GH4 preorders will start on March 17. Price still unknown.

We will have to wait more than one month to know price and place our preorders on the new GH4. Amazon US (Click here) reports that “we will begin accepting pre-orders on March 17, 2014“.

Meantime the readers reaction the GH4 is very positive according to our POLL. I hope Panasonic will not change our mood after the final price announcement :)

Do you like the new GH4?

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And here is the GH4 Shooting Impression by Daniel Berehulak:

Live coverage: Panasonic GH4 officially announced!

 

GH4 specs, price and preorder notifications:
Panasonic GH4 body at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here), BHphoto (Click here).
DMW-YAGH interface unit at Adorama (Click here), BHphoto (Click here), Panasonic US (Click here).
DMW-FL580L Flash at Adorama (Click here), BHphoto (Click here).

Previews, tests and image samples:
Hands-on at EosHD, Quick summary at Dpreview, Hands-on at Pocket Lint, First impressions at Trustedreviews, Hands-on pics at Cnet, First impression at ThePhoBlographer, First impressions at Quesabesde (Spanish), First imrpession at Cmaeras.Reviewed, Hands-on at Hybridcams, First Impression at Imaging Resource.

Videos:
“Light of the Yucatan” in 4K by Bryan Harvey (youtube), Shooting Impression by Bryan Harvey (youtube), GH4 Shooting Impression by Bence Máté (youtube), GH4 Shooting Impression by Takehito Miyatake (youtube), Panasonic GH4 commercial (youtube), Shooting Impression by Daniel Berehulak (youtube), Gh4 at Videoaktiv (German), First look by Wex (youtube), GH4 hands on by PMA (Italian), Video at Park Cameras (youtube).

Hot Notes:
1) Pricing will be announced in mid March only! (Camera will cost less than $2000 or 2000 Euro).
2) This is the world’s first mirrorless interchangeable lens mount camera recording 4K
3) The external XLR / HD-SDI add-on for this camera allows for uncompressed 10bit 4K output over 3G HD-SDI – the kind of spec Canon currently charges $25,000 fo (EosHD).
4) DFD (Depth-of-Defocus) autofocus works like this: During live view (before a half-press of the shutter button), the camera will occasionally make a tiny adjustment to focus, to check whether subjects in the frame are in front of or behind the current focus point. In addition to this information, the camera judges how far out-of-focus objects in the scene are, based on how blurred they are, assessed using a profile detailing the blur behavior of the lens at its current aperture. Although this combination of data itself doesn’t give the GH4 enough information to achieve precise focus, it does give it a clear idea of where it should start using conventional contrast detection AF process to achieve fine focus. (Dpreview).
5) Recording 4K will crop your image by an ulterior 1,125x (Cinema 4K) or 1,2x (Cinema) factor (Personal View).
6) The new sensor seems to be able to get more detail out of the highlights than the sensor in the Olympus EM1 (ThePhoBlographer).

Press release:
Dpreview, Panasonic, 43rumors, SystemKameraForum (German), Pocket Lint, Engadget, Photographyblog, Photoscala (German), DSLRmagazine (Spanish), Panasonic (Japanese),

Poll:

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Click on the images to see a large size version:

a little bit of everything…(new G6 and GF6 firmware updates)

One Week with SLR Magic anamorphot (OM-D & Sony A7) from Seb Farges on Vimeo.

E-M1 video quality test at EosHD.
Camera Duel: Sony RX100 Mk II vs Panasonic Lumix GM1 at Digitalversus.
Firmware updated for the G6 (page here) and GF6 (page here).
SLRMagic 17mm T1.6 review at ThePhoBlographer.
Panasonic at The Photography Show (Photographyblog).
Perspective Warp in Photoshop CC 14.2 (Outbackphoto).
First refurbished [shoplink 44499 ebay]Olympus E-M1[/shoplink] and first refurbished [shoplink 44500 ebay]12-40mm lens[/shoplink] on sale at [shoplink 22691 ebay]Olympusmarket[/shoplink].

John:and… here’s a five-minute video I made with the GM1 and 12-35mm f/2.8 lens during Tet, the Vietnamese New Year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFT9pmIyR_g&feature=youtu.be

Panasonic financial report: “Operating Profit Increased Significantly”.

