43 Rumors

The macro is the lens that interests me. Now summer has finally (probably briefly) arrived, I would love to be able to try that lens for photographing damselflies and butterflies. Though my old manual focus 50mm macro gives pretty good results, I would love to be able to see if the focus limiters help achieve [...]

There are cases of lens prices falling. For instance The PL 25mm f1.4 seems to have cost about £500 initially, now it is available at typically £429-450, and there is a £50 cashback available as well. I expect the 12-35mm will become available with a cashback in a few month’s time. If everybody delays buying [...]

The 12-35 f2.8 could be a very useful lens for walking and landscapes as well as videos. I would not buy it unless the price comes down. However, I will be waiting to see if it becomes available at a lower cost as a bundle with the GH3. In the past when I was doing [...]

There is a cash-back offer on the PL 25 f1.4 in the UK at the moment, so I will probably get one of those. I am surprised at how many manual focus fast primes we are getting, there must be demand for them. If somebody would do a 14mm f1.4, I might be interested in [...]

I can’t imagine Panasonic camera owners being interested in this lens. Unless they can implement O.I.S in a mirror lens I don’t see the point buying a new one. Though this lens is much smaller than my old 500mm f8 mirror, the magnification will still make it difficult to hand hold at speeds sub 1/1000 [...]

It looks like a wish list to me. The greatly increased battery life looks particularly unlikely and I don’t think it would have the GPS either. I would welcome most aspects of that specification, though, particularly having the weather sealing and lower ISO setting. Unfortunately, I think the price would be £1500+ with a 12-35 [...]

At current UK prices, you can buy an EM-5 and a 25/f1.4 lens for the same amount of money as an X-Pro 1, body only, so they don’t really fit in the same price category. I would expect the prices of these cameras to fall in a few months time. As an example, UK prices [...]

Some people here seem certain that the DR of the EM-5 can not exceed 12EV, but I can’t find any information that confirms that the E-M5 records 12 bits per pixel. If DxO says the NEX-7 records 12 bit yet its graphs show over 13 EV DR, does this mean DxO have got it wrong [...]

I have found these convertors listed on the website of Camera World in the UK. They are more expensive than generic front of lens convertors. I would imagine few people would buy them unless there is some test data to show they are worth the money.

I am surprised that the NEX-7 was so highly rated by many people, who seem to have been so mesmerised by its shape and specification that they didn’t bother to ask what lenses were available and how well they performed (the same thing is being repeated with the Fujifilm X-Pro 1). When I bought an [...]

The price for the 12-35mm lens is a bit disappointing, but not too surprising. At that price it may not be supplied as a “kit” with a camera body either, which could have made it more affordable. Panasonic UK is running a number of cash back offers on lenses at the moment. Once the 12-35mm [...]

It is my personal wish that Panasonic bring out a GH3 with improved sensor performance and a big, high eye-point EVF and preferably, weather sealing. It would be nice if it could be acquired with a 12-35mm f2.8 lens at a not too exorbitant price. The next GH should keep the shape and control layout [...]

That’s hardly surprising. In the UK the GF3 and G3 have been out for quite a while and their price has dropped to quite an attractive level. The EM-5 is priced at £1149 including lens and is not even in shops yet. Sales of the EM-5 may well be stronger in a few months’ time, [...]

I listened to the video on the posted link and had to turn up the volume until I could hear any sound- my PC has a cooling fan which drowns out the sound of the video. I can often hear the noise made by (what I presume is) the O.I.S in my Panasonic 45-175mm lens. [...]

Regarding the 45-175mm lens, Photozone review seems to largely confirm the statements in the reviews that were uploaded to this website. Resolution is roughly on a par with the 45-200mm lens, and as I said in my review, there is little visible sign of chromatic aberration. It is successfully removed by software corrections.

There are some comical suggestions in the list. 300mm f2.0 is the obvious one, but I would rate a 10-50mm or 70mm pancake as being pretty implausible too. I think the chance of getting a 12-50mm f2.0 is zero as well: such a lens would be bigger and more expensive than the 4/3 14-35mm f2.0, [...]

It is ironic that they complain of a lack of 100 ISO setting, given that a week or two ago some people were complaining that the sensitivity at the ISO 200 setting on the EM-5 is closer to 120 ISO.

I tried the camera at the Focus on Imaging show a couple of weeks ago and there have been plenty of sample images available for download.. so I think that in fact lots of people are pre-ordering after having performed some assessment of the camera.

Having looked at some of the DxO tests of m43 lenses recently, I have become suspicious that some tests, where they look at uncorrected raw files, are analysing parts of the image which would normally be chopped off by the distortion correction. DxO in particular report high distortion, vignetting and chromatic aberration for lenses (e.g. [...]

If Olympus can get the macro lens out by early summer I will be very much tempted. Hopefully the focus limiters will help make AF more successful with insects. I’m sure it will be pretty expensive (£500+) though.