Kevin Spacey has indigestion, also likes the Olympus Pen.

Olympus has introduced a new series of ads for the PEN Cameras, featuring none other than Kevin Spacey waxing poetic about photography.  I've been impressed with Olympus' marketing of the PEN until now, and truth be told, the new ads aren't bad (hey, at least they don't feature Ashton Kutcher!).  But this one is just too much:



That "hurty" thing?  That's called indigestion, Kevin.

You can see another one at DPReview, which I find entertaining for the fact that Kevin Spacey appears to pull a lens out of his back pocket.

Camera Sufficiency

"There definitely are types of photographs that gain meaningful artistic power from increasing technical perfection, but many, many, many pictures do not, or at least not much. The things I'm interested in making pictures of fall mostly into the latter category, and I simply don't care about 1 or 2% differences in distortion or 50 line pairs of resolution this way or that."

The quote above comes from Eamon Hickey's excellent review of the Olympus E-P1 over at the Online Photographer.  I think that people on the web (myself included) often forget that in our quest for more, more, more! with our cameras, and it's worth remembering from time to time that more isn't always required.

Eamon also talks about the "advantages" of shooting with an LCD screen instead of a viewfinder, which I suspect many photographers will take issue with.  I personally prefer to hold the camera to my eye-- that's how I've learned to take photos-- but for street photography, I can see the logic in using a small camera and an LCD screen, and Eamon correctly points out that you draw less attention to yourself that way.

Yoshihisa Maitani dies at the age of 76

"The object of photography is to express what is in your heart and mind.  A camera is just a tool for taking pictures.  As a designer, I want to design a camera that becomes an inseparable part of the photographer, a camera that dose not get in the way.." -Yoshihisa Maitani

Yoshihisa Maitani passed away on Friday at the age of 76.  How familiar you are with Yoshihisa Maitani probably depends on how familiar you are with the cameras made by Olympus in the 1960s and 70s.  Maitani was the designer chiefly responsible for the Olympus Pen and Pen F cameras, the OM 35mm SLR system, and the XA ultra compact rangefinder cameras.  In short, if it was produced by Olympus from the late 50s through the 1980s, Maitani was likely involved.  He retired from Olympus in 1996.

The cameras of Maitani were innovative for a variety of reasons, but their most defining characteristic was their size and weight, which was consistently smaller and lighter than other cameras produced at the time.  The original Pen was a half frame camera released when no one else was making half frame cameras.  The OM-1 was essentially the world's first compact SLR, and the XA is still to this day the smallest rangefinder camera that I'm aware of.  If I could describe his overall design aesthetic in just a few words, it would be to make the camera as compact as possible while keeping the controls full sized.

Maitani was truly unique in the photographic world, in that he was a well known and a well regarded designer in an industry that normally does not have individual stars.  This is particularly true in Japan, where corporate culture treats products as the creation and property of the company.  In spite of this, in the late 1970s Maitani was featured in a series of advertisements in the US that promoted him as the mastermind behind Olympus, using slogans such as:

BEHIND THE GENIUS OF OLYMPUS CAMERAS IS A GENIUS.

THE CAMERAS OF MAITANI. THEY'RE MORE THAN CAMERAS. THEY'RE INVENTIONS.

And my personal favorite:

I CANNOT TAKE SOLE CREDIT FOR DESIGNING THESE LENSES. I HAD HELP FROM A COMPUTER.

Ah... the modesty!

(For the record, I also had help from a computer in writing this blog post.)

You can read the full text of these ads at the Maitani Olympus fan page. [Sadly, this link is no longer working]

Other than Oskar Barnack (who created the first Leica) and Victor Hasselblad (who has a company named after him) I can't think of any other camera designers who received anything close to this level of notoriety.  Does anyone know who designed the Nikon F, for example?  How about any Canon or Pentax camera?

Of course, this leads to a chicken and egg question.  i.e. Which came first, Maitani reputation as a camera designer or the ad campaign by Olympus promoting him as a genius?  In other words, would we have known who this man was without the ads?  I have no way to answer this conclusively, but I believe that we would, and the simple reason is that his cameras are still being bought and sold today on ebay, and still being used by photography enthusiasts around the world. 

