The japanese website Egami found a new Olympus patent (Google translation doesn’t work very well). I tried to make a small summary:

* Patent publication number 2010-152140 published on 2010/07/08  and filled 2008/12/25

The following patent discloses an adapter (in blue) that adds phase detection and optical viewfinder to current MicroFourThirds cameras. This is not a new concept, we already saw that with the Leica Visoflex (click here to see the Visoflex on eBay).

Such an adapter makes sense because phase detection autofocus is still much faster than the current contrast autofocus system of MicroFourThirds cameras. And not few of us will like the idea to have an optical viewfinder instead of the sometimes noisy and not good enough electronic viewfinder.

That could be also the final solution to merge FourThirds and MicroFourThirds (but that’s just speculation for now!).

UPDATE: Olybold has taken a nice picture of the Leica Visoflex on the Panasonic G1 (Many Thanks!!!)

The japanaese company UN-LTD will now offer a new close-up lens for the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 LensPanasonic 20mm f/1.7 LensPanasonic 20mm f/1.7 LensPanasonic 20mm f/1.7 LensPanasonic 20mm f/1.7 LensPanasonic 20mm f/1.7 LensPanasonic 20mm f/1.7 LensPanasonic 20mm f/1.7 LensPanasonic 20mm f/1.7 LensPanasonic 20mm f/1.7 LensPanasonic 20mm f/1.7 Lens.

Google translation:
“Simply attach the lens, you can enjoy close-up photography of about 5cm minimum.
Size: φ52mmx9.4mm (H)
Weight: 27.5g
Material: Aluminum
Country of Origin: China
UNX-7821: Open price (estimated actual sales price 3,480 yen)”

I believe you can order the lens on their website only: UN-LTD.com

P.S: Amazon US has the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 Lens for $345.69

One of our readers just sent us the link to the following Opteka 500-1000mm Lens which is listed on Amazon US (click here). It sounds like the lens is made for Micro Four Thirds Cameras. I couldn’t found any info that reveals if the lens needs an adapter or not. Do you know it?

The mirrorless camera segment is still growing in Japan and in June only 32.5% of all sold system cameras were mirrorless!

UPDATE: We also post the list of the most sold 20 system camera in Japan between January and June 2010. We have 7 mirrorless cameras that made it into the top 20. The source is BCNranking (click here)

Position	Camera (click on camera name to check price and availability on amazon)	Market Share（％）
1	Nikon D90	13.0
2	Canon T2i	11.5
3	Nikon D5000	10.6
4	Nikon D90	9.7
5	Nikon D3000	7.9
6	Pentax K-x	6.3
7	Panasonic GF1	6.1
8	Olympus E-PL1	4.6
9	Canon 7D	3.5
10	Canon XSi	3.1
11	Panasonic G1	2.7
12	Sony NEX-5	2.0
13	Canon 5D MarkII	1.8
14	Canon 50D	1.7
15	Sony A550	1.5
16	Sony A330	1.4
17	Olympus E-P2	1.3
18	Panasonic G2	1.3
19	Nikon D300s	1.3
20	Olympus E-P1	1.1

And in 2010 Olympus and Panasonic manage it to gain market share (and notice the huge drop of Canon!):

BHphoto discontinued the E-P2+lens+EVF kit (click here to see it). Normally I would expect BHphoto to say “out of stock”. Amazon (click here) and Adorama do have the same kit in Stock.

So is that just an “error” or is Olympus really stopping to sell the full kit?