Sometimes you find yourself wishing…

… you would have been wrong.

On 30 January 2024, I wrote: “Rarely has a piece of news been so unoriginal” and later: “Apart from the larger buffer (hence the 128 ND filter) and the rubberised dials, all these ‘features’ could, of course, also be retrofitted to the OM-1 via a firmware update. According to my information, this firmware update does exist; they just prefer to sell the OM-1II. A firmware upgrade for the OM-1 is only supposed to be released if the backlash from existing users gets too big; otherwise, it’ll stay on the back burner. So: to all you fanboys: buy the OM-1II now and OMDS will continue to reliably rip you off in the future, because they’ve realised – people are soooo stupid, they’ll buy anything at any price.”

I got quite a backlash. No, that would be completely new hardware; you couldn’t possibly port the functions to the OM-1 because of this and that and so on. And Wagner hasn’t got a clue.

The Alpha 04 from Korea has just proved the opposite. It simply transferred the functions from the II to the I. You can even select the ND128, though it doesn’t work due to a lack of memory. See above. Wagner hasn’t got a clue.

According to the latest analyses, there are still over 20 dormant functions in the OM-1’s firmware; one of them appears to be the zoom frame, which was present right up to the OM-5. It’ll take a few more days before all this is out in the open.

Things are simmering a bit behind the scenes. It’s not just the official warning about malicious non-mFT members who might be selling dodgy hardware that’s doing the rounds. Within the mFT consortium, reminders are also circulating that it’s completely illegal to pry into other companies’ developments and that a contract has been signed to that effect. Which finally explains why the Oly cameras never supported the Panasonic aperture ring and why the two companies built incompatible Sync-IS systems. Customer-friendly design is apparently prohibited under the contract.

It may well be, of course, that some companies will now follow Insta360’s example and leave this consortium – or not join it in the first place. After all, this is primarily about undocumented interfaces and software – some of which isn’t even patentable. Yesterday I drew up a list of how many feature ideas I’ve submitted to Olympus. There are 25 of them. (Some of them even had sub-ideas.) Of these, 12 were fully implemented, and 2 were partially implemented. Not included, of course, are all the configurations and minor usability issues that I criticised in my books and posts and which were subsequently rectified.

Well, folks, it’s naturally hard to swallow when other people use these ideas too. And pay exactly the same for them. Namely, nothing.

Even so, I’d secretly hoped it wouldn’t become so obvious just how badly the customers were ripped off. I’d rather have been wrong. The best thing that could happen is if all those people who knew full well back then that the new camera was brutally super-duper new were simply laughed at and went on to advertise financial products or lipsticks in future.

It gets really bad when people have painstakingly saved up for the OM-1II because they thought the hype was the truth. And then when the finance minister at home asks where the cash has gone and comes at them with a frying pan. “Yes, I believed them!” “What a proper idiot i married.” Kabloing.

I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of the sales rep who then finds themselves face to face with a photographer with a screw loose and has to listen to his well-founded and emotionally charged opinion at a trade fair. And then the sales rep has to go and explain that the OM-5II, the PEN, the E-M1II and the E-M1III are all completely different cameras. Completely different processors and all that.

Trust is the beginning of everything. Building a brand’s credibility takes decades. Destroying it beyond repair happens in a flash.