Panasonic issued their latest financial report (PDF download here). And the good news is that “Operating Profit Increased Significantly”.  Bloomberg reports:

Net income rose 20 percent to 73.7 billion yen ($730 million) in the three months ended Dec. 31, the Osaka-based company said in an e-mailed statement today. That beat the 44 billion-yen average estimate of three analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News.

The reason why Panasonic did so well is because they did cut investments in unprofitable businesses (like Plasma TV) and started a huge restructuring program. Panasonic is particularly doing well in the car supplying industry. There is no info in their report about the camera business. The only major camera related news is that Panasonic announced the reorganization of the Semiconductor Business and Transfer of Shares of Subsidiaries regarding Overseas Factories (PDF here).

Good news for the company while it remains a bit of a mystery what will happen with the camera business. Panasonic said many times they now want to focus on the more professional market. And the G4K is exactly going into that direction.

(UPDATED) Mirrorless sales strong in Asia. Compact camera sales constant!

Vitaly from Personal View made this nice graph based on the shipped camera data shared by japanese companies. The graph on top shows how mirrorless system camera shipments are constantly growing in Asia while they remain weak in EU and North America. And the graph below shows how compact camera shipments are always on the same level. The truth is system cameras shipment decreased over the last two years.

And as you can see mirrorless system cameras do sell well in Asia:

I will leave any comment up to the experts visiting this site :)

 

a little bit of everything…


SLR Magic 1.33x Anamorphic – Sunset BMCC RAW

GM1 review at AdmiringLight.
12-32mm review at AdmiringLight.
TexBlend 1.1 released (Outbackphoto).
GX7 owner assessment at Soundimagesplus.
Nocticron 42,5mm lens test at Kasyapa, Yaotomi and Yodobashi (Japanese text and wonderful images).
Olympus Stylus 1 test at Trustedreviews.
E-M1 review at Buchangrant.com.
E-M1 vs D800 at Qamera.com.
Comparison between E-M5’s 5 axis stabilisation and E-M10’s 3 axis stabilisation at Bestmirrorlesscamerareviews.
E-M10 with 25mm lens at Bestmirrorlesscamerareviews.
LCD Loupe for the GM1 at r73.
E-M10 vs E-M5 by Jamie on Youtube.
Shooting Spiders with Olympus 60mm f/2.8 Macro (Facebook).
E-M1 and 300mm F2.8 in the wild at Fullcirclepix.
A closer look at the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera (Engadget).

Guillermo: I just calculated the precise ‘ISO LOW’ in the Olympus E-M5 firmware 2.0 update: it is an ISO160, not ISO100. But it is real, it affects RAW data so good news for RAW shooters. Perhaps you like to comment: http://www.guillermoluijk.com/article/em5isolow/

Lacza:I have written a post about street shooting with Thomas Leuthard – when he was using 2 EM-1 bodies. https://medium.com/street-photos/a0f8f2053b87

Ioup:I wanted to share this with your readers, I shot this short movie with a GH3, and I guess it shows well what you can achieve with this camera! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyR2Ze7C-EE

Joe:My friend Mark Toal and I just started (1/1/14) a new blog called Mirrorless Photo Tips (http://www.mirrorlessphototips.com).

Mike: Just in case there’s some interest, this is a video link to a report I posted in my day job as a Voice of America correspondent, on some women photographers, interviewed at last weekend’s photo show Photo LA — http://www.voanews.com/content/photos-as-windows-on-the-world/1836538.html

David:It is a field test of Olympus’ older, 4/3rds, 50-200 f2.8-3.5 SWD lens (and it’s matching 1.4x converter) and the E-M1. I used the combination to shoot the crazies who race motocross bikes across frozen lakes, at -20C! You can find it, along with my other Olympus reviews, here: http://www.furnfeather.net/Reviews/ReviewIndex.html

Robin:Actually it’s no rumor I’d like to share, but my E-M1 review. I tried to sign up for the page, but it wasn’t working. Hope it’s ok I use the ‘share news and rumors’ box. My review is available in english and german and it contains tons of real word images, taken on the streets in asia. If you like my review, I would be happy if you could share it with the community. :)
english version:
http://www.fotodesign-rs.de/olympus-om-d-em-1-review/
german version:
http://www.fotodesign-rs.de/olympus-om-d-em-1-review/