On Fri, 27 May 2005, Winsor Crosby wrote:
>
> Well, Nikon brought out a "telecentric" 12-24 zoom in Feb 03 without
> the the discovering new principles hype. The E-1 came out with its
> first E camera and lens some months later.
I have an English presentation about telecentric lenses from Olympus dated
Feb 23, 2003. I'm sure there were many presentions before that in Japanse.
I doubt very much that Olympus follow suit because of Nikon, if that's what
you're implying.
> The point I was making was
> that it is just lens design to a purpose and every company in the
> digital camera business was redesigning and reissuing their wide
> angle lenses to work better with sensors. Olympus did not discover
> something unknown by others, and in fact lagged other makers a bit.
> And the Oly marketing implication that "telecentric" was something
> new which they apply to all their lenses is just silly because any
> traditional telephoto lens is all ready "telecentric".
Very few "innovations" are true discoveries. So what. It's all about
marketing and applying technology to your product without infringing
patents. More power to Olympus (and any other company) if they can convince
people that they discovered things.
> It is a shame because Olympus makes some nice stuff, but it is
> embarrassing to see them try to gull their customers when they were
> really sitting around with their thumb up their.. for decades, while
> others were charging ahead. I would be just as critical of Pentax or
> Minolta who also were late in producing digital SLRs if they then
> claimed to be the expert and that everything else was just a
> compromise. But they did not. They are content to sell the features
> of their cameras.
You're forgeting that Olympus is much more than just cameras. In fact most
of Olympus' revenue comes from scientific instruments such as microscopes,
endoscopes, etc. They are a world leader in that market and are extremely
innovative. Olympus may have let their SLR line stagnate, but they did not
let their innovation in the optical field fall behind.
-mark
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