Luminous Landscape(LL) had the chance to play a little bit with the [shoplink 15659]Voigtländer Nokton 25mm f/0.95[/shoplink]. That is what LL says about the Build Quality: “Simply put, this is a $900 lens that could easily go to a masked ball as a $3,000 Leica product, at least when it comes to visible and tactile fit and finish.” And LL doesn’t have any problem with the fact that the Nokton has no AF: “Because it takes about the same amount of time and effort to focus the Nokton on an MFT camera as it does to use AF technology properly“.

About the image quality: “Indeed in every shot that I took with the Nokton wide open I unfailing was impressed with its ability to not let me down and turn into glowing mush.” And there is also room for a surprise. At f/1.4 aperture the Nokton has slightly more contrast and is slightly more shaper than the [shoplink 16340]Panasonic/Leica 25mm f/1.4[/shoplink] lens!

The only minor issue is: “If your shots have any light sources, like all ultra-fast lenses the Nokton will show some considerable glow.”

Conclusion: “If you’ve gotten the impression that I really like the Voigtlander Nokton f/0.95, you’re right. It creates a quite unique way of viewing and recording the world that can really get one’s creative juices going.”

You can get the Nokton at Cameraquest or on [shoplink 15659]eBay (via german and asian resellers)[/shoplink].

Thanks Luminous Landscape for your nice work!

Panasonic GH2 1:1 crop mode MACRO from Andrew Reid.

Andrew Reid from EosHD posted the first part of the Canon 60D versus Panasonic GH2 Review. He pays a particular attention to the crop mode: “1:1 crop mode enables you to change between a portrait field of view and extreme telephoto at the press of a button, and the telephoto view comes without sacrificing detail (quite the opposite!) and maintains the aperture of the lens, so a Zeiss 85mm f/1.4 for example becomes a Zeiss 400mm F1.4 yet for $500 and the size of a beer can.”

Andrew finds the video quality of the GH2 better than the 60D: “What is frustrating for Canon now, is that the GH2 is going to go pretty much unchallenged on the market for a good few months. Even the Canon 5D Mark II has a sensor which is really crippled by poor image processing relative to the GH2, so you will get a much higher resolved and more detailed image from the GH2 than on the 5D Mark II. And it’s not just detail – dynamic range, colour – everything suffers if the image processing is not up to snuff.”

Thanks Andrew for posting the review but your conclusion makes us even more crazy that we can’t buy the GH2 yet! Right now you can only buy the japanese GH2 on [shoplink 17664]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink]. And there is one more bad news for US readers: Amazon changed the Panasonic 100-300mm availaibility status to “This item will be released on January 1, 2011“. I hope that’s just a mistake because european stores like Amazon Deutschland and Amazon UK already do have the lens in Stock and even [shoplink 17618 ebay]eBay has some of them on auction[/shoplink].

This is the only [shoplink 17922 ebay]GH1 + 12.5-75mm[/shoplink] lens I found on vimeo :)

We have still to wait a little bit before to get our GH2. To kill the time I searched for some exotic fast zoom lenses that we (and I) might could use on the GH2. There is one particular interesting lens I found on [shoplink 17922 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink]. The Cosmicar-Canon-Tokina 12.5-75mm f/1.8 C-mount lens! The focal lenght and constant fast aperture is very interesting and but sadly I found only one video taken with the GH1. The Karaoke part is terrible :)
A few pictures can be seen at Flickr. The japanese website geocities.jp tested the Canon version of the 12.5-75mm lens.

That lens is deifnitely not a professional solution but we have to wait a few months before Panaosnic releases the already announced fast wide and normal zooms!

Omuser.com posted a series of image samples at any focal length an aperture (Click here to read the google english translation). Image quality and build quality of the [shoplink 16261]Panasonic 100-300mm[/shoplink] are very good. The AF is quick and quiet. The only “issue” is that the lens is big and heavy. But damn that is a 200-600mm FF equivalent! And if you compare it to other lenses the Panasonic is really very small and very cheap:

The Panasonic 100-300mm lens is already in Stock in Europe at Amazon Deutschland, Amazon UK
In US you can only preorder the lens at Amazon US, Adorama, BHphoto.

You can also buy all new Panasonic lenses on eBay:
[shoplink 17556 ebay]Panasonic 14mm f/2.5 eBay acutions[/shoplink] [shoplink 17618 ebay]Panasonic 100-300mm f/4.0-5.6 eBay acutions[/shoplink] [shoplink 17620 ebay]Panasonic 3D 12.5mm f/12 eBay acutions[/shoplink]

Photographyblog heavily tested the [shoplink 15659]Olympus M.ZUIKO Digital ED 14-150mm f/4-5.6[/shoplink] lens.  The lens performance is verz good: “It has left us with a favourable overall impression.“…”you can safely use it wide open or stopped down by one f-stop“…”Chromatic aberrations can be a bit of an issue at longer focal lengths, but they can usually be dealt with in post processing.”

That lens is in Stock at Amazon (Click here) with a $120 discount.

There are also a few new tests with the Voigtländer:
Mike Kobal tested the Lensbaby Composer and [shoplink 15659]Voigtländer Nokton 25mm f/0.95[/shoplink] on the Panasonic GH1. And he also posted a Super Slow Motion test.
TheBlackStar posted a few image samples on Flickr and Dreesman at Dpreview forum.

If you want to buy the lens there is one single Voigtländer Nokton in [shoplink 15659]Stock on eBay (Click here)[/shoplink] sold via german resellers (UPDATE: Lens sold)

At Omuser.com you can see the [shoplink 17163]Olympus E-5[/shoplink] vs Nikon D3s shootout. You can see the image comparison on page 5 (Click here). The text is in chinese but that should not be a problem:

Look at the following samples:

ISO 200 (Click on image to enlarge)

Not bad at all! And consider the price difference …the Nikon costs $5100!

Digitalkamera.de posted a new Olzmpus E-5 review (Click here to read the google english translation). Also in that case the reviewers is enthusiast about the camera performance. The only complain is the high price.

Olympus E-5 direct shop links:
Amazon US, BHphoto, Adorama, Amazon Deutschland.