Olympus in-body Image Stabilization misrepresentation

Hello. A word to the wise:
I bought an Olympus E-510 camera for the in-body image stabilization.
They advertised the in-body Image Stabilization as "works with any
lens." Now they are repeating the same hype with their new E-3 camera.

The sales rap was, "With Nikon or Canon, you have to pay for expensive
optical image stabilization in the lens, and you have to pay for it in
every lens that you want stabilized. But with Olympus, you buy the in-
body image stabilization once, and it stabilizes every lens."

'John Knaur, senior marketing manager, Digital SLR, Olympus Imaging
America Inc said,
"The new E-3 will satisfy the pro-level needs of our customers with
incredible AF speed, superior image quality ue, in part, to In-body
Mechanical Image Stabilization that stabilizes all lenses attached to
the camera..." '

Olympus Product Manager Sally Smith Clemens said, "Our feeling in this
camera is that in-body-based image stabilization is an advantage to
the user because every lens or every existing lens they have would be
able to take advantage of image stabilization by having it built into
the body."

"...Every lens, or every existing lens..." That's pretty definite.

But that isn't true. The minute that you mount a legacy manual-focus
lens on either camera, the camera responds by TURNING OFF the in-body
image stabilization and the Focus Confirmation. Even classic Olympus
Zuiko manual focus lenses are disabled.

I have written to Olympus about this, asking for a firmware update to
fix the problem, and received an answer that said, in so many words,
"Thank you loyal Olympus customer. Many people have mentioned this. We
will think about it." It turns out that the owners of Olympus E-1 and
E-300 cameras have been begging for several years for a firmware
upgrade that would enable the Focus Confirmation with legacy lenses.
And Olympus refuses to fix the problem. They are still "thinking about
it."

The apparent corporate policy is to pressure you to buy all new lenses
from them.
So, it seems that Hell will freeze over before they issue a fix.

On the other hand, I have learned that Pentax also has in-body image
stabilization. And when they say that their in-body image
stabilization will stabilize any and all lenses that you can attach to
the camera, they mean ALL LENSES. You just dial in the focal length of
the manual-focus lens that you have mounted, and it works. Look at the
K10D.

And someone in Russia just came out with a "liar chip". (There are
some samples being marketed on the German eBay web site.) It's a
little piece of PC board with gold contacts and a chip. You glue it
onto your lens adapter so that the contacts connect with the camera
just as if you had an electronic Four-Thirds lens on the camera.
The chip lies to the camera and says, "Yes, I'm a genuine Four-Thirds
lens, and my focal length is XXX."
And the Image Stabilization and Focus Confirmation immediately start
working.
All you need is a chip that will tell sweet lies to your camera body.

So it isn't an engineering problem. It's a corporate policy problem.

On Sat, 17 Nov 2007 11:16:09 -0800 (PST), Orange
wrote:

The apparent corporate policy is to pressure you to buy all new lenses
from them.
So, it seems that Hell will freeze over before they issue a fix.

How is this different from any other company that sells D-SLRs? They make their
money in the exorbitantly overpriced glass and add-ons, not the camera.

When you really think about it ... everyone is in an uproar over any store that
baits you into a lower priced item and then tries to push you into buying
overpriced add-ons, where they really make their money. They use that as
indicator #1 on how to spot disreputable dealers. Then they think nothing about
it when the company that they buy their D-SLR from does the exact same thing.
Absolutely zero difference.

Yes, you get EXACTLY what you pay for. They just never stop to think what they
are really paying for. They pay to be taken for and made into fools.

The absurdity and stupidity of humanity never ceases to amaze me.

"JacksonL-T" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 17 Nov 2007 11:16:09 -0800 (PST), Orange
wrote:

The apparent corporate policy is to pressure you to buy all new lenses
from them.
So, it seems that Hell will freeze over before they issue a fix.

How is this different from any other company that sells D-SLRs? They make
their
money in the exorbitantly overpriced glass and add-ons, not the camera.

Well he did explain that Pentax let you use any lens so that is certainly
different.

When you really think about it ... everyone is in an uproar over any store
that
baits you into a lower priced item and then tries to push you into buying
overpriced add-ons, where they really make their money. They use that as
indicator #1 on how to spot disreputable dealers. Then they think nothing
about
it when the company that they buy their D-SLR from does the exact same
thing.
Absolutely zero difference.

???

Yes, you get EXACTLY what you pay for. They just never stop to think what
they
are really paying for. They pay to be taken for and made into fools.

The absurdity and stupidity of humanity never ceases to amaze me.

