On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 12:48 PM, Miserere <[email protected]> wrote: > I really like the body design of the L1 (and the live-view and smart > flash design). It's a shame you and I might be the only ones who did > because they quickly ditched the Porro prism and moved to a me-too > pentaprism design. What a shame... > > I wasn't around Oly and Panny at the time, so I don't know why they > moved away from this design. Would love to hear from you if you're > familiar with the circumstances.
I can only conjecture from the outside, but I suspect it was combination of several things: - I don't think Panasonic ever expected to sell a lot of the L1 cameras. That particular camera I think was a cannon shot across the water saying, "We are going to play here!" ... It was designed in tight collaboration with Leica on layout, functions and style pretty obviously. The Leica version, at a $500-600 premium price, was on the same order. Leica was more "testing the waters" for a FourThirds SLR involvement, I think. The viewfinder/shutter sub-assembly is a shared component with the Olympus E-330 ... - For Olympus part, I think they felt the sales of the side-winder bodies (the E-300 and E-330) were both disappointing, irrespective of the technical merits of the design, and that was largely because the porro-finder light pipe is simply less efficient than a pentamirror and especially than a large pentaprism leading to poorer viewfinder brightness. - Both companies follow on products used more conventional pentamirror/pentaprism (L10 - pentamirror, E-500 - pentaprism) and had conventional SLR shapes that most buyers found more appealing. By the time the L10 was released, Panasonic was already deep into the development of the Lumix G cameras and had pretty much stopped development on SLR technology, where Olympus with a larger footprint into SLRs and a big user base, had a more complex game to work through with pro to consumer grade customers, many of whom at the high end already had big investiture into their lenses and bodies. Business and technology often interact in unpredictable ways. The LC-1/L1 design is brilliant, the resulting camera has been a delight, but I think the E-5's viewfinder and other features go so far beyond it that I'm retiring mine now. The E-1, for sake of shared batteries, cables, cards, accessories, control layout, etc, is a better backup to the E-5 than the L1. -- Godfrey godfreydigiorgi.posterous.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
