OM System wants to be the go-to camera brand for travel and adventure, but at the same time recognizes that many of its core users are dedicated bird and wildlife enthusiasts. Given the relatively low resolution of its cameras versus the competition, OM System recognizes there is room to, quite literally, grow.
Speaking with PetaPixel at the Bild Expo in New York City last month, Eiji Shirota, Head of the OM System Business Unit, explains that the computational photography tools that the company has added to its cameras make them very capable, but also understands that birding photographers specifically would probably prefer resolution.
“With the OM-1 series, we want to be the number one camera brand for birding. But with that camera and the rest of our line, we also believe our cameras are great tools for landscape and macro, because we have so many great functions, thanks to computational photography. We believe each has huge potential to realize a user’s many expressions, and we are now focusing on hardware improvement and software improvement, especially for computational photography,” Shirota explains.
In March, OM System’s Kazuhiro Togashi, Vice President of Brand Strategy and Product Planning at OM System, explained that the company felt very strongly about the capabilities of its computational photography features — so much so that it wouldn’t want to lose any of them by increasing the resolution of its sensors which would likely result in scanning and processing speeds that would be too slow for those features.
“In the current situation, if we increase the megapixels, we need our engine to be much stronger and much quicker to keep up with the computational photography functions. If our speed of processing is too slow, it won’t satisfy users’ expectations. So we would have to develop a new engine along with a new sensor,” Togashi said. “It’s hard, but it’s a good challenge.”
That through-line of thought is maintained by Shirota now, several months later.
“We developed some new computational features, such as Live GND, and that’s a big deal for landscape photographers. We plan to further enhance this function for landscape photography that we can’t disclose the details at the moment, as they are still under development. But we will provide so many functions, and our ideal is to realize a shooting experience that doesn’t require any hardware accessories,” Shirota explains.
“Of course, we cannot do this at the moment, but we want to realize this kind of software development. Now, we understand that if we are using computational features or want to maintain our very fast continuous autofocus, it will be difficult to also maintain those features if we deliver higher megapixels. It’s a trade-off with readout speed. So now we are thinking about the improvement of the readout speed and processing, but are also considering something that combines software [and current sensor technology] with AI development, which can provide a huge jump up in resolution from the original images.”
Shirota indicates that OM System is interested in adding AI-based image upscaling technology found in software like Adobe Photoshop and with DxO, which can result in cleaner noise and higher resolution, but this would require processing in-camera. If implemented, this wouldn’t be the first time a company attempted such a thing — Canon did it in the R5 Mark II and R1 last year. It was Canon’s way of showing that the R1’s relatively low 24-megapixel sensor could create much larger images. OM System will likely be looking for photographers to react differently than they did to Canon’s implementation, however, as that was met with a tepid response.
Image credits: Header photo by Erin Thomson for PetaPixel
Source link