43 Rumors

First normal lenses, then MSC lenses and now R lenses? Thats really a lot of reworking. Hopefully thats the last rework.

Woohoo! Micro 4/3 users will have an even greater selection of slow zooms to choose from.

where’s the 24mm fast pancake prime ? ;o)

Re-working the 14-42 to get an auto focus improvement makes sense even if it is a bit annoying to all the owners of previous iteration lenses. Hopefully this is all sorted now.

However if they were going to re-work another of the lenses I think it would have been better to have chosen the 17mm over the 40-150mm, especially if the 17mm is going to be the kit lens with some of the cameras. The 17mm optical design could also have been improved at the same time. I dont know how slow the autofocus was with the current 40-150mm – was it slower than the 14-42 MSC? Anyone out there with any experience?

When Panasonic released the Gh2, they increased the live view refresh rate from 60fps to 120fps, effectively doubling af speed. I wonder if Oly did the same and if that means the new EVF will be much better than the current VF2.

Still don’t care how fast it focuses on a stationary, high-contrast object in in well-lit studio. I can do that with a manual focus camera. Can it track someone doing something, in moderate to dim light, accurately, with fast zoom or prime? (I think we have the accuracy part.) I’m not talking about world-cup soccer – how about my kids playing?

(Yeah, we need the fast zooms, and the fast, long primes as well.)

man, its getting more and more depressing reading the comments around here. Seriously people getting worked up about an improvement to the kit lens. Its not like they changed the optical formula again. If they found a way to improve autofocus speed they better use it. Do people really exspect them to not make a minor improvement to the design to improve performance of everyone who picks up a pen in the shop just so that old customers doesn’t feel left behind.

“This should have been the e-p1″ People are acting as if the e-p1 was a bad camera. No one forced you to buy that one. And because you did olympus is not allowed to make more progress? People around here talk down erverything thats not big aperatures and a viewfinder in rangefinder style. Its getting pathetic.

And buying a new kit instead of a body only usually costs just a little bit more. I really dont see why people get that worked up.

I really dont understand why this is bad news. If you expect them to bring out the final version of a product on day 1 then you do not understand the real world. People improve all the time so rather than see this as a problem embrace as it encourages more to the format which will in turn increase choice and drive down cost. Use what you have, upgrade when needed. Dont expect that every release is even targetted at you. Fair play to both manufacturers for improving their lines in a year where whether factories have been impacted or not their development must have been set back by the natural disaster earlier this year.

There is still an unmatched range of options in m4/3. I bought just an additional inexpensive lens, the 17mm, which had fast AF. I adapted two CDAF zooms the 40-150 and the 9-18.

Then I had fun looking for smallish legacy primes, no expense at all. The kit lens I almost never used. This way my PL1 doesn’t lose much useability at all.

If it’s true that bodywise increase in AF speed is 20%, no great issue.

The real problem is if to buy the 12/2. Will that be made obsolete in a year or two, or would I be better off with a CV 12 Heliar?

But I don’t need much else. m4/3 was always intended like a v. small system. Most have just an additional lens, having a range of primes a’ la Leica is a privilege.

Also when you get into the 0.1 sec AF speeds why should one care about what comes next.

Or rather I’ll wait till September-December to see what RF types come out. If they are too expensive, I’ll then be ready to buy the E-P3 or E-PL3, at a lower price.

I don’t see anything negative with the new kit lens. Would you guys prefer that they stayed with the MSC 14-42mm?

For me, as long as this wont jack up the price of the kit, it’s definitely welcome.

Well, this was to be expected. Most new users are going to buy a kit. They couldn’t advertise “fastest focusing ever”, then tell customers they had to spend another $400 or $800 to get that feature. Lots of the P&S converts do so for pictures of their kids or pets because those compact cameras suck with fast moving subjects.
When these new kits are available, those people can buy a cheap E-P(whatever) with a kit lens that works as fast as they’d like.
I don’t think a lot of R&D cash went into the new kit lens. They probably just added the “R” motor or feature to the last 14-42 lens without a complete re-design.

