Generally speaking most photographic historians seem to give credit for these
most important
photographic milestones:
Konica - Inventor of the 35mm SLR
Olympus - Inventor of OTF TTL Flash Control
Minolta - Inventor of the Auto Focusing Lens
Rather or not these are still covered under patents is really insignificant for
historical
purposes. What is significant is that none of these companies are now seriously
involved in
the state of the art development of 35mm SLR film cameras. Olympus has been and
continues to
be a state of the art industrial and medical imaging company. Both industrial
and medical
imaging are quickly moving away from film. There are two significant reasons
for this. One
is that the resolutions of digital capture devices are now offering resolutions
of over 2000
pixels and video display monitors are also offering screen resolutions of over
2000 pixels.
This type of resolution is of high enough quality to examine almost anything.
The other
reason is more complicated but basically based upon the fact that we are moving
away from
printed paper images towards computer video displayed images. Obviously
economics,
conveince, and newer electronic media distribution methods can account for
this. There are
many other reasons for this basic change in our viewing habits. I'm sure many
will have
other reasons for this.
So it makes sense that these leading edge industrial imaging companies are
starting to
abandon the the development of film capture devices. I see the modern film
scanner as the
bridge of the these two technologies. What is most interesting is that
companies such as
Nikon and Canon have basically taken over the development of 35mm film
capturing devices.
Also these companies alongside Kodak have made the most impact on supporting
the near 35mm
format transition to digital. Olympus is not now interested in this pro 35mm
market. So I
don't think that they are that interested in making this transition of the OM
system into a
digital system. We would all like to see them do this, but I would be
seriously surprised
if they made this transition on the OM system. Regardless this is an
interesting time to be
involved in imaging. The changes have never moved so rapidly.
So I feel those older developments are now left to historians and really will
not impact the
future of modern image capture. As to on or off camera flash devices, well I
think we will
see some great improvements in high speed flash sycn for digital devices.
Phillip Franklin
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