Whistling in the wind

Well, the speculation is ramping up on what Olympus will or will not deliver at Photokina. I don't particularly care, as I can't afford it anyway. But it will be interesting to see if Olympus are still interested in anything approaching the pro DSLR market. There's a lot of talk about what MUST be provided and how "Oly" (or "OLY" for the more Neanderthal) has to do X, Y, or Z, or else the writer will "leave". Ho hum. Since the various fora represent probably around 1%, if that, of Olympus DSLR owners, and are by defintion dominated by geeks and nerds, rather than photographers (yes, thanks, I do appreciate I'm in the same boat), the relevance of all this venting is, frankly, low. Not as low as the relevance of this column, however, and that isn't going to stop me listing, for the benefit of my 3 readers, what I would not give up. These are the basic features which convinced me to buy an E-1, and which I expect as a baseline in whatever comes to replace it, if anything:

• Clear, bright (for a DSLR), 100% coverage viewfinder (short of top end Canikons, nothing else on the market has this)
• Interchangeable finder screens
• Weatherproof
• Dust shaker
• Superb ergonomics
• Quiet shutter / mirror

And these are the improvements I would like to see, in something close to the same body:

• Better autofocus. Much better. More AF points, more sensitive, and more reactive
• Larger screen, with instant histogram display
• Permanent ISO display in viewfinder - even better: user configurable viewfinder display
• Better high ISO performance: 1 stop would be ok, 2 better. (i.e, current ISO 400 quality at ISO 1600)
• More resolution: ability to print at A3+ at 240dpi without too much upsizing, so around 10Mpix, but 8Mpix would be ok.

And if I don't get everything I DEMAND, then I'M LEAVING!