Digital Home Thoughts: Olympus & Panasonic Announce Micro Four Thirds System

"Olympus and Panasonic have announced a new, mirrorless format / lens mount based on (and compatible with) Four Thirds. The Micro Four Thirds system uses the same sensor size (18 x 13.5 mm) but allows slimmer cameras by removing the mirror box and optical viewfinder. The new format has three key technical differences: (1) roughly half the flange back distance (distance from mount to the sensor), (2) a smaller diameter lens mount (6 mm smaller) and (3) two additional contact points for lens-to-body communication (now 11 points). Removing the mirror mechanism allows this shorter flange back distance, meaning lenses for the new mount can be considerably smaller than current Four Thirds designs. The format will require framing to be carried out using Live View on either the LCD monitor or an EVF. Existing Four Thirds lenses can be used on Micro Four Thirds cameras using an adapter."

If I understand this all correctly, what this means is that we're going to see cameras from Olympus and Panasonic that will be real DSLRs insofar as they have removable lenses, but they'll be potentially quite a bit thinner. So take something like the Sigma DP1 and improve it by making it lens-swappable. Sounds pretty tempting doesn't it? A camera that's almost as small as a point and shoot, but with the high-quality sensor of a much bigger camera is quite appealing. I've found in my tests with the Nikon D60 that the camera can rapidly become awkward to use when you take a small-body camera and put a big lens on it, but a small prime of even a pancake lens would fit nicely and allow for a small overall package.

The biggest disadvantage seems to be the fact that you lose the optical viewfinder. I've gotten used to not having an optical viewfinder on my small P&S cameras, but on a DSLR? That would be much harder to adapt to, especially when you combine the physical zoom of a big lens with having to stare at the screen - that just screams awkward to me. We'll see how the designs of these micro four-thirds cameras turn out...