But at least m4/3 is finally looking appealing to more advanced users. The only real great fully native lenses the system had where the 20 f1.7, the 7-14, and the 9-18. Maybe the 45 macro for some, and a couple of the zooms, but most are horribly slow. Now with the 25, 12, and 45 the system as a whole is more appealing to DSLR users that know what good (fast) glass is worth. (As an E5 user with fast lenses, this is the first time the m4/3 system is compeling me to take a look.)
Now if only either Panny or Oly would get with the program and offer a fast standard zoom (think Z12-60, PL14-50, Z14-54, Z14-35) and fast long zoom (Z50-200), the system would be very strong.

“Is there something else, Oly?”

Yes, is there?

How about an E-650, an E-50 and an E-5 MkII?

Because right now it seems 4/3 is dead and over here I see an ad for a 50-200 SWD being sold for 500€ (which is half the store price), and nobody wants to buy it. It’s been there for ten days now, I sent the guy a message, he says nobody is interested… Even if I didn’t have one already, I would think extremely hard before throwing money on a lens that could be almost completely useless in a couple of years, because it doesn’t focus well on a PEN and doesn’t even fit well on a PEN as it’s big and heavy. Not that I trust Olympus to keep m4/3 alive; they might as well kill it the same as they did with 4/3, or go out of business because of incompetence.

Do you see what’s happening, Olympus? Where are your new 4/3 camera bodies? How about a couple of new lenses? Perhaps that legendary 100mm macro or at least a 50mm with a limiter switch, a reworked 50-200 with internal zooming, and maybe a 100-400 f/4 that would take wildlife shooters by storm? Or a cheaper 45mm f/1.8, like the one you’re making for m4/3?

Where are those things, Olympus? Where?

Old predicted that focus speed would catch up – and eventually make the phase-detect focus of DSLRS unnecessary. From a performance point-of-view it seems that this has been achieved – though only with newly designed lenses. We can see now why Oly did not jump in, as many were urging them to do, with a whole range of high-end primes and large aperture lenses. In the long run, it is more important that they get this right than that they have to leave some past technology behind.

The sensor speed probably means that 4/3 lenses will be slower than they are on an E5 – and I guess the only fear, for owners of those lenses is that this will always be the case. That depends on how difficult it is technically to equal phase detect AF on those lenses using contrast. In any case the path to full integration of the systems now looks much more feasible and from now on new lenses will be m4/3 and use the new technology (whatever it is).

If the AF on 4/3 is reasonable, those of us with a small number of special 4/3 lenses (like the 50mm macro) will be content that they are still usable on the new system. Those with a large investment are going to be in a worse position, if the AF speed always lags what they were used to with the E-series cameras – but it may be that within a year or two the speed has caught up – electronics do progress very fast.

As to those, like me who have bought an EPL2 recently – do I feel bad about that… not really because I’ve had some great photos, I would have missed if I hadn’t and there will always be a new camera around the corner. If I buy a new body at some point I’d buy a kit lens with it anyway, so I don’t mind if that has been upgraded. What this development will make me much more inclined to do is to invest in new lenses and accessories as it looks as if this system is going to be one which works very well and has a good future.

Looking forward to seeing how the new focus system works, what the sensor DR etc is like and what new accessories (esp EVF and flash) will be released.

There are some funny expectations about lenses, i.e. a 17/2 wouldn’t be a pancake anymore. The lens is already v. zippy.

The 12-60 and 50-200, even if ‘reworked’ would still be massive. Size containment works only for the wide to normal range. And anyway that would go against the m4/3 ethos, which is different from 4/3.

I am interested to see what Leica and Fuji bring to the table in September, after all they have the experience of RF lenses, Sony made a mess, and enthusiasm for such huge lenses may not last.