Technology: September 2008 Archives

The good ship Micro Four Thirds has barely slipped from the ways but there's already a torpedo in the water aimed to strike her hull. That fish was fired by Samsung in interviews with trade writers last weekend.

In separate gab sessions at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin with Nigel Atherton, of What Dgital Camera, and Damien Demolder, of Amateur Photogrpaher, Samsung brass told the scribes that it was working on a hybrid digital camera along the lines of the one being developed by proponents of the Four Thirds imaging system. However, Samsung's hybrid would be based on an APS-C sized processor, not the Micro Four Thirds standard announced last month by Olympus and Panasonic.

It seems the Korean Company's motivation behind development of a mirrorless digital camera that uses interchangeable lenses is very similar to that of its 4/3 adversaries. Samsung Executive Vice President Byung Woo Lee is quoted by Atherton as saying: "Our research has shown us that there is a big demand for a new type of camera product. One that has the sophistication and interchangeable lenses of a digital SLR, but is smaller and more user-friendly."

Not only does Samsung's rationale for a hybrid sound familar, but so does its feature set for the snapper--electronic viewfinder, high quality LCD and new lens mount. Those similarities, reasons Atherton's colleague Demolder, may be why the company wants to make its intentions known so far in advance for a product that probably won't reach consumers until 2010,

"Establishing a public consciousness of their intensions may deflect future copying claims," he writes, "and, of course, Samsung wants the world to wait for its APS-C version."