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Mr Ichiro Kitao of Panasonic on the G1.

johnastovall

Deceased, but remembered fondly here...
PMA 2009 interview.

Now for the shocker.

"Moving on, we've been looking at the feedback since the G1 was announced, and we've got a lot of questions from our community, some of which we'd like to cover here.
First up; there's a lot of demand for a smaller Micro Four Thirds body - more 'rangefinder' style than faux DSLR. It's not really a question, it's more just telling you what they want. But do you have any comment?

(mock surprise) I didn't hear anything about such a request? This is news to me!"

So much for listening to your customers....
 
K

kiloran

Guest
Definitely sarcasm of the "knowing wink" variety :)

Its a refreshingly open interview for a Japanese company and shows that they've realised they need to change the way they engage with their public/press in order to grab market share from the big 4...
 

Jorgen Udvang

Subscriber Member
Keep in mind also that Panasonic launched the L1 a few years ago, which is "rangefinder style", and it was probably anything but a commercial success. I'm not surprised that they have chosen a different path this time, but that they can joke about it, in their Japanese way...
 

mawz

New member
Keep in mind also that Panasonic launched the L1 a few years ago, which is "rangefinder style", and it was probably anything but a commercial success. I'm not surprised that they have chosen a different path this time, but that they can joke about it, in their Japanese way...
Panasonic's lack of success with the L1/L10 came as much from their marketing/kitting/pricing of these cameras as any issues with the styling. The camera's were unavailable without the expensive Leica kit lenses and mostly identical to their Olympus siblings (The E-330 and E-510). If you didn't specifically want the Leica lens (especially the kit lens for the L10, which was slower than the Oly 14-54 and you could have the Oly lens and mostly more capable E-510 for less than the L10 kit) the Panasonic bodies made poor sense. This was even worse once Oly started selling IS-equipped bodies giving IS with any lens vs the Panasonic bodies which needed the Leica OIS lenses for IS. And of course the L10 was in some ways cut down from the E-510 (the crippled buffer could not be justified in a more expensive package)

The unfortunate part is IQ-wise the L1 and L10 had advantages over the respective Oly siblings due to Panasonic's choice to use weaker AA filters.
 
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