Olympus quits camera business after 84 years

Re:Olympus quits camera business after 84 years by possibleworlds on Thursday June 25, 2020 @06:44PM (#23646621)

Agreed. There's also the Fujifilm X-Trans sensors which try to recapture some of the magic of film. However I really wish more people knew about Sigma and their Foveon sensors[1].

The fact is that there is a completely different technology on the market which produces very different – and arguably far superior – image quality and colour reproduction compared to 99% of digital cameras on the market. The Sigma system can be clunky and the sensor tech has its drawbacks (eg almost unusable above 200 iso), however given the right conditions the images they produce can be stunning.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foveon_X3_sensor

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Re:Olympus quits camera business after 84 years by bitL on Thursday June 25, 2020 @09:28PM (#23647826)

Unfortunately, real Foveon is a thing of the past, Sigma switched to a Bayer sensor in their latest "fp" camera and their last Foveon-based Quattro had 3 layers but a 4:2:2 pixel mosaic, making it no longer a "true Foveon". I owned SD1 Merrill and it was the sharpest camera I've ever used, but there is nothing comparable on the market these days.

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Re:Olympus quits camera business after 84 years by possibleworlds on Friday June 26, 2020 @12:39AM (#23648777)

All true. I do hold out hope for a “true” foveon return. And you can still grab Merrill models second hand, like I did about a year ago.

I mainly use an Olympus em5 mkII so I’m saddened by the OP news, although I will wait to see how it plays out before switching to Ricoh and/or Pentax. Guess I have a thing for the underdogs.

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Re:Olympus quits camera business after 84 years by numpad0 on Thursday June 25, 2020 @10:23PM (#23648067)

Sigma is/was totally planning to unveil fp with Foveon in CP+ until this January, before COVID-19 hit anyway...

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Re:Olympus quits camera business after 84 years by jeyashankher on Friday June 26, 2020 @12:38AM (#23648769)

I own and still use a DP2X. When things go right, the result is truly breathtaking. 80 to 90% of the photos I take with this are junk, but the remaining 10-20%, boy-oh-boy, truly memorable results!

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Re:Olympus quits camera business after 84 years by dreamcompiler on Thursday June 25, 2020 @10:17PM (#23648037)

I was under the impression that the Foveon sensor had been overtaken by events. Kind of like the Lisp Machines: When it was first introduced its dedicated "no compromises" approach was great, but then the more pedestrian technologies were able to outscale them and they lost their edge.

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