rattymouse Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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I just got back from another 7 day trip to Japan, by far my favorite country to visit and photograph. It's always very interesting to be in the home of the camera, as 95%+ of our cameras come from that country. I made yet another trip to Kyoto photographing "my brains out". It is such a target rich environment. 7 days never goes by so fast, or so pleasantly.
Anyway, while walking through over 15 different UNESCO world heritage sites, and seeing tens of thousands of people carrying cameras, I engaged in my second hobby, which is observing what other people are shooting. I find it very interesting to see what cameras are more popular than others. The most shocking observation to me was how many Olympus cameras I ended up seeing. It was *really* an enormous amount. Far, far, far too many to count, even for a single day. I would put it up there with Canon, Nikon, and Sony. I could never keep track of how many of these brands I spotted out in the wild, simply because the number is waaay too high. My previous visits to Japan did not see so much from Olympus but this past trip was far different. I'm not an expert on the various Olympus models, so I cant make much more than the general observation, but all the ones I spotted were of the micro 4/3rd variety with interchangeable lenses.
Strangely, not much Panasonic sightings. I would have thought that Oly and Panny would be sort of on equal footing, but that was not what I saw. I certainly did see a lot of Panny's, but they were much less common than Olympus.
I brought my 3 film cameras (2 Fujifilm and 1 Nikon) and encountered only 3 other film shooters during my week in Kyoto. One Pentax, one Contax, and one Leica M6 shooter.
Regarding Fujifilm, I spotted the following:
4 X-T1's
1 X-E1
2 S5 Pros (VERY shocking to see that. Boy did I want to talk to those guys bad!)
1 X10
1 X20/30
1 INSTAX Neo 90
If you discount the SLR's and film camera, I averaged spotting a single Fujifilm X camera per day. I know Fujifilm has a miniscule marketshare, but this really drove it home in a big way.
I know that Olympus was in serious trouble a few years back, but it seems that they have the sales volume now to be at least a bit hopeful. I dont know how the profits sit with all this volume, but if anyone can carry the mirrorless flag forward along with Sony, it certainly is Olympus.
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