Sat down to our first talks with Oly about projections and where we stand with outstanding special orders and all the fun stuff.

Current pricing projection is right in line with your guesses... $1599-1799. My guess is 1699.

There will indeed be a kit with the 12-60. This is the toughest one for them to price because they want to be competitive without losing shirts... but my guess is they'll lowball it. The discussion was $2100-2200 with the 12-60.

These numbers will of course be finalized in the next two weeks, but they're pretty close.

They are considering a kit with the 14-54 so that they might break that magic $1999 number but they feel that the 14-54 doesn't showcase the E-3's abilities as well as it should... so they may not entertain this thought all the way through. Also they are quite aware that the vast majority of early adopters will probably already HAVE the 14-54 as it is. Why waste the body inventory?

No question that they see it as the main competitor to the D300. They really don't feel that, camera-wise, the 40D offers much in the way of technical competition and I personally, after handling the A700 for the past week and a half, think the Sony borrowed a little too much from the Maxxum 7D and not enough from everyone else. Nice, but nowhere near nice enough. In fact, it's not nice enough to the point we're discussing where we stand with Alpha altogether. Harsh, but that's the world we live in.

D300 number 1, sure... but the E-3 will be solid. No DOA here. That I can tell you.

Oly's goal is mid-november availability. Which of course means the end of november in retail speak. But they were quite serious about beating the D300 to the market both in shipping and in availability.
Nikon is having serious backorder issues NOW with their product... the D300 and D3 are going to be heavily, heavily back ordered... some versions of their kits won't be available until near March of next year... based on those projections alone, the E-3 has it's chance if Oly can provide. The 40D has it's Canon followers but those who come in off the street are realizing that it's not all that and a bag of chips.

In my mind, totally out of the store and as a photographer, I see this, technologically, as a two camera race... with two quality competitors. The D300 will win based on marketing and recognition, and a couple specs (though not as many as some would like to think) but the E-3 will make out fine... and surprise a few, I think.

We'll see.




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there are no better companies, only better images.