Olympus Caps Megapixels at 12, Looks for New Battleground

Last week at PMA, Olympus announced that now that they've reached the 12 megapixel level on standard DSLR cameras, they have no intention of pushing more. To paraphrase Akira Watanabe, ‘Twelve megapixels is enough (we've reached it, you know), and we have other things we'd like to work on.'

The recently released Olympus E620 features 12 megapixels (12.3 to be exact), among other features, and we have to agree that a dozen megapixels is more than adequate for even semi-serious photographers (though we'll gladly accept that extra .3)



As you may recall, the mythological Mount Olympus, "home of the gods" was the residence of 12 primary deities. Just thought I'd throw that in there.

So where is Olympus going with their refocused efforts? If Watanabe (Zeus of Olympus' SLR planning department) is to be believed, autofocus is the next front of major development. He pictures phase-detection systems eventually being outperformed by image sensor technology. Of course this would require an increase of speed, but it's in the works. I guess you could say that images are the "next phase" in autofocus?

Clocks, donuts, calendar months, zodiacs, function keys... 12 seems like a decent number to top off at. Speaking of topping off, why not redirect your efforts on out dozens of digital camera reviews, including our new entry-level DSLR comparison. Or you can check out some additional related news posts:

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