing the impact that Micro FourThirds has on the market. Having drawn immense commercial appeal and market following, the time is perhaps ripe to expect Kodak to re-enter and for others to introduce competing designs.

Having pioneered the first generation FourThirds sensors that powered the E-1, E-300, E-400 and E-500, Kodak has a fresh range of new CCD and CMOS sensors that are capable of driving future Micro FourThirds cameras. Panasonic, who took over from Kodak, will of course remain the key supplier and having absorbed Sanyo, sensor production capacity has also increased, thus improving their ability to meet larger marker demands. There are also Sigma and Fujifilm. Sigma’s Foveon chip needs no introduction here and the same goes with Fujifilm’s proven Super CCD EXR sensor technologies. Both carry huge potential and can be easily made deployable for Micro FourThirds. Fujifilm also has its Real Photo (RP) Processor 3D sensor that promises much today. With its rumoured entry into Micro FourThirds, there is every possibility that we will also see this new sensor.