2. A dramatically different place

The long hiatus at Olympus that saw a jump from film to digital is most poignantly characterised by the retirement of its chief designer Yoshihisa Maitani in 1992 and the company’s re-entry in the now digital SLR market in 1999. It was seven years of catch-up in the making when its first DSLR, the E-1, was launched. And so when it did arrive in 2003, it seemed to many in the industry as a bit too little too late.

If the quantum step required to stay abreast with the competition from 1999 to 2003 was challenging enough, the enormous leap of faith would probably defy even the most astute mathematician’s logic. The climb to restore its position amongst the luminous Big Four started with the E-1 and between then and the new E-3, Olympus had released a rash of models that bore little resemblance to a coherent line-up to the buying public, no doubt stirred on by some of its competitors and their zealots.

The E-300 was boldly designed and capable of excellent colour reproduction but where it counted – the competitive marketplace – the numbers didn’t add up very successfully. What the market wanted was statistical bragging rights and this the E-300 apparently did not deliver. Stung by criticisms of its ‘oddball’ eccentricity and ‘roofless’ porro-mirror design, Olympus toned down and released the more conservatively-styled E-500. Anything that pandered mindlessly to a common market would always be a good revenue-earning move. So long as you don’t do anything different, stick to the mainstream and tow the line, it would do well where the coffers are concerned.

In certain ways the E-500 was Olympus’ vanilla flavoured Toyota Corolla – it didn’t do anything particularly differently or outstandingly but it delivered the goods decently. In that sense it was as Olympus-like as the Corolla was a BMW. But while it brought invaluable income to the company, the lynch mob was baying for blood about the replacement for the E-1.

By now the E-1 was long in the tooth. Although it continued to produce exemplary image quality, market sentiment had changed drastically by then – even Olympus couldn’t recognise it at first. While you might still be able to drop in the latest 1992 colour film into a venerable 1972 OM-1 and continue to get amazing images, you couldn’t pit a 5-megapixel E-1 with a rival DSLR that boasts of 12MP anymore than you could just swap an old image sensor for a new one.

The difference in this context was entirely the source of problem for the company.