6. A difference in culture and thinking

The story of Olympus against its ‘more illustrious’ rivals smacks of the tradition-clad battle between an unassuming David and at least two Goliaths – a small company with the ingenuity, tenaciousness and guile to outwit its far more gargantuan enemies. By and large Olympus has evolved over decades of innovation, many of which had begun to take place after 1950. A young engineer by the name of Yoshihisa Maitani was spotted by the company general manager the late Eiichi Sakurai and the decision to join Olympus was an ominous turn in its fortunes.

Spurning the offer to join a giant Japanese auto manufacturer, Maitani’s move to try his hand in camera design was founded in his passion for photography. After all he was also a proud owner of a Leica III rangefinder camera purchased by his parents. However this article isn’t about the great man himself but more about the seeds he had sown to change the way this small company would think about its future and the rich vein of creativity that he brought and inspired in the process. All these have everything to do with the E-1 and no less, the E-3, because it’s these that set Olympus apart from any other camera maker in history.

The company that made a name in smallness is Olympus and there’re reasons why. Maitani might have been the designer when it came to the Pen, Trip and later the OM and XA but he merely played the part of an instigator. He catalysed upon the foundations of Olympus, a company whose first and most endearingly successful products continue to be microscopes and endoscopes. This is a company firmly founded in the micro cosmos, which Maitani was quick to learn and equally adept in burnishing. Of course he understood the elegance as well as the enormous engineering challenges in being small but it has to be a size that fitted a function or otherwise it would have been an empty conquest to him.

There are countless stories of how Maitani bent the will of the then Olympus Optical Co., Ltd. His guile in getting his blueprint for the company’s brand new film SLR camera (after the FTL) into motion is certainly worth reading. The way his approach to problem-solving to revolutionise the OM-1, the vision he had for the XA, what was in his mind that shaped the IS-1000 and the purity of thought that went into the highly technical OM-4 that eventually culminated in the finest 35mm SLR of all time, the OM-4Ti. And in between all these, don’t forget the exemplary Maitani-touch in cameras that might not have been as attention grabbing but nonetheless very seminal. They included the XA2, XA4 Macro, AF-1 (Infinity), μ[mju:] Classic, OM-10 and the AZ-300 Superzoom. And these were the ‘more obvious’ ones because Maitani’s influence had spread almost entirely across the vast OM System also.

And here’s why the ingenuity of one person could turn heads not only at Olympus but the whole industry but it was the company that obviously benefited the most. Maitani, more than any other employee at the company, totally revolutionised the thoughts, philosophies and mantra of the company as a camera designer and maker. And for the industry, Maitani’s influence had changed the landscape not just in SLR but also compact camera design. Since his retirement, there has not been any single camera designer who has such a deliberate ability to force such changes.

As remarkable as this may read, the real seed for the E-3 isn’t the OM. It was actually the Pen or to be more precise, the classic Pen-F. The Pen-F was to be Maitani’s enduring hallmark if not for the board’s pressure to join the 35mm film SLR market. The OM-1 in all its makings is the direct evolution of the original Pen-F. Much of its design underpinnings were already well founded in the half-frame 35mm SLR and in fact the thinking behind the vast OM range of Zuiko lenses was already present with the Pen-F’s lens line-up. In the space of close to fifty years it took for the highly revolutionary Pen-F to become today’s E-3, Maitani played more than a prominent role in changing the way the world thinks about photography and camera design.

Maitani single-handedly inspired the company’s camera division to adopt his style of thinking. And by all means, his vision spread throughout the entire division to become Olympus’ most outstanding creative signature. Small in physical stature but a giant of a man, Maitani was and still is the driving force behind the determination of every thinking engineer within the company to design cameras that not just made compelling sense but defined a place for themselves in the pantheon of outstanding designs and such as the case with the Eighties where year after year, Olympus cemented its reputation for smallness, performance and bold and creative designs.

In the twenty years thereon, clear lineages can be drawn where the seeds of growth that Maitani had sown have certainly evolved from film to digital. The foreshadow of the XA was the 35mm compact rangefinder series beginning with the RC and itself inspired firstly the μ[mju:] and then the μ[mju:] Digital series. You can also trace the μ[mju:] 750SW all the way back to the weatherproof AF-1 (Infinity in North America). And as for the industry’s adoption of lithium batteries, look no further than the original AFL-S.

The Pen-F gave way to the OM System and from thereon, the Camedia E-10/20 before moving on to found the Four-Thirds standard and the E-series DSLR range. In fact the E-300 and E-330 owed its inspiration to the unmistakable Pen-F. The OM System itself had two camera sub-groups and today’s E-series line-up has hallmarks of both. It’s clear that life after the E-500 has become clearer. The E-400 is very much the OM-10 of today, the E-410 the OM-20 and the E-510 a combination of the OM-40 and OM-2n in some ways. As you can see, there’s plenty of room for Olympus to fill the gaps in the current E-series range of cameras.