Also, his design aesthetic to make cameras smaller has continued at Olympus in his absence.  Readers of this blog will have noticed that Olympus has recently relaunched the Pen branding with the Digital Pen System.  We'll probably never know what Maitani thought of these new camera-- which are admittedly vastly different from his original creations-- but I suspect he was happy to see his vision moving forward into the digital era.

The Pen Story Video

Olympus is continuing the marketing push for its new Digital Pen Camera (which I first wrote about here) with this insane stop motion video:



My brain hurts thinking about how much effort went into this.  According to Olympus, they shot "60,000 pictures, developed 9,600 prints and shot over 1,800 pictures again."  My favorite part is the hang gliding sequence at about 2:30.  The music is a little cheesy but effective.

Olympus goes retro, announces E-P1 "Digital Pen"

I received this email at 1am this morning, telling me that Olympus has finally made good on their long speculated new Pen Camera:



Dubbed the Olympus E-P1, or "Digital Pen", it's their first offering in the Micro 4/3rds lineup, and the first compact camera to have interchangeable lenses and a DSLR sized sensor (in this case, the same sensor used in Olympus DSLRs).  For more information and detailed specs, I suggest reading the previews at DPReview, Imaging Resources, or visit the Olympus E-P1 page.

Olympus has apparently also realized that attractive women sell cameras:



So why is this camera significant?

The E-P1 slides into an underdeveloped spot of the camera market, namely a camera that can produce photos indistinguishable from a DSLR but in a lighter, much more compact body.  This will appeal to serious amateurs who think DSLRs are too bulky, and many professionals will buy this camera not to replace their DSLR, but as a secondary "carry everywhere" camera.  Others have tried to capture this market, notably Sigma with their DP cameras, but those have been marred by poor performance and other issues.  Panasonic has its own Micro 4/3rds cameras, in the excellent G1 and the GH1, but those cameras are not nearly as compact.  Thus, this new Olympus model is pretty unique.



Just glancing at the specs, I'd say Olympus has a winner on their hands.  I was worried it would lack image stabilization, but nope, that's included.  Also included is a dust reduction system.  The sensor is the same 12.3 MP sensor used in other Olympus cameras, so image quality should be on par, and the E-P1 has a whole host of exposure modes and manual controls to satisfy camera purists.  Yes, it lacks a built in flash and a viewfinder, which is unfortunate, but this was necessary (according to Olympus) to reduce the size of the camera.  Finally, the E-P1 includes a 720p video mode for those obsessed with the idea that their still camera must also shoot video.



Did I mention that it looks really snazzy?

There are, of course, unknowns at this point.  How well does the autofocus system work?  How well will the 17mm f2.8 lens perform?  Is the LCD screen good enough to compensate for the lack of a built in viewfinder?  These are things that will be answered as reviews start trickling in.

Retro Marketing Genius?

Camera specs aside, I have to give Olympus kudos for the marketing and launch of this camera.  For the last few months, Olympus has been touting the 50th anniversary of the Pen cameras on their web site, leading to speculation (now proven correct) that this was a precursor to a new Digital Pen camera.  This has served two purposes: 1) it's built up a lot of interest for this new camera, and 2) it's made people nostalgic for the old Pen system, which like the E-P1, was innovative in its time for its size and features.



Tying the E-P1 to the Pen cameras from the 1960s is a brilliant move.  It allows Olympus to be retro and cool, and at the same time, they get to rebrand themselves as something more than a second fiddle company to Nikon and Canon.  Instead, they're the company with the history of innovation compared to Nikon and Canon's status quo.  Of course that's not really true or fair, but it's beside the point-- it's effective marketing, and the other camera makers would be wise to pay attention.

Another thing worth noting is the price, which is less than expected.  $750 for just the camera body, $800 with the 14-42mm zoom, and $900 for the camera and the 17mm lens.  While yes, that is still quite expensive, rumors had this camera in the $1000 range or more, so this is a good job of managing expectations on Olympus' part.  The E-P1 actually seems like a bargain by comparison.