Zeitgeist Watch: The New D-SLR Backlash

The takeaway from this post on wired.com seems to be that the zeitgeist is through with “the monolithic dominance of bulky, retro-styled digital single-lens reflex cameras.”
Apparently the high-tech world has been seething for another new imaging revolution. The writer believes it has now arrived, in the form of a small new digital sensor being touted by Panasonic and Olympus (described, strangely, as an “upstart” camera manufacturer, though the company has been turning out various models for years and years). The new Micro Four Thirds System (see the new logo above) is a set of standards for compacts cameras with interchangeable lenses. They’ll be skinny enough to fit in Barack Obama’s shirt pocket.
Oh, by the way, there are no real products to test yet. But that doesn’t stop writer Dylan Tweney from anticipating that the new technology “may even bring back the golden age of candid street photography.”
I don’t know whether the new Olympus technology will be great or passé. I’ll let my colleagues with expertise make their comments when the time is right.
I do get tired of the high-tech types who need to characterize new technologies as inherently destabilizing forces that will empower individuals at the expense of monolithic multi-national companies headquartered in sleek underground lairs. It’s really silly.—David Schonauer