Just a short note for my readers. It’s my last day in France now and I had a very good vacation here. I had only good experiences and met many nice french people! I have to admit that 43rumors kept me more busy than I thought it would be. For the next time I will try to find a 100% substitute for the time I am away. As I told you months ago I will now travel a lot for work and I will need someone helping from time to time. Next week I will be on mountain trip on the Dolomites (I love to climb). And Next Month I will have a huge work to do first in Belgium than in NYC. Anyway, don’t want to bore you with my personal stories, I only wanted to let you know that I am very limited in time so please excuse me when I forget to answer your emails or when I am a bit late in posting a news.

Coming back to rumors. All I can tell you know is that both Olympus and Panasonic will have announcements in late August/September. And I heard from a possible surprise from Olympus and an almost certain huge surprise from Panasonic. I still have only few tidbits about that but as usual you should now that I am trying to post that stuff as soon as I can. The GF7 is coming (and that is not a secret anymore) and also new lenses. I got the feeling that the upcoming Sony NEX announcement (on August 24) put some pressure on Panasonic as I heard they will announce some products earlier than expected.

A very personal message: Some french friends that I met in these weeks are now reading this website. That’s a message for them: “Merci pour la journée magnifique”!!!

That sets a new record in Japan. According to BCNranking nine of the last week twenty most sold system cameras are from Olympus/Panasonic! As you can see from the image on top even the “japanese” E-PL1s does well! There are also two NEX cameras in the top twenty, that means that for the very first time Mirrorless cameras are the majority inside the japanese top 20! Now we know Nikon has their mirrorless system ready for the official presentation. Still now word about Canon…

P.S.: In Europe and US you cannot have such detailed reports. You can get a very vague idea about the popularity of a camera by checking the Amazon rankings:
– System camera rankings (DSLR+mirrorless) at Amazon US (Click here). Amazon has also a dedicated Micro Four Thirds ranking (Click here) where you can check which m43 camera is the most popular.
– All digital camera rankings Amazon Germany (Click here). Mirrorless camera ranking at Amazon Germany (Click here)
– All digital camera rankings at Amazon UK (Click here). Mirrorless camera ranking at Amazon UK (Click here)
– All digital camera rankings at Amazon France (Click here). Mirrorless camera ranking at Amazon France (Click here)

Yasuhara didn’t manage to find any supplier in in oversea countries. And that’s why they decided to deliver the Nanoha lens directly to the users. You can preorder the lens directly at Yasuhara.co.jp. The current price is 479.50 USD. The shipping cost is not included in it. This price may be revised. Reminder: he Nanonha is a macro lens for m43 with 5x magnification. On Nonoha’s website you can find a description written in English: “The magnification is much more than ordinary macro lens. The magnification is up to x5. It means 1 pixel on the picture is about 1 micrometer on the shooting target. With NANOHA, you can find small wonders easily without using microscopes. And we added some patented features for your good shooting.” Yasuhara made some really nice lenses in the past like the [shoplink 22469 ebay]MC 50mm/f2.8 (Click here to see that lens on eBay)[/shoplink]. The company went bankrupt or something around 2004 I think, and this is new starting project.

In the meanwhile we heard that the SLRmagic 50mm f/0.95 fullframe and high quality lens is under development and that there are three focusing options. I am now curious to hear what kind of focusing mode you would chose:

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Explanation: Scalloped focus ring is the one used by the Nokton f/0.95 ([shoplink 15659 ebay]Click here to see it on ebay[/shoplink]). Focs Tab is what for example the Leica Summicron uses ([shoplink 24402 ebay]Click here to see it on ebay[/shoplink]). Regular barrel is what Zeiss lenses use ([shoplink 24401 ebay]Click here to see it on ebay[/shoplink]).

“Why can’t I just point my camera at what I’m seeing and record that?” If you are looking for the answer you can find it here at Cambridgeincolor.com. It’s really one of the best articles I have read recently. There are a couple of very interesting facts:

1) Angle of view

“Although the human eye has a focal length of approximately 22 mm, this is misleading because (i) the back of our eyes are curved, (ii) the periphery of our visual field contains progressively less detail than the center, and (iii) the scene we perceive is the combined result of both eyes.” and “Our central angle of view — around 40-60° — is what most impacts our perception. Subjectively, this would correspond with the angle over which you could recall objects without moving your eyes. Incidentally, this is close to a 50 mm “normal” focal length lens on a full frame camera“

2) Resolution and detail

I guess most of us thought our eye would have more “Megapixels” than a camera. Surprisingly the answer is NO! Cambridgeincolor says: “A single glance by our eyes is therefore only capable of perceiving detail comparable to a 5-15 megapixel camera (depending on one’s eyesight). However, our mind doesn’t actually remember images pixel by pixel; it instead records memorable textures, color and contrast on an image by image basis.”

