Guides / Four Thirds
Four Thirds: the dead mount worth buying into
Olympus and Kodak built the first camera system designed for digital from scratch, sold it for seven years, and then replaced it themselves. The cameras went to almost nothing. The lenses did not.
Last updated August 2026
Where it came from
Olympus and Kodak announced the Four Thirds standard at photokina in September 2002. Every other digital SLR at the time was a film camera with a sensor dropped into it, which meant lenses computed for film sending light into the corners of a sensor at an angle it handled badly. Four Thirds threw the film body away and started over: a 17.3 x 13.0mm sensor, a 38.67mm flange distance, and a mount sized so lenses could be telecentric, firing light at the sensor closer to straight on. Brighter corners, better off-center detail, and it mattered most on wide angles.
It was also an open standard, which nobody else was doing. Panasonic, Sanyo and Sigma had joined by early 2004, Leica arrived through Panasonic, and for a while it looked like the format that would take on Canon and Nikon from a different direction: half the sensor area, half the lens size, and a 2x crop that turned a 300mm into a 600mm.
The first camera was the Olympus E-1 in 2003. Sealed magnesium, built like a tool, and 5 megapixels at a time when Canon was shipping 6. That number is most of the story of what happened next.
What replaced it
Micro Four Thirds, announced by Olympus and Panasonic in August 2008. Same sensor size, same 2x crop, same aspect ratio. The change was that they took the mirror box out and cut the flange distance roughly in half, which let the bodies and the wide lenses shrink. Everything Four Thirds was supposed to be about size got more true once the mirror left.
That put Olympus in the odd position of competing with itself, and it went the way you would expect. The E-5 arrived in 2010 as the last Four Thirds body. Lens production ran until 2017. Nobody made a dramatic announcement; the mount just stopped.
The part that matters if you are buying today: the replacement can mount the old glass. An Olympus MMF-3 adapter puts any lens on this page onto any Micro Four Thirds body with full electronic control. That single fact is why a 2003 macro lens still costs more than the camera it was built for, and why the lens prices below have held while the body prices collapsed.
The CCD thing
Four Thirds bodies split cleanly in two, and it is not by price or by year. It is by sensor.
The first four cameras used Kodak CCD sensors: the E-1, E-300, E-500 and E-400. People buy these for the color. Whether a CCD renders differently from a CMOS sensor once both files go through a raw converter is an argument that has run for fifteen years and is not settled. What is settled is that the demand is real and it sets the prices: the E-1 asks more than bodies with twice its resolution.
Everything from the E-330 onward runs Panasonic's Live MOS sensor. More resolution, cleaner high ISO, live view, and none of the reputation. If you want to take pictures rather than chase a look, this is the half of the list to shop, and it is cheaper.
One clean line marks the switch. The E-400 was the last Kodak sensor; the E-410 that replaced it six months later used a Panasonic one, and Olympus never went back.
The Kodak CCD bodies 2003 to 2006
Four cameras, one sensor lineage, and the entire reason this mount has a following in 2026.
The first Four Thirds camera and the only professional body of the CCD era. Sealed magnesium, 5MP Kodak CCD, and the color people are actually buying. 5MP caps how far you can crop, which is the only reason it stays affordable.
No pentaprism hump. Olympus ran the light sideways through a porro mirror instead, so the top plate is flat and the camera looks like nothing else before or since. 8MP Kodak CCD.
The E-300's sensor in a conventional body with a normal viewfinder hump. Same 8MP Kodak CCD, lighter, less strange, and usually the cheapest of the four.
10MP, and the smallest DSLR in the world when it shipped. Olympus never sold it in North America, so every US listing is an import. It was also the last Kodak sensor Olympus used: the E-410 switched to Panasonic and never went back.
The Live MOS bodies 2006 to 2010
Panasonic's sensor, more resolution, live view, and cameras you would still choose to carry.
The first DSLR that could frame on the rear screen, using a second sensor tucked in the viewfinder chamber. 7.5MP Live MOS. Bought now for the handling and the history more than the files.
In-body stabilization on a consumer DSLR in 2007, while Canon and Nikon were still putting it in lenses. 10MP Live MOS, common, and cheap.
The E-1's replacement after a four-year gap. Sealed, fast phase-detect autofocus, and the body the 12-60mm SWD was designed around. 10.1MP.
12.3MP, articulating screen, and the first Olympus body with art filters. Sits between the E-620 and the E-3 on both price and build.
