Olympus 4/3 line

Well, since you’re on the site, you’ve probably noticed we’ve added a fourth line: the Olympus Four Thirds system, which also fits Panasonic SLRs.

Some of our mainstream shooters are probably wondering: “why”? Obviously, we’ve had some requests from Olympus shooters who don’t have a lot of places to rent gear. We’re also rather excited about the recently announced Micro 4/3 system and the possibilities of pocket-sized SLR cameras with interchangeable lenses.

Right now, however, there are still some points to consider about the 4/3 system. Most of you are aware it uses a smaller sensor— it uses a 2.0 crop factor, compared to the 1.6 and 1.5 crop factors in Canon and Nikon crop sensor cameras. The smaller sensors have some drawbacks, particularly at high ISO, but they also have some advantages.

Olympus has done a nice job creating some superb and unique lenses that maximize these advantages. The Olympus 90-250 f/2.8 zoom, for example, is the full-frame equivalent of a 180-500mm f/2.8 lens. The Olympus 35-100 f/2 is equivalent to a 70-200 range on full frame, and a 300 f/2.8 on Olympus is equivalent to a whopping 600mm f/2.8. You get the picture. Combine that with a very advanced in-body image stabilization system that allows horizontal and vertical panning, and you’re probably beginning to understand the attraction. A number of the requests we had to stock Olympus came from our Nikon and Canon shooters who want to use this as a second system to do things their primary system can’t.