LOL Yes. I love this kind of ruminating
Panasonic must be shaking their heads at all the attention Olympus is getting, with an arguably inferior product to theirs (AF isn't so good, apparently) just because they've given it some heritage cred with an old name an retro styling. The price doesn't appear to be putting too many people off either. The new camera is actually not remotely like the Pen F, which got a lot of attention in its day but actually only very few sales to a cult audience of half-frame nutters (
) I know it well enough, but I never owned one, never wanted one, and yet here I am now wanting a this new Olympus for strange motives I don't quite understand
Olympus have always been very good at this, especially in the UK where they have held market leadership in a lot of sectors against worldwide trends. Take a not so revolutionary concept, make it smaller and chic, get personalities to endorse it and the job's a good un. OM1, OM2, the original clam-shell Miu, etc etc. Look what David Bailey did for the Olympus Trip! That camera was a technical dinosaur, and so too was Bailey very much past his famous peak - yet they both shot back to fame on the back of a TV campaign. And Bailey even married Marie Helvin, which has got to be a result.
It all says to me that cameras and picture taking are not just about photographs at all. It always helps if there is some technical justification for our whims and extravagant lustings, but sometimes we just want stuff because it's nice to own and use. (I've just bought an L zoom. Of course it's better... Hmmm)
Which leads me to thinking that the Cosina brand hasn't got a hope, and they'll have to try very hard indeed to breathe any real life into Voigtlander. Leica, on the other hand; is this the life line they need? And set against the disaster that is the M8, what could they and Panasonic do with a really premium brand version of this new Olympus concept? Maybe they've got a hint of it with the success of the Lumix LX3 and Leica D-Lux 4. I'm wanting one already