6.1 Model positioning within the E-Series range

As a teaser, you can look at the system body nomenclature for the E-System. Olympus uses a simple digit-string naming system where a single-number represents their highest (pro) range such as the E-1 and now the E-3. Needless to say, the next model will either be an E-4 or E-5. As we speak, the E-3’s replacement is already in development.

Then there are the three-digit range such as the E-3xx, E-4xx and E-5xx. These are a combination of consumer and prosumer grade DSLR cameras. Currently the mix is a bit confusing because of a model line-up realignment that Olympus has committed itself to. Therefore the writing is on the wall that the E-330 will eventually make way for a lesser model; one that would still have LiveView but with features that are more closely associated with beginners. This one could be the real digital version of the OM-10 complete with Manual Adaptor.

The question here is, “Is there a double-digit range at all?” Presently there isn’t but it is quite likely that you will see the emergence of the company’s first semipro DSLR as a companion model to its top-of-the-range E-3 and beyond. Because the model codes E-10 and E-20 are already previously used, you might see the E-30, which would be interesting considering the use of the ‘3’ in association with the E-3. This model could well be a reality sometime in 2008. Nobody really knows.

And as with the three-digit group, Olympus started with E-3xx. So the next question is, “What happened to numbers that are smaller?” and with that comes two clear sub-groups that the company has not revealed anything such as, for example, an E-100 or E-200. So what could these ones be? As the higher-end Camedia prosumer models have now faded away, Maitani’s vision of a true bridge-camera may be revived here in those forms. Therefore it is possible to think along the lines of E-series DSLR models that fulfil this obligation. Think of these triple-digit models as covering the same market segment as the OM-10, 20, 30 and 40 during the Eighties.

Another question is whether there are any more groups created beyond the E-5xx. Nobody knows at this stage but the chances are always there depending on what the future holds and how Olympus sees their entire vision unfolding.

Someone once asked me if Olympus would go so far as to revive cameras in the mould of the C-8080 Ultrazoom. That is a very difficult question to answer but you might find its replacement somewhere within the above rationale. However a sensor is but a sensor whether it is or isn’t Four-Thirds. It is of course technically acceptable – and economically sensible – to imagine a fixed-lens prosumer optical-finder camera that uses a Four-Thirds CCD sensor but whether this is feasible or not, no one can tell. In a camera of this nature, there is no need for a CMOS because there won’t be a prism finder. Therefore you’ll need to ask the question if Olympus would go to the extent of foraging for a competitive CCD that is better than the C-8080’s but doesn’t cannibalise sales from the current E-series DSLR range.

While names and model naming traditions are important to Olympus, its heritage and legacy are even more so. Through decades of discovery and leadership, the company’s characteristics are anchored in the design of its cameras and its understanding of user needs hewn into its ergonomics. In fact during his tenure, Maitani founded an in-house photography school and insisted that every engineer under his wing attended and completed the courses he offered.

Even as we wind forward to the year 2007, nothing much has largely changed with Olympus. Despite film giving way to digital, the company’s focus has remained identical to when Maitani was in charge except that the manners of execution may have moved with the times. As they’d say, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Nonetheless with the new E-3, the process of thought, the way ideas are encouraged and the determination to think differently have all culminated in a design that is far more than what its appearance might suggest to most observers. You could say that it takes someone with a willing preparedness to deeply understand Olympus.

However those who were in their prime during the best of the modern film years have long retired. In their place are people who have scant understanding of not just film but who Olympus is at the height of its achievements. These aren’t people with romantic attachments to the company and what they know about it, read and learned from elsewhere. Primarily this is the age of the Internet but again this virtual space is now dominated by people who are hardly acquainted with Olympus; at least not in ways we were familiar with well before the turn of the century.

The new millennium brought along hard and fast rules embellished in slick marketing and a stronger accent towards lifestyle. Numbers have become the stalwart of discrete impressions. They either say a product is good or it’s not. The middle ground appeared to have gone missing. It’s a 1 and 0 world today. The emotive appeal of film has long gone and with it, a purer understanding of what image quality or natural colours is not to mention the due consideration given to lens design.

And as the market heaves and breathes through mergers, demises and takeovers, a lot of the sentiments about what photography is have long been lost but not irrecoverable (as far as Olympus was concerned). Consider the names that are once big during the 35mm SLR camera industry but now long gone – Minolta, Konica, Yashica, Contax, Rollei, Chinon and Ricoh and others. And then consider those that were living on the thin line until only recently such as Leica, Praktica, Zeiss and Schneider-Kreuznach and a few more. Many might say it’s their inability to move with the times but all the same, at least some of these names gave us the most unforgettable images of all time. It is no small wonder that Olympus actually survived at all.

Without film, we now have digital and computing and it is this landscape that the company and its emerging new flagship, the E-3 has inherited.