In the spring 1999, Olympus research
and development teams took on an exciting new challenge:
to define the form and performance characteristics
of the ideal digital SLR image sensor.
In particular, they wanted to maximize the portable mobility
and handling ease that are fundamental advantages of
digital SLR photography. It was a challenge whose scale was
appropriate to the dawn of the 21st century.
The world had truly entered the digital age and
technology was developing faster every second.
The launch of Windows(R) 98 had accelerated
the spread of personal computing, and people were
beginning to use mobile phones to access the Internet.
And the world of digital SLR photography was also
in a state of great change.

Gazing out of the office window,
Akira Watanabe began to speak:

"With digital SLR cameras, the image sensor takes
the place of film, so it is no longer necessary to
design camera bodies around existing film sizes.
You can simply use the sensor size that best achieves
the goals of digital SLR photography.
"But you need to address one of the
most fundamental differences between film
and digital imaging, which is that silver-halide
photographic film responds to light regardless of the angle
at which the light strikes it,
but a digital image sensor responds accurately only
when the light strikes the image sensor head-on.
With lenses designed for film cameras,
light rays at the periphery are often angled too sharply
for the image sensor to capture them properly.
"Even our acclaimed OM system lenses could not
deliver light rays straight onto every part of
the image sensor, and we quickly realized that to do it right,
we would have to develop new lenses specifically
for digital SLR use. "The mount and lens need to be
much larger than the image sensor to ensure that every area
of the sensor receives light rays head-on.
If you make the image sensor bigger,
light rays at the periphery inevitably wind up striking
the sensor at an angle."