"The biggest feature of the Olympus E-System was the use of the 4/3-inch image sensor, which has an imaging area about half the size of 35mm film.
"For us," recalls Mr.Kazumi Ito, who was in charge of creating the viewfinder for the E-1's successor, "the challenge was how to make the 'view' of the viewfinder look larger, brighter and sharper while keeping a small screen size."
"Even when the body is small, sharpness can be improved by increasing the viewfinder size.
"To increase the magnification, it is necessary to make the pentaprism light path as short as possible.
On the other hand, to widen the field of view, the pentaprism size should be increased in order to pass the light flux corresponding to the field area. These apparently contradictory requirements were solved by the development of a new pentaprism featuring a high refractive index.
In addition, we incorporated a cemented lens group made of high-refractivity glass in the magnifying system. This reduces aberrations and improves the level of optical design for image pickup lenses."

"An important aspect of the Olympus E-System is its emphasis on an optimum, easy-to-handle size for the camera body.
"The problem is that this puts restrictions on the layout of the optical path to the viewfinder, leaving us with no choice but to go back to basics and completely re-examine the optics layout.
"After repeated brainstorming sessions in which an endless number of ideas were proposed, we came up with a design that improves spatial efficiency by tilting the viewfinder and increasing the magnification.
"Incorporating a variety of ideas and drawing on all of our technological knowledge, we eventually succeeded in providing the E-1's successor with a large viewfinder magnification worthy of the flagship of the second iteration of the E-Series, while maintaining the eye point at a similar level to competitors.
"Needless to say, we also secured a field rate worthy of the successor to the E-1.
"To make the color reproduction as natural as possible, we developed a tone correction coating to provide a high-quality, natural look in the viewfinder view."