Olympus exits camera business

[Manfred M]

I had wondered when this would happen, but it looks like it finally has.

https://petapixel.com/2020/06/24/oly...mera-business/

The real question is whether the brand will continue under new owners or if it is the beginning of the end...

Of course, who is next?

[pschlute]

Never owned an Olympus, but it would be such a shame to see an iconic name go. I hope the brand can survive.

[Manfred M]

Never owned an Olympus, but it would be such a shame to see an iconic name go. I hope the brand can survive.

On the other hand, this has been an ongoing reality and quite a number of brands have disappeared while I have been doing serious photography. When I started I remember camera, lenses and flash by companies called Topcon, Miranda, Rollei (Franke & Heidecke), Contax (Zeiss and later Yashica), of course Yashica itself, Bronica. Of course the work that Minolta and Konica did is now under Sony control. My first SLR was a Praktica (Pentacon), they are gone too.

I remember third party lenses by companies like Soligor, Chinon and Kiron. I used both Braun and Honeywell flash units in the 1970s. My Paul C Buff studio flash uses the mount design from the defunct Balcar company and my Godox uses the Bowens mount, a company that went out of business about a year ago.

Agfa, Dupont and Ansco (later GAF) no longer produce film.

The list goes on if one looks at ownership changes.

Hasselblad is now part of DJI (the Chinese drone maker) and Phase One is the controlling shareholder of Mamiya. Leitz has been broken into three parts; the company that makes microscopes, a company that makes surveying equipment and of course the camera maker (which licenses the Leica brand from the microscope maker). The Voigtländer brand is licenced by the Japanese Cosina company, which makes camera lenses for Zeiss (other than the ones that Sony makes and marks as Zeiss). Leica lenses on Panasonic cameras are very much the same thing; Leica licenses their brand to Panasonic).

Who's next? My suspicion has always been that either Olympus or Pentax would be the next to go. As Olympus has existing, is Pentax is next? They have not updated their cameras in quite some time; this is not an encouraging sign but are part of Ricoh, which is a large company.