Fiction: Olympus 2019-2023

This article was written at Christmas 2018. Now, over five years later, this article is also extremely “funny”. What might have been if it had been…

In 2019, Olympus celebrated its 100th anniversary with a new camera that made all previous cameras look “old”: the E-M1X. A technology carrier in which everything the engineers could think of was built in. The camera was to be faster than all other cameras. The target group was professional photographers in the sports and studio sector.

However, the market launch was ill-fated. The launch was postponed several times, leaked photos of a pre-production model caused unrest among amateur customers and the camera failed to appeal to the targeted professional clientele. The camera was too expensive for hobbyists and so it was sold off via discounts in kind just a quarter of a year after its market launch.

The E-M5III and PEN-F introduced in the same year had some typical Olympus gimmicks built in again and the – finally – new sensors delivered a step less noise, but the customers did not see the benefit of the cameras and Olympus did not succeed in picking up the customer at his old camera here either.

In addition, the mFT world was rocked by a scandal when it emerged that the apertures of the expensive f/1.2 and f/1.4 lenses had all been faked and were in fact up to three quarters of an aperture lower – and this fraud had been built into the mFT spec from the start. Sales of 1.2 and 1.4 lenses from Panasonic and Olympus collapsed worldwide.

The tide only turned in 2020. In the meantime, marketing had been restructured and with the long-awaited E-M1III with global shutter and the firmware update to 2.0 of the E-M1X, the two top cameras from Olympus also really picked up in terms of sales figures. Panasonic’s exit from the camera sector and the difficult waters into which Nikon had fallen did the rest. In the meantime, the new lenses were all available and when the E-M1X proved its worth at the Olympic Games in Tokyo and 65% of the best photos of the games were taken with an Olympus, there was a run on the system.

Just in time, the E-M10X came onto the market as a hit in the under 1000 euro segment. The camera was the first entry-level camera with switchable firmware. They had learnt from the fiasco of the E-M10III and now offered a stringent touch interface that could be switched to a full-featured camera, whose menus not only went from A to H, but only stopped at T. Only the E-M1X had even more menu items. Despite pre-production, there were months of supply bottlenecks for the E-M10X in particular, and the special model with a polished brass top cover and genuine leather grip sold out within two days despite its high price.

2021 then saw the Olympus charm offensive. In the wake of the 2019 lens scandal, there were revised versions of the Pro lenses, now with the correct f/1.2 aperture. Registered original buyers of the old lenses were able to purchase the new lenses at a small surcharge. As many customers had sold the lenses at the time, this campaign only cost Olympus 1.2 million euros, but the marketing effect was gigantic. The second-hand prices of Olympus products immediately went through the roof.

2022 saw the launch of the successor to the E-M10X, which was also called E-M10X but had a “23” after it internally. The camera now – finally – had a UHSIII drive inside and, like the E-M1III, had an interface for the high-speed transmitter of the E-M1X.

In the meantime, Olympus had given up the Olympus Playgrounds and launched a film and photo festival in Europe, which attracted 50,000 guests in its third year in 2023 and is now compared to the “Burning Man” in Nevada. Due to space problems, a move from Hartenholm to another location is being considered.

2023 was another year of rumours, especially about the successor to the E-M1X. Although Olympus had published a roadmap in 2019, especially for the lenses, there has been no reliable information about an E-M1X “24” so far.