European Compact System Camera 2012-2013 – Olympus OM-D E-M5 from EISA on Vimeo.

EISA just announced he 2012 award winners. The E-M5 won the price in the category best “European Compact System Camera“. But honestly, it isn’t that difficult to win a price if you create three different categories for mirrorless cameras:
European Compact System Camera (Winner: [shoplink 29074]Olympus OM-D E-M5[/shoplink])
European Advanced Compact System Camera (Winner: Samsung NX20)
European Professional Compact System Camera (Winner: Fujifilm X-Pro1)

Olympus also won the price for the best “European All Weather Camera” with the Olympus TOUGH TG-1.

The best “European Compact System Lens” is the [shoplink 31225]Panasonic LUMIX G X VARIO 12-35mm F2.8 ASPH[/shoplink] (you can watch the EISA video here).

For all you German native speaker there is a new E-m5 book written by the famous Olympus author Reinhard Wagner. It’s in Stock now at Amazon Germany (Click here). Sadly I found Zero E-M5 book in English or any other language. There are some Olympus PEN books in English like the one for David Busch and the E-PL1 for Dummies(!). So I guess it’s only a matter of time now until we have an E-M5 book too!

Screenshot of the Imaging Business Q1 sales (Click on it to enlarge the image).

Olympus released the latest Quarter Financial results report. You can download it here: http://www.olympus-global.com/en/corc/ir/brief/pdf/n120809aE_n.pdf.

It’s not a surprise that the overall results are very negative. While the medical business is still growing all other divisions are reporting losses. The Imaging Division sold less cameras mainly because of the shrinking compact camera market. The good news is that Micro Four Thirds sales increased thanks to the [shoplink 29074]Olympus E-M5[/shoplink]! Results would have been even better if the Silver kits would have been available earlier (only now in Stock at [shopcountry 29074] for example).

For the next Quarter Olympus forecast sees a return to profit. Let’s hope this is true. Below one more interesting screenshot about the digital camera world wide market:

I would say Olympus has to reduce the number of compact camera models and focus on very specific markets. The Sony RX100 is a good example of what could work (it is on top of the Amazon rankings). And than focus on Mirrorless of course…

Before to start…for US readers:
First time ever Amazon itself has the Silver E-M5 in Stock (Click here). And it’s quickly climbing the mirrorless rankings (see here).

Back to the Panasonic news:
One of the few things we know for sure about the upcoming GH3 is that it is weather sealed. And so it may not be casual that Panasonic announced super resistant SD cards. As Engadget reports ironically the cards are soo good that they will probably outlast the photographers life too :)

“It resits at temperatures from -13F to 185F, immersion in 3.3 feet of water for half an hour . The cards are also built to survive zaps of electricity, proximity to magnets and exposure to X-rays. If it all becomes too much to bear, the design will even fuse on the inside to prevent fire burning the card from within”

Sounds perfect for our next GH3 or not?

Source: Panasonic Japan.

And here is a rumor roundup about the GH3:
FT5: similar GH2 design, weather sealed, no global shutter, major improvements in AF speed and EVF quality, GH3X kit with 12-35mm X lens.
FT3: 15.5 mega-pixel sensor, Iso 160-12800 (extends to 80-51200), 6.7fps, 3.2″ inch LCD with 1050k-dots, EVF with 2.06 mega-dots, double SDXC slots, in-camera GPS, external battery grip.

Some news from the competition! Nikon announced their new Nikon J2 and 11-27.5mm lens. Full coverage at MirrorlessRumors. Price and specs at Amazon (Click here) and BHphoto (Click here).

I would say that there is no big news here. The lens is nice the camera offers small improvements over the J1. I really want to see in one year from now how the mirrorless market will be. My impression is that Canon EOS-M is a much stronger competitor than the Nikon 1 system.

Meantime an interesting info comes from Sony. They will announce a cheaper NEX-7 model, the NEX-6. Could be the competitor of the E-PL5 if this camera will have an integrated viewfinder!

I already posted this on MirrorlessRumors last week but I want to mention it here for you too. A guy named “Andreas” sent me a link to an eBay project called Mirrorless-deals.com (Click here). It contains complex filters that can sort out all the unnecessary stuff while searching for cameras or lenses. Examples:

All Lumix cameras in worlwide stores or All Olympus cameras in UK stores and so on. He spent a lot of nights on this and it’s worth to try it out and possibly help him in refining the algorithm. It’s still in Beta phase! Nice work!

Website: http://www.mirrorless-deals.com