Digital Micro Four-Thirds camera - history

Olympus Imaging Corporation, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (Panasonic), Sigma Corporation and Kodak established an open standard for the Four-Thirds lens mount following initial research and development of digital stills image capture technology for the format begun in the late 1990s by Olympus.

The Four-Thirds format is based on the size and aspect ratio of television camera technology from the mid-twentieth century which employed three electronic imaging sensors housed in vacuum tubes, one for each of the primary colours, red, green and blue. Vacuum tube diameter was measured in inches and fractions thereof; i.e. 1/3", 2/3", 1", and 4/3".

The Four Thirds format technology developed by Olympus in conjunction with Panasonic established a size for their camera imaging sensor of 17.3mm X 13mm, which conforms approximately to the old t.v. tube size giving an image aspect ratio of 4:3. The Olympus E-1, launched in 2003, is a Four-Thirds format system digital slr with Full Frame Transfer CCD; using specially designed Zuiko lenses, high image quality was obtained from a sensor less than half the size of a standard 35mm full frame.

Panasonic was the first Japanese electronics manufacturing company to push four-thirds digital capture technology further when it launched the Micro Four-Thirds camera, the Lumix G1 in 2008. The G1 sensor is the same size as in regular four-thirds cameras but the design eliminates the traditional reflex mirror box and opto-mechanical viewing system of the slr. Instead, an electronic viewfinder captures the image in real time from the camera's LiveMOS sensor. This enables the camera and its interchangeable lens mount to be made smaller than conventional slrs and Dslrs, hence 'micro'. The distance between the sensor plane and lens exit point is also reduced, allowing many different objectives to be mounted on the camera with adapters from Novoflex, Voigtlander and others. The G1 was followed by the Lumix GH1 which incorporates HDvideo capture.

Olympus launched its E-P1 Micro Four-Thirds camera in 2009. Its retro styling is based on Yoshihisa Maitani's design of the Olympus Pen F half frame film camera of 1963 which evolved from the company's successful range of compact Pen cameras with an 18mmX24mm film format first launched in 1959. The E-P1 has no built-in electronic viewfinder but uses a large high resolution TFT LCD screen. It can shoot HDvideo and capture audio in stereo sound. Special M-Zuiko lenses have been developed for the system.