Thom Hogan just shared his toughts about the new product announcements. I copied only a part of the text related to Olympus and Panasonic. I strongly recommend you to read the whole post!
“Panasonic: the big news was the GH2, which looks like a winner (disclaimer: I’m shooting almost all my video these days on a hacked GH1). Coupled with new lenses, the LX-5, and a the other new Panasonic compacts, and taken together with the recent G2, Panasonic seems to be running engineering at full tilt. I’m curious, though. 18mp in a m4/3 body seems a bit ambitious. I’m hoping that Panasonic has made a noise breakthrough at the sensor level, not taken to more post processing noise reduction. I’ve always thought Panasonic’s engineers seem more like actual camera users than those at other companies, so I have high hopes for their new offerings. I just wish they’d quit crippling certain aspects in their designs (like video bandwidth).”
“Olympus: the E-5 seems like a warmed over E-3. The 4/3 pot was therefore stirred, but it didn’t produce a sauce any different than before. No new m4/3 bodies, though some lens action was visible. The big story was the prototype of YALSC (Yet Another Large Sensor Compact). Or is it a large sensor compact? Hard to say from what little info was revealed, but the use of the Zuiko name on the lens and the way it was discussed, the prototype is at least in the G12/P7000 category, perhaps better. Personally, I’d rather have seen Olympus concentrate on fixing the user interfaces on their m4/3 bodies (especially after another trip to Africa with them and constantly fighting the controls, which tend to set random things when you’re not looking). I suspect Olympus is in a lull between major offerings. They spent a lot of engineering energy on the E-P1, E-P2, E-PL1 set, and it’ll be a bit before the true second generation of m4/3 bodies appears. Shame, that. As Panasonic and Sony seem to be slowly getting more momentum in the arena that Olympus pioneered.”
