I confess, I am not really happy with todays Olympus announcement. I understand that there is a “marketing reason” why those lenses have to exist. Maybe zoom lenses is what “normal” people buys when they go in store. But we are still missing a Zuiko MFT lens we can be really proud of. We have some good lenses like the [shoplink 14818]9-18mm[/shoplink], but no fast prime lens, no high-quality and reasonable fast zoom, and only one pancake lens! And most of the current lenses are copies of already existing Panasonic lenses (or is Panasonic copying the Olympus lenses?). Take a look for yourself:

Thousand of 43rumors readers voted for High-Quality prime, pancake and zoom lenses in many of our polls. We need more “WOW” lenses like the [shoplink 14796]Panasonic 20mm f/1.7[/shoplink].  But we also need lenses that are essential for a complete lens repertoire (where is the normal 25mm f/1.4 lens?).
There will be no need to switch to a NEX or NX system or any other system if the lenses are good enough! So please stop playing cat and mouse, stop to fear the market. Try to have some vision like when you imaginated the MicroFourThirds system. Surprise us!

That’s just my personal opinion, feel free to comment this post…
Me, 43rumors.

Click on the image to enlarge!

Macro, Fisheye and Wide prime lenses are expected to be unveiled by Spring 2011. Why so late? :(

[Thanks Aguilar]

Olympus announced the new E-P2 all black kit and the 40-150mm and the 75-300mm MicroFourThirds lenses. We will continually update this post with all news, reviews, preorder links and image samples.
Reminder: The E-5 will be announced on September 14. Panasonic has a scheduled press release on September 21.

The E-P2 Special Black EVF Edition contents (€1,079, available October 2010.)
* E-P2 camera in black
* M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 17mm 1:2.8 Pancake lens exclusively in black
* VF-2 electronic viewfinder in black
* Historic lens cap with F logo

The E-P2 Special Black Flash Edition contents (€1,049, available October 2010.)
* E-P2 camera in black
* M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 17mm 1:2.8 Pancake lens exclusively in black
* FL-14 external flash exclusively in black
* Historic lens cap with F logo

Olympus M.ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 75-300mm f/4.8-6.7 (€899, available December 2010.)

Olympus M.ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 40-150mm 1:4.0-5.6 (€329, available October 2010.)

PRESS RELEASE:
Olympus announces special edition kits for the E-P2 camera in black (Dpreview / Imaging Resource / Photoscala / DCresource / DigitalCameraReview / ThePhoBlographer)
Olympus introduces M.Zuiko Digital ED 40-150mm lens (Dpreview / Imaging Resource / Photoscala / Quesabesde / DigitalCameraReview)
Olympus releases M.Zuiko Digital ED 75-300mm lens (Dpreview / Imaging Resource / Photoscala / Quesabesde / DigitalCameraReview)

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In an article on CNET Asia “Panasonic aims to up camera market share in Asia” Panasonic confirmed that they have “no immediate plans to release a new dSLR“.

CNET and Panasonic discussed about the goals from Panasonic:

“At present, its share of the digital still camera pie in Asia is 10 percent and the share target for 2010 is 15%. The US share is quite low for Panasonic, while Germany is a potential country. We would like to expand our businesses in those countries“

Now it is official. Olympus announced that Cosina will join the Micro Four Thirds group! And Cosina posted the lens news on their website

UPDATE: I was told that the lens has a better optical quality than the old and expensive C-mount [shoplink 15432]Schneider 25mm f/0.95 (which costs used over $900 at eBay…used!)[/shoplink]

P.S.: Hood is included.

Click on picture to enlarge!

Today Voitgländer will announce the production of new lenses for the MicroFourThirds system!
The first lens to be unveiled is the new Nokton 25mm f/0.95 lens. This lens has been designed for MFT and you don’t need to use any adapter! The Lens is manual only (no autofocus). Expected price $1000 and availabilty by October/November.

The image quality is reported to be on a very high level. The only comparable lenses to date are the old C-mount lenses like the [shoplink 15432]Schneider 25mm f/0.95 (which costs over $900 at eBay)[/shoplink]. There are also two more 25mm f/0.95 lenses like the [shoplink 15433]Navitar and Angenieux (again C-mount lenses)[/shoplink]. But those are not designed for MFT and you need an MFT adapter. They are also a little bit more expensive than the Nokton (and the Nokton is new!).

We hope to learn more about the Voigtländer-MicroFourThirds future strategy as soon as possible!

Source: Photoscala

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Hi!

I am very happy that Voigtländer joined the MicroFourThirds group and I am happy that we from 43rumors where here to report you the news. As you know the BIG caliber Panasonic and Olympus are supposed to announce the new products by mid-September. Before that I wanted to propose you a new value system and talk about some issues we had with some of our rumors:

1) The value system is to complicated (FT1 to FT5).
2) Even trusted sources have prooven to fail with some of the rumors.
3) The rumor language.

So here my proposed solutions:

1) I propose a new rumor value system:
FT1 = Rumor from unknown or external source. In that case we don’t know if there is some truth behind the rumor and it’s likely that the rumor turns out to be false
FT2 = Rumor from one of our trusted sources. A trusted source is a source that gave me correct infos in the past.. This doesn’t mean that the rumor is automatically correct because there is still the possibility that he received wrong or partially incorrect informations.
FT3 = Rumor from trusted sources + evidence (example image leak). Sometimes sources do send me a “proove” and they ask me to not post it. So you should know that when I post a FT3 rumor without posting a “concrete evidence” this happens because I can’t post it.

In any case you should keep in mind that those are rumors and not official news. So there is always a chance that it tourns out to be false! I will also try to underline that in every rumor I will post on 43rumors.
An example. Once we leaked the Panasonic G2 images and specifications on the Panasonic website (!). I posted the rumor with FT5 value. As you remember those specs were wrong! Just to explain you that even on official websites (which are supposed to have correct informations) there could be still errors!

2) Even trusted sources can fail to give me correct informations.
There are many reasons why a trusted source can give me uncorrect informations (not deliberatley!). Olympus and Panasonic do their best to close their information leaks. And they are aware that 43rumors is trying to get infos about upcoming products. That could be a reason why different trusted sources can sometimes receive slightly different informations about the same camera. Another reason is that I receive mostly cryptic and partial informations. It’s rare that a source writes me and says “Hey the GH2 has those and those specs”. They mostly use a codified language I have to interpret.

3) The rumor language.
Every source has a different character and different language. Yesterday for example one source said that a new product was coming and “99% of you will want but only 20% of you will buy“. I didn’t know what was coming until the very last hours. Don’t blame on me if this doesn’t turn out to be 100% correct (not everyone likes the Voigtländer). My job is to post what I receive. And next time I will make it clear that you have to take such statements with a grain of salt!
I also have to improove my “rumor” language. Most of the times I am in hurry. I work on 43rumors during my coffea breaks, pauses and when I am at home late evening. I also never learned english at school and it is not native language. That makes it easy to be misunderstood. Now that we are getting closer to Photokina I will double-triple check every text I am going to post. But please be aware that my language is far from beeing good!

So keep always in mind that this website has an unperfect and personal style!

Many Thanks you all!
Me :)

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