???

On Nov 17, 9:21 pm, JacksonL-T wrote:
On Sat, 17 Nov 2007 11:16:09 -0800 (PST), Orange
wrote:

The apparent corporate policy is to pressure you to buy all new lenses
from them.
So, it seems that Hell will freeze over before they issue a fix.

How is this different from any other company that sells D-SLRs?

Well, false advertising is still false advertising.

The absurdity and stupidity of humanity never ceases to amaze me.

So I'm stupid for believing Olympus claims?
When they advertise "10 megapixels", am I stupid to believe that?
When they advertise "has a Live-View LCD display on the back", am I
stupid to believe that?
When they advertise "has a dust-buster that shakes dust off of the
sensor", am I stupid to believe that?
I think not. Because those are all real features of the camera.
So what is so stupid about believing "In-body Image Stabilization
works with any existing lens you have"?

Orange wrote:

But that isn't true. The minute that you mount a legacy manual-focus
lens on either camera, the camera responds by TURNING OFF the in-body
image stabilization and the Focus Confirmation. Even classic Olympus
Zuiko manual focus lenses are disabled.

They should have stated the lack of IS in the specs for their OM to
four-thirds adapter, but they forgot to do so. However they do state
that auto-focus is not possible, and focus confirmation is tied to AF.

"http://olympuszuiko.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/mf1instcomp.pdf"

Orange wrote:

So what is so stupid about believing "In-body Image Stabilization
works with any existing lens you have"?

They should have stated that using their 4/3 to OM adapter turns off IS.
However they may have jut thought that it was common knowledge that when
you use incompatible lenses via adapters that all automatic functions
are lost due to the lack of communication between the body and lens.

You'd probably have to manually enter the focal length of the lens
somehow for IS to work via a lens adapter.

On Nov 18, 8:59 am, SMS $B;[h\J8(B* $B2F(B wrote:
Orange wrote:
So what is so stupid about believing "In-body Image Stabilization
works with any existing lens you have"?

They should have stated that using their 4/3 to OM adapter turns off IS.
However they may have jut thought that it was common knowledge that when
you use incompatible lenses via adapters that all automatic functions
are lost due to the lack of communication between the body and lens.

You'd probably have to manually enter the focal length of the lens
somehow for IS to work via a lens adapter.

Yes, exactly. That is how Pentax does it. You just dial in the focal
length with the control wheel. That's easy. I don't mind that at all.
After all, it *is* manual focus. I don't mind a little knob-twiddling
to make things work correctly. I just want it to be *possible* to make
things work correctly (especially without having to resort to using
Liar Chips that don't really solve the problem with zoom lenses).

I doubt seriously if Olympus just assumed that everybody knew that
their advertising about "in-body IS works with every existing lens you
have" really means "works with some lenses, but not others".

Orange wrote:

I doubt seriously if Olympus just assumed that everybody knew that
their advertising about "in-body IS works with every existing lens you
have" really means "works with some lenses, but not others".

Well I'm sure that what they meant to say was that IS worked with all
Olympus 4/3 system lenses. Indeed, they should have explicitly stated
that it did not work with any other lenses.

On Nov 18, 1:10 pm, SMS $B;[h\J8(B* $B2F(B wrote:
Orange wrote:
I doubt seriously if Olympus just assumed that everybody knew that
their advertising about "in-body IS works with every existing lens you
have" really means "works with some lenses, but not others".

Well I'm sure that what they meant to say was that IS worked with all
Olympus 4/3 system lenses. Indeed, they should have explicitly stated
that it did not work with any other lenses.

On the contrary, what I'm pretty sure of is that they really meant to
say is that their new system is so good that people should rush out
and buy it right now.

(And who wants to get hung up on little details like the fact that the
factory will program the cameras to fail to live up to the
advertising?)

Orange wrote:

(And who wants to get hung up on little details like the fact that the
factory will program the cameras to fail to live up to the
advertising?)

I would give them the benefit of the doubt here. Whoever wrote the
collateral forgot to include a footnote regarding using non-4/3 lenses
via the OM lens to 4/3 body adapter.

I doubt that Nikon states in the collateral for the D40/D40x that many
older Nikon lenses won't work on the D40/D40x, even though both the body
and lenses have one of the versions of the Nikon F mount. Canon probably
doesn't state that their older FD lenses won't support many of the
features of the EOS body when used with an EOS to FD adapter.

As to the Olympus digital SLR bodies, there are sufficient reasons to
avoid them even if the OM lenses did work with image stabilization.