Olympus cameras

By Chuck Hajdu

While I was at CES attending the PMA show I heard an interesting rumor that Fujifilm is trying to acquire the Olympus camera division. Considering the mess Olympus has been of late this may well be good news for lovers of well made cameras. Olympus has always made a rock solid product and they really have been very innovative.

If you haven’t heard of the problems at Olympus here’s a very short, quick recap. Their former CEO turned whistle blower and tried to oust the board. They fired him and he’s suing them. Olympus’ stock is in the tank and there is supposedly $1.1 billion missing from their books. All in all, a pretty bleak picture.

The Olympus PEN cameras are really wonderful little products. They were the forerunners of the current rage for mirrorless dSLRs and are great travelling cameras. I’ve used them for years and they are my favorite trade show cameras. I just covered CES 2012 with an EP-L1 with a 17mm f2.8 fixed focal length lends and it proved to be perfect. Easy to carry in a pocket, a lens that was fast enough to shoot without flash and excellent lens quality.

I hope everything works out well for Olympus, I’d hate to see them just fade away.