3) Sensivity and Dynamic Range

“Dynamic range* is one area where the eye is often seen as having a huge advantage. If we were to consider situations where our pupil opens and closes for different brightness regions, then yes, our eyes far surpass the capabilities of a single camera image (and can have a range exceeding 24 f-stops). However, in such situations our eye is dynamically adjusting like a video camera, so this arguably isn’t a fair comparison.“

Conclusion: “Overall, most of the advantages of our visual system stem from the fact that our mind is able to intelligently interpret the information from our eyes, whereas with a camera, all we have is the raw image. Even so, current digital cameras fare surprisingly well, and surpass our own eyes for several visual capabilities. The real winner is the photographer who is able to intelligently assemble multiple camera images — thereby surpassing even our own mental image.“

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And there is another interesting article at Quesabesde (Click here to read the google english translation) The question is: “Do digital sensors lose effectiveness after some time?” The answer is No!….But not a 100% No :)

It looks like some website yesterday reported the wrong european price of the VF-3 (Dpreview said the street price was 150 Euro). According to openpn.com (CLick here) the real price of the VF-3 is 199 Euro (not 150 Euro). By the way they made an analysis of the VF-3 compared it to the VF-2 and to OVF such as E-450, D3100 or 1100D in order to give an idea of what you get. The price is now official on Olympus Germany website too! UPDATE: It looks like even Olympus America itself doesn’t know the real price of the viewfinder. The Olympus Facebook page says the VF-3 price is $149 instead of the official $179! (Thanks E-P1.net for finding this).

Concerning the E-PL3, the price of the 14-42 kit is 649 Euro… same as NEX-C3 with its 18-55. You can see a comparison between both again at openpn.com (Click here)… The E-PL3 has many features not present in the NEX. (Click here to read the google english translation).

UPDATE: a note about the wrong built-in flash rumor. The info came from external websites and I trusted them to much also because the leaked picture really gave us to believe that this might be true. Will be more careful next time with rumors coming not form my trusted sources! Thanks for your understanding!

And here is a list to some of the article I found on the web and I didn’t post yesterday:
Olympus PEN E-PL3 gets a price tag, release date (Engadget).
Olympus PL3 pricing, availability, and new viewfinder announced (Imaging Resource).
Olympus America brings a new 36x Camera with the SP-810UZ (Akihabaranews).
Olympus PEN Lite price announcement (Letsgodigital).
Olympus PEN family gets new electronic viewfinder (Dpnow).
Olympus SZ-11 & VG-145 (Photographyblog).
Olympus VF-3 Electronic Viewfinder (Photographybay).
Olympus reveals specs, pricing for PEN E-PL3 (Cnet).
VF-3: Elektronischer Sucher für Olympus Pen und XZ-1 (Photoscala).

Yasuhara (the company that makes the Nanoha lens) just announced that “We are now planning to release NANOHA arond the end of July 2011. But we estimate we cannot provide enough amount of NANOHA in first several month. It costs some time to purchase NANOHA on your demads. Sorry for your inconvenience. After NANOHA appeared on the web, we got many contacts from all over the world, especially from Europe. Now we don’t keep any sales stations in oversea countries but we understand some useres do want to use such kind of the lens. So we are now planning to provide NANOHA directly to the oversea useres in the early period of our business. We will release new informations at the end of July on this page.”

The Nanonha is a macro lens for m43 with 5x magnification. On Nonoha’s website you can find a description written in English: “The magnification is much more than ordinary macro lens. The magnification is up to x5. It means 1 pixel on the picture is about 1 micrometer on the shooting target. With NANOHA, you can find small wonders easily without using microscopes. And we added some patented features for your good shooting.” Yasuhara made some really nice lenses in the past like the [shoplink 22469 ebay]MC 50mm/f2.8 (Click here to see that lens on eBay)[/shoplink]. The company went bankrupt or something around 2004 I think, and this is new starting project.

You can find some mage samples posted on DC.watch (Click here). Price of the lens should be around 450 Euro.

Image source and press release at Quesabesde.

There are a couple of Olympus news today!

1) The new VF-3 is finally official. It costs 190 Euro (or $180). From the Press Release (Source: Dpreview):
“The VF-3 is perfect for photographers who like the option of holding the camera up to their eye to compose. With 100-percent field-of-view, none of the recordable subject area is cropped, making composition with the VF-3 easy and accurate. The magnification and built-in diopter adjustment of the VF-3 allow for easy viewing. The VF-3 can be rotated up to 90-degrees to accommodate more obscure shooting angles for additional creative control. Furthermore, if you are the kind of person who likes to tweak the settings on your TV, you’ll love the ability to adjust the brightness and color temperature to your own particular tastes.”
So which One shoudl you buy? The Olympus VF-3 or VF-2? Answer at ThePhoBlographer (Click here).

2) The E-PL3 will start to ship in September for $700 with kit lens. (Source: Photographybay).

3) They also announced the SZ-11 a new compact shooter (Source: Akihabara). And another compact camera in Japan (the Olympus VG-145) Source: Dc.watch.

4) And than we have a new ultra zoom camera, the Olympus SP-810UZ. Source: Photoscala.