Micro Four Thirds consortium grows, roster starts to look like a baseball team

 

 

With JVC Kenwood joining the crew earlier this week, the consortium of Micro Four Thirds companies now stands at 23—that’s like the size of a whole baseball team, and pretty solid for an expansion franchise that debuted less than 6 years ago. Let’s take a look at how deep this roster goes.

There are the staff aces, Olympus and Panasonic, and a trio of sluggers in Leica, Sigma, and Zeiss. Solid role-players round out most of the starting lineup, including Cosina, Kenko Tokina, Kowa, Blackmagic, and new teammate JVC.

Some names look unfamiliar, but are solid arms to have in the bullpen—even if they don’t see much action. Astrodesign is a high-end video camera company that's big in Japan. Komamura makes night-vision cameras. Photron does high-speed photography. SVS-VISTEK builds cameras for industrial applications.

 

 

But like any mid-market team, there’s some filler at the bottom of the depth chart. Tamron promised a lens but hasn't delivered it yet. Schneider just rides the pine. Kodak and JK Imaging (effectively the same company in this context) are minor-leaguers at best. Tomytec seems to make hobby train sets, so we’re not even sure how they got into the clubhouse (Ed. note: turns out Tomytec makes a series of telescopes and telephotos lenses with MFT adapters and mounts as well as other lens adapters for MFT cameras). And then there’s Fujifilm, who bailed on the team to go play basketball.

If you were the general manager of the Micro Four Thirds consortium, who would you trade for? Anyone on the waiver wire worth picking up?

(Via 43 Rumors)