The Big Blue Blanket - Olympus In Store

Forgive me for not opening the Olympus E-P3 boxes and displaying the camera and lenses inside. I am a coward.

Olympus have always been the clear winners in the camera division of the Japanese National Packing Contest. This is the industry-wide championships to see which company can put its products into the tightest space for shipping. The boxes and internal dividers are reduced until the cameras or lenses fit into the smallest possible compass while still remaining uncrushed.

Staff in camera shops at one time were known to have been knocked unconscious by the force of cameras exploding from their restraints when first unwrapped, though this has been toned down in recent years. The practise of vacuum-packing was outlawed in Kyoto in 2003.

Nevertheless, it is a serious commercial decision to unpack a camera box - Nothing ever seems to fit back in quite the same way. I am grateful to the Olympus company for printing the specifications of the equipment on the outside of he carton.

Suffice it to say, we seem to have sufficient stocks of the splendid E-P3 to satisfy dozens of customers. These are the doyen of the micro 4/3 mirror-less compact cameras and will be the answer for many people who want big DSLR-like performance but a small compact size. Please do not remind me that it is possible to equip them with adapters to take all sorts of older lenses from many other manufacturers - one of the staff here in the shop does this and he is a demon with film-camera lenses. We are all jealous of his fine results and jealousy is a sin.