The one to buy if you want to shoot a Four Thirds DSLR rather than collect one. 12.3MP, stabilized, articulating screen, and small enough to carry all day. The E-600 is the same camera with the good bits removed.
The final Four Thirds body, 2010. Weather sealed, 12.3MP, and the best autofocus the mount ever had. It is priced like the end of the line, because it is.
Panasonic's only serious Four Thirds body. Rangefinder styling, a shutter-speed dial on the top plate, and an aperture ring on the Leica kit zoom. It sold badly, which is exactly why it is collectible now.
The L1 with a Leica badge and DNG output, roughly 13,300 built. The files are identical to a much cheaper Olympus. The premium is the badge and the scarcity.
The glass is the actual legacy
Olympus sorted its Four Thirds lenses into three grades, and the grade still predicts the price twenty years later. Standard grade was the kit glass. High Grade added metal barrels, sealing and faster apertures. Super High Grade was the reason people put up with 5 megapixels.
The Super High Grade line included a 14-35mm f/2 and a 35-100mm f/2, both constant f/2 zooms, which nobody has shipped for a small sensor before or since. The 35-100mm covers the same field as a 70-200mm and does it a full stop faster than every full-frame 70-200mm f/2.8 ever made. It currently runs about $1,400, and it is one of the few lenses here whose price has gone up.
The two most-hunted lenses are cheaper and more useful. The 50mm f/2 macro (around $290) is a 100mm-equivalent portrait lens that happens to do macro, and Micro Four Thirds shooters adapt it constantly, which is why it never got cheap. The 12-60mm f/2.8-4 SWD (around $330) is the standard zoom most E-5 buyers want with the body.
If you want one lens and you are not spending much, the 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5 is the workhorse. It is the lens the E-1 was designed around, most used bodies still come with one, and it costs about $140. Buy the Mark II if you plan to adapt it forward: the original hunts badly with contrast-detect autofocus on a Micro Four Thirds body, and the Mark II does not.
The full catalog, with prices from last night, is on the Four Thirds mount page.
What to check before you buy
These cameras are fifteen to twenty-three years old and most of them were stored, not used. That creates a specific set of problems.
Batteries first. The BLM-1 and BLM-5 packs in the bigger bodies are long out of production and the originals are past their useful life. Third-party replacements exist and are fine. Budget for one and treat any cell that came with the camera as a bonus.
Then the card slot. The E-1, E-300 and E-500 take CompactFlash, and the E-1 also takes xD. Plenty of listings ship without a card, and xD cards now cost more than they have any right to. Check which slot you are getting before you assume your SD cards will work, because on most of this mount they will not.
Ask for a shot at ISO 1600 before you buy a CCD body. This is where the era shows its age worst, and it is worse on these than on the Live MOS cameras. If the seller will not shoot one, assume the worst.
Check the sensor cleaner runs. Olympus shipped the first ultrasonic dust reduction in the E-1 and it is genuinely good, but it is also a twenty-year-old piezo element. Watch the startup sequence and look for the confirmation on screen.
On the E-300 specifically, look through the finder before you commit. The porro mirror setup gives a smaller, dimmer view than a pentaprism, and some people cannot get on with it at all. It is the one thing about that camera you cannot fix later.
Grades from MPB and KEH mean something and carry a warranty. An eBay "good condition" means whatever the seller decided. Most Four Thirds supply is on eBay and a lot of it ships from Japan, so read the listing and expect import shipping on top. How we collect and normalize prices is on the methods page.
Worth watching
Two people have put real time on these cameras recently instead of reviewing them off a spec sheet, which for a twenty-year-old body is the only test that tells you anything.
One Month Two Cameras on the Panasonic DMC-L1. The channel's format is living with two cameras for a month at a time, so you get what the L1 is actually like to carry rather than what it scores. Their post on the E-300 covers the other strange one on this page.
snappiness on the same DMC-L1, which is worth watching alongside the first one. The L1 is the body here whose price is set by how it looks rather than what it does, so two opinions are worth having before you pay the collector premium.
Where to start
Want the look: buy an E-500 and the 14-54mm. It is the cheapest way onto a Kodak CCD and you can find out whether you care about the color for very little money.
Want a camera: buy an E-620. Stabilized, articulating screen, small, and it does not feel like operating a museum piece.
Want the glass: buy the lens first and adapt it to a Micro Four Thirds body you already own, or one from the Micro Four Thirds page. You get the optics without the twenty-year-old battery, card format and sensor.