In the recent past, there was a discussion (accompanied by a fair amount of
bitterness towards Olympus) about Oly's refusal to bring out a digital camera
body that accepts OM System Zuiko lenses. Oly's official explanation for this
was that lenses designed for 35mm film didn't work optimally for digital
systems. In particular, their concern (explained in a .PDF which could be
retrieved from them) was that the light rays emerging from the rear of the lens
were not all perpendicular to the film plane, which was supposedly a problem
for CCD sensors.
Well, perhaps Oly wasn't so wrong after all. A friend of mine who is a
professional commercial photographer recently invested in a Fuji FinePix S1
body (the one that takes Nikon F-mount lenses) to augment his film work, and to
preserve his investment in Nikons (although, like all good addicts, he used the
purchase to also justify acquiring several extra Nikon lenses... 8^> ). While
the digital camera has fast become a favourite of his for ultra-high-speed
turnaround for clients, he has noted an interesting problem with the resulting
image files which has been noted -- and complained about! -- on several Usenet
news groups, but which to date has received no official confirmation from Fuji.
The problem, in a nutshell, is non-perpendicular light rays striking the CCD
sensor!
The symptom is that, especially in photos where there is a large area of
smooth, even gradations of colour (like, say, when one does a product shoot
against a specified background), the resulting images show a decided colour
shift from the centre of the image out to the edges. It's so pronounced under
some circumstances that my buddy has to suck each image into Photoshop and
diddle it rather extensively to get rid of the colour shift, which his clients
have found occasionally quite objectionable. (It's much less noticeable, of
course, when imaging a more "natural" scene [other than large areas of clear
blue sky, for instance].)
When I told him Oly had so far refused to engineer a digital body to accept OM
System lenses, he simply smiled wryly and said "Very clever, those Olympus
people."
If so, I'm thinking Oly might bring out a digital system with interchangeable
lenses which are *not* OM System Zuikos. Sad for backwards-compatibility, but
perhaps Olympus believes that they need to create the "OM System of the
Future." Then we'd all have a whole 'nuther set of Olympus System stuff we
could lust after, crave, hoard, scrabble about for in the dark, etc. ...
Hmmmm, in five years' time, I could have TWO *bitchin'* sets of Olympus
systems. Yeah, baby, YEAH! 8^>
Garth
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