Olympus Selling itsImaging Division

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It seems like dive cases to house a smart phone with auxiliary power, lighting, and control access will be the way to go.
 
This is an interesting development and many are saying brought on by smartphones. I will dive my EM5 mk2 until it dies. very happy with it and no screaming reason to upgrade although I did consider bringing it all into EM1, I won't do that until the dust settles and maybe never.
I am more excited about getting a 12-100 lens at a reasonable price as pro's and amateurs sell off their gear and move into other areas. I was Nikon prior to Oly and have never regretted my move. I bought a Nikon D800 to get a feel about FF camera's and sold it after 3 months. It was heavy which I was expecting, I was amazed that the image quality wasn't as good as I expected it to be.
 
It's hard to know what this means for the Tough range for sure, a lot will depend on exactly what is included in the sale. Olympus directly own production facilities in Vietnam - unlike a lot of manufacturers they don't outsource. If the IP and production facilities are both trasnferred then production could continue. If it's only the branding rights, dealer networks and whatnot, then it's hard to see how JIP could maintain the Tough line in anything but name only. That would be a real shame as the Tough is a fantastic camera. I just got a (used) one literally a few days ago and gave it it's baptism earlier this week, and I'm so damn impressed with it.
 
As a relatively new TG-6 owner, I'm not worried. Where the Tough camera line fits well into a nice niche market, I suspect they'll continue to be well supported well into the future under the new ownership and/or be spun off and sold to another company who'll continue to develop them under a different brand name. Their DSLR line, however, with much more capable competition...that may be in trouble (fortunately I'm a Canon man on that front :wink:).
 
Sad news indeed. I shoot Nikon, but am a firm believer in the benefits of competition. Often when a manufacturer is purchased, quality tends to drop like a rock as increased profits are squeezed out of the acquisition. Hopefully this will be an exception.
 
I could not care less. I own TG-4 and I use it as my snorkeling and grandkids-at-the-beach camera because it is light and easy handle, but quality is garbage. Which is exactly the reason it can't compete with smartphones. If the Tough TG line is discontinued and my TG-4 dies, the product niche will survive for some time and there will be some other maker of waterproof junky cameras.

The real reason for the sale, I suspect, is that the Olympus upper-end cameras can't compete with Fuji and Panasonic, who recently flooded the hipster market with dozens of new models, but this has no relation to scuba or snorkeling.
 
I've got a lot more invested in my OLY m4/3 lenses than I do in the OMD10 camera....so whatever happens I hope my lenses will still be useful. Also, dang, I was hoping for a TG-7 to come out.....
 
I guess we watch to see who else falls out of, what is rapidly becoming a niche market.
Diving with a smartphone will attract a lot of young divers but for me, the worst case is a move to Panasonic (highly unlikely).
Olympus was one of the best underwater cameras in terms of users, quality, size and performance. If you think this is an exaggeration then look at the number of articles here - Canon 4k, Olympus 3.5k, Nikon 1.1k the rest bugger all. Is this an aberration of this site? I don't think so.
There will always be professionals and advanced amateurs who will look to buy high-end cameras. This phone trend has been coming for a while, the site I use 500px has had a phone area for a while and some of the results are stunning. It's not easy ATM but it will get there and sooner than many think.
I don't think there is a camera supplier who will not be wondering what the future holds for their camera divisions.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

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