"There was a time," recalls Yasuji Ogata of the R&D Division's Optical Development Department, "when imported lenses were generally regarded as superior to Japanese ones. But even then, there's one Japanese brand that was highly respected around the world thanks to sharp resolution and high imaging performance. That brand was ZUIKO.
Over the years, ZUIKO became legendary, thanks to a steady stream of superb lenses that were hailed as masterpieces of optical engineering." As head of optical design, Mr. Ogata knows the story better than anyone.
"As SLR cameras are digitalized, the medium for capturing images has shifted from film to the image sensor. And the most important thing that differentiates them is that the image sensor can only capture light that is incident on it straight from the lens to the imaging plane.
"This means that if a lens designed for film cameras is diverted for use with a digital SLR camera, the image may deteriorate towards the edges, with reduced sharpness, color blurring, and darkening in image peripheries where the light is incident obliquely.
"So, if you want the highest possible image quality and performance, you're going to need a digital-dedicated lens optimized to work with image sensors. Naturally, that's exactly what we at Olympus decided to design. The result is a line of digital-dedicated lenses based on the proprietary lens development technology and expertise accumulated through the original ZUIKO lenses.
"High image quality is possible only when the lens, image sensor and image-processing engine work together to optimize each other's performance.
"The lens has to be able to capture even fine details of the subject faithfully, the image sensor should capture the subject image input through the lens with accurate color separation, and the image-processing engine should be capable of reproducing the captured image faithfully.
"It is only when these three factors are linked that the maximum image quality can be obtained.
"Since a lens may be used for one or two decades, its performance also has to be maximized so that it can deal with future image sensors with improved performance and larger numbers of pixels, as well as with currently available image sensors.
Being able to cope with more pixels is important because the lens is the place where the image makes its entrance, so to speak. When the number of pixels is increased, the nature of the lens becomes the most important factor, more important than the resolution of the image sensor.
"The ZUIKO DIGITAL lens system is the result of our pursuit of high resolution and performance using the latest technology and based on the lens philosophy I just mentioned earlier.
"Even on the image peripheries or when a wide-angle lens is used, the light input through the lens reaches the image sensor almost straight, so the image in the peripheral area is finely resolved with reduced color blurring, even if the image is very large.
"ZUIKO DIGITAL inherits ZUIKO's tradition of unrivaled technology and adds to it with advanced telecentric technology," explains Mr. Ogata, adding proudly, "It's not just the revival of legend, it's the start of a new one."