Last week I reported about a Panasonic patent disclosing a Light Field sensor with high-resolution (original article can be read here). Well to get a glimps of how such a Panasonic camera could work check out the newly announced Lyto Illum camera at lytro.com. It has an astonishing 30-250mm f/2.0 constant aperture lens for a 40 Megarays 1 inch sensor! 40 megarays is around 4-5 megapixel in 2D resolution. Such a compact and fast lens is possible to make for a Light Field camera because you don’t need glass to correct aberrations (A Light Field Sensor captures all light directions).

Now imagine Panasonic making a MFT camera with such a sensor. I think it could become a killer camera!

P.S.: Play with that image to learn in three seconds what a Ligh Field Camera can do:

Panasonic just released a new firmware update (Donwload link here) for the brand new Nocticron lens. It improves the “motion picture quality under high sensitivity in use with GH4.“.

You can buy the lens at Amazon US (Click here), Adorama (Click here) and BHphoto (Click here). In UK at Wexphotographic (Click here). In Germany at Redcoon (Click here), Technikdirekt (Click here).

Celebrity photographer David Bailey: The man behind the (Olympus) camera! (via Imaging Resource).

Panasonic 14-140mm lens review at Photographyblog.
GH4 shooting report at Yodobashi.
15mm shooting report at Yodobashi.
Alex Majoli’s Mad Men set photos shot on an em1 at Lightbox.
about a novice getting great results with a mft camera…(Buchangrant).
Olympus OMD EM1 rear dial issue by Daniel Cheung.
Olympus E-M1 rebates in France (Lepidi).

Jim: I have seen several people asking about the cheap focal reducers. I have a series of test images on flickr using a pancolar 50/1.8 shots from f1.8 to f22. 3 x series
I posted this in the panasonic/dox post in response to a question. Maybe others might be interested in my post and the link.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/54912595@N02/with/13906394982/”

Walter: “The actual issue of the german magazin ‘camera’ (www.camera-magazin.de) has an interesting article with the title ‘Size does not matter’. It’s an article about a test made by ‘Warentest’. According to them the Olympus OM-D E-M1 is a little bit better rated then the Nikon Df. MFT beats full frame! But we all know: it’s not about the equipment, it’s about the photograph ;-)“

Music Video Camera Shootout GH4, GH3, 5d mark iii, 7D, C100

New New Russar+ M-mount lens at Lomography.
Panasonic 12-32mm pancake zomm tested at Photographyblog.
M.Zuiko 60mm macro for butterfly photography on the Pen E-P5 at Bestmirrorlesscamerareviews
LEE filters Little Stopper and HandlePod with the E-P5 for long exposures at Bestmirrorlesscamerareviews
Japanese E-M10 test at Itmedia.
Olympus OMD EM1 Review: Travel Photography by Daniel Cheung.
preliminary brochure for the GH4 at Panasonic.net.

Chris: “celebration of 5 years of micro four thirds. Okay, it’s s a shameless plug for my blog. http://www.chrispattison.co.uk/a-bakers-dozen-13-images-taken-with-13-micro-four-thirds-cameras/”

David: “I have penned what will likely be my last blog/review of Oly gear for a while. The 12~40/2.8 PRO zoom gets magnificent reviews. I bought one and over-all, the
reviews are warranted. But the lens suffers from significant “Moustache” distortion. I have a review of the problem, and it’s cure, along with my other six Olympus reviews, at: http://www.FURnFEATHER.net/Reviews/ReviewIndex.html”

Eric: “This isn’t a rumor — but I’ve posted a couple of reviews lately on my blog that 4/3 Rumors readers should find interesting. A comparison of wide-zoom lenses:
http://www.seldomscenephotography.com/2014/01/23/wide-zooms-for-micro-43-cameras-compared/.
And a review of the 14-42mm EZ “pancake” lens:
http://www.seldomscenephotography.com/2014/04/08/the-olympus-14-42mm-f3-5-5-6-ez-lens-a-user-experience-review”

Anonymous: “Pretty impressive footage with cheap 9mm bodycap+Gh3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGTLyZeNJVY“

Gami: “Brokenman Trailer vimeo.com/92023803 GH3+voigtlander 25mm+tokina 11-16mm, thanks for sharing”

Gnat: “No rumor here, just a Panasonic GM1 impressions post blog as a bike touring and carry everywhere camera system. https://olyallthetime.squarespace.com/blog/2014/4/13/panasonic-gm1-impressions Paired with a Panny 14mm & 20mm and a the spectacular Oly 45mm it is really a super lightweight, compact and capable camera system.“

Maxim Guselnikov
E-M1 & mZD 75/1,8

We just don’t buy MFT stuff we actually also shoot on it :)
So here is a selection of some of the most liked 43rumors readers photos. Be sure to participate with your best shot by sharing it on the 43rumors Facebook Wall (Click here).

Panasonic Light Field sensor Patent No. 20140078259. Light Field forum coloured the most important elements.

Imagine a MIcro Four Thirds camera with a sensor capable of taking full sharp pictures and where focus points and bokeh will be determined in post production. Imagine a MFT Panasonic camera that can take pictures in a way where you can change the perspective(!) in postprocessing too. As most of you will know such a technique already exists and is used by [shoplink 45611 ebay]Lytro cameras (here on eBay)[/shoplink]. They allow you to do this: CLick on the image to refocus and drag to change the perspective:

The current issues with [shoplink 45611 ebay]Lytro cameras[/shoplink] is that the resolution is very low. As Light Field Forum reports right now the maximum effective image resolution of 25 % the sensor’s resolution. Well the good news is that Panasonic latest Patent No. 20140078259 shows how Panasonic solved that problem. They created a technique to achieve 100%(!) of the sensor resolution by moving the lens array below the Pixel layer.

Light Field Forum writes:

In contrast to today’s microlens setups, the microlens array in this system lies behind the photosensitive layer. Thus, light rays first reach the imaging layer (1d in the figure below) and create a standard 2D image. They then pass through the microlens array (1a) and another layer which can be controlled to let light pass through or block it (1b). If allowed to pass through, they finally reach a reflective layer (1c) and are transmitted back to the photosensitive layer (1d) as a microlens-coded image.
By finely tuned control of layer 1b (transmitted light controlling layer), the camera can record both a full-resolution 2D image and a 4D light field image in rapid succession, collecting all the information necessary to reconstruct a full-resolution light field.
The authors note that the presented system is compatible with “every camera that uses a solid-state image sensor”, including “digital cameras, digital camcorders and other electronic cameras”.

I would love to have a Micro Four Thirds camera with such a unique sensor! And you?

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Found via Dicahub and Image Sensor World.

Click on image to enlarge.

The Photokina organizers had a meeting in Japan and DC.watch posted some of their slides. As you can see from these very interesting graphs the camera world is changing a lot! Not only do company have to face an economic crisis but there is also a change on the kind of devices used to take photographs. The graph do show us that:

– Non Pure Photographic devices are selling more while the classic camera sales are dropping
– DSLR sales will remain stable while there is a small growth expected from the mirrorless system camera sales for 2014.
– A small surprise is the huge increase of the premium compact camera market
– The compact camera market is dramatically shrinking

And there are still so many changes about to happen. For example how much impact on the camera market will devices like Google Glass have?