New Branding Adopted By OM Digital Solutions

As part of the transfer of Olympus’s imaging business to Japan Industrial Partners Inc. – where it now operates as OM Digital Solutions – the license to use the Olympus name has expired and all new products from now on will be branded ‘OM System’. The OM initials date back to the launch of the famous OM-1 35mm SLR in 1972 (originally to be called the M-1 until Leica objected), the camera and system that helped established Olympus as one of the ‘big five’ Japanese camera makers. The ‘M’ acknowledged designer Yoshihisa Maitani, who also created a number of other significant Olympus cameras, including the Pen F half-frame 35mm SLR and both the XA and mju series of 35mm sub-compacts.

The Olympus name was first used in

1936 on a 6x4.5cm format folding rollfilm camera, the first model to be marketed by the Takachicho Manufacturing Company, which had previously concentrated on making microscopes and then began making camera lenses.

After the Second World War, the company expanded its camera operations with an emphasis on optical performance and, after Maitani joined in

1956, increasingly more compact designs. This started with the introduction in 1959 of the first of the hugely popular Pen series of halfframe cameras. The company was renamed Olympus Optical Co. Ltd in January 1949 and then became Olympus Corporation in 2003, by which time a significant part of the business was medical imaging products. The two operations were split into separate entities in 2004, the camera business operating as Olympus Imaging Corporation. Over the next decade and a half, the medical side continued to grow to become the core of Olympus’s operations, including a joint venture with Sony, which was created in 2013 and has since introduced a number of key innovations in medical imaging, particularly in the area of endoscopy.

In September 2020 Olympus Corporation announced it was selling its imaging business – which also includes its portable audio recorders – to Japan Industrial Partners. This transfer was completed in January 2021. In Australia, the company is represented by OM Digital Solutions Australia Pty Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary based in Macquarie Park, Sydney.

The first product to wear the OM System brand is the M.Zuiko Digital ED 20mm f/1.4 PRO prime lens (equivalent to 40mm), and it will be used on a new flagship M43 interchangeable lens camera body that the company says is currently in development and will “bring photography to the next level”.

OM-D E-M1X Mark II anybody?