The following patent is really old. The Publication Date is 04/10/1991!
But I thought you would be interested to read more about it: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/EP0225408B1.html
It shows that Olympus already had a plan for building a modular camera a very long time ago 😉
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Seem like the lens was not interchangable back then. And that thing on the left bottom, is it a grip handle? Look very similar to the OMX…
I hope, if they wiil release a modular camera for Four thirds, it will instead look like a standard DSLR then this.
Do some reading on patents. Just because a company registers a patent has nothing to do with their plans to use it in an actual product.
agreed.
filing a patent and (re)discovering it later proves not a thing.
hard facts proof things.
fact is: nikon and canon invested more into the classic dslr business than olympus in the past 12 months
ps: i find that one linked story of that photographer who is somehow slowly switching to canon somehow trend-setting
At least filing date is more than a decade earlier than e-1 release. 😉
The subject of this article is not suitable at all…
The patent was published in 1991 and already filed in 1985.
World has changed a lot and don’t tell us that Olympus is going to reinvent this modular camera from 1985. Olympus is smarter that that.
Olympus knows they have to focus in their new flagship body on the core of photography, better AF, better sensor performance (DR, noise, high iso etc ).
Hopefully Olympus gives us some more serious signs that they are actually working on and planning a new 4/3rds flagship camera.
Of course not every patent gets turned into a real product, but I think the point was to show that this is an idea that Olympus has been kicking around for a long time. The post title should maybe have been “…AN Olympus modular camera”, not “THE Olympus modular camera”, admittedly.
I agree with achiinto, Modular or non modular, it’s imperative that looks like a normal DSLR, at least the size of E-30.
By the look of it, seems like that modular prototype in the patent was later released as a non-modular camera, the Ricoh Mirai:
http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&safe=off&q=Ricoh%20Mirai&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi
Can you see the resemblance? I do! Of course it was also released under the Olympus brand as the AZ-4 Zoom, but the look is slightly different and less similar to the camera in the patent. Oh, it was the precursor of the IS series of bridge cameras.
Remember the MDN? It was also a modular prototype that never saw the light. But in both cases, it seems, a non-modular version based on the prototypes came to the market.
I really liked my old Olympus IS100 35mm camera:
http://olympus.dementia.org/eSIF/om-sif/is-series/is-series.htm
This shape is basically that of the modern bridge cameras.
I would be very comfortable with Olympus going with this shape in m43 , especially if it was optimized for video shooting. Even if they just added a removable handgrip for video use, and a EVF.
A good friend loves the video quality from her Panasonic P&S (HD Tz series), but hates the ergonomics of it for dedicated video use. So she’s ready to shell out US$1000 on an new Panasonic video camera. I’d rather she spend the dough on something like this if it comes to pass!