2 new Olympus cameras announced

[scottg]

Olympus has announced the PEN E-PL2 micro-four thirds camera

and the Olympus XZ-1 high-end compact camera.

The specs of the XZ-1 look amazing. On paper it's the lead high-end compact camera, for the time being.

[bvanant]

The xz-1 looks very impressive but with a couple of caveats. My understanding (probably wrong) is that in spite of the larger sensor than say the S95 (1/1.63 vs. 1/1.7) the Olympus like the Panasonic LX5 won't use the whole area of the chip but rather it will be stuck at 4:3 crop. That of course won't be a killer. What I like is that it has a hotshoe meaning control of older strobes will be much simpler although from the pictures on the Olympus UK website it doesn't look like it has a bulkhead (they mention optical triggering) but it appears to support all 67 mm add-on lenses.
BIll