Image courtesy: Forumlumix.

Tomorrow (November 15th) at around 5-6am London time Olympus will release the new 17mm f/1.8 lens. The lens has been already announced at photokina. What you will get now is exact price, in Stock info, specs and image quality info. Will there be something else? For now  am not sure about it. The rumored 40-150mm f/2.8 lens is very likely scheduled for a January release. As usual stay tuned on 43rumors. We will follow the official lens release and give you live updates about news and reviews.

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The current Olympus 17mm on eBay Europe (via Slidoo) and eBay US (via Slidoo).

[/shoplink] Image on top shows the current [shoplink 33626]Panasonic 35-100mm f/2.8 X lens[/shoplink] lens. The Olympus alternative is coming soon.

According to some anonymous sources Olympus is going to release a new High Quality 40-150mm f/2.8 zoom lens. I am not sure yet if the lens will be announced along the 17mm f/1.8 lens or later. I heard the lens will hit the stores in January. But I don’t know the announcement date yet.

This lens be compete against the just released [shoplink 33626]Panasonic 35-100mm f/2.8 X lens[/shoplink]. For the record, Olympus already has a 40-150mm zoom but that one has a f/4.0-5.6 aperture and by no means the same build and image quality of the upcoming new lens.

This would be the first f/2.8 zoom lens from Olympus. I hope someday they will come out with some f/2.0 lens too :)

Anyway, please keep in mind that this is a rumor from anonymous and unknown sources (rated FT3). I hope trusted sources can soon confirm the lens release for January!

Meantime, stay tuned on 43rumors the next hours and days!

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The two superb Zuiko f/2.0 zooms:
14-35mm f/2.0 on [shoplink 25320 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink] and via Slidoo eBay.
35-100mm f/2.0 on [shoplink 25119 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink] and via Slidoo eBay.

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Rumors classification explained (FT= FourThirds):
FT1=1-20% chance the rumor is correct
FT2=21-40% chance the rumor is correct
FT3=41-60% chance the rumor is correct
FT4=61-80% chance the rumor is correct
FT5=81-99% chance the rumor is correct

Digicaminfo confirmed the rumors we posted days ago and also got the info that the new upcoming Olympus 17mm f/1.8 lens will come without the hood! You have to buy it separately for 65oo Yen (64 Euro or 82 Dollars). Now, to be honest, the 17mm f/1.8 is priced at 550 Euro also much less than 900 Euro asked for the other lens that comes without hood…the Olympus 75mm 1.8 lens. So it may be that Olympus prefers to sell the lens cheaper without hood and leave you the choice to add a hood or not. For the 75mm lens you can alreayd buy some cheap hoods at US ($7 on amazon), US ($32 better quality), [shoplink 34663 ebay]Germany (ebay)[/shoplink] and [shoplink 34664 ebay]Hong Kong (ebay)[/shoplink].

The 17mm f/1.8 lens characteristics are:
Exterior made of metal
MSC
Snapshot focus
Nine elements in 6 groups
46mm filter size
35,5mm length, 57.5mm maximum diameter, 120g weight
release in mid December for around 550 Euro or 50.000 Yen.

Announcement soon!!!

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Rumors classification explained (FT= FourThirds):
FT1=1-20% chance the rumor is correct
FT2=21-40% chance the rumor is correct
FT3=41-60% chance the rumor is correct
FT4=61-80% chance the rumor is correct
FT5=81-99% chance the rumor is correct

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Olympus 75mm 1.8 Lens alternatives (if you don’t care about the missing autofocus and electronic contacts):
1) [shoplink 31292 ebay]Dallmeyer 75mm f/1.9 (Here on eBay)[/shoplink]. This is an extremely expensive lens and I don’t know why it is so. Only crazy guys would buy that :)
2) [shoplink 31293 ebay]Leica Summilux 75mm f/1.4 (Here on eBay)[/shoplink]. Extraordinary high quality lens for an extraordinary price (although it’s still less expensive than the mysterious Dallmeyer). It’s the fastest of all 75mm lenses
3) [shoplink 31293 ebay]Zeiss Biotar 75mm f/1.5 (Here on eBay)[/shoplink]. Fast and also a bit exotic lens made for the Exacta series.
4) [shoplink 31294 ebay]Leica Summarit 75mm f/2.5 (Here on eBay)[/shoplink]. High quality and relatively compact lens. A bit slow compared to the Olympus (f/2.5).
5) [shoplink 31295 ebay]Voigtlander Heliar 75mm f/1.8 (Here on eBay)[/shoplink]. Probably the best alternative of the new Olympus 75mm f/1.8 lens. Same aperture, superb high quality and cheaper.
6) [shoplink 31324 ebay]Fujinon 75mm f/1.8 (Here on eBay)[/shoplink]. This is a very cheap TV lens and I don’t expect the quality to be very good. I wouldn’t buy that unlike your really need that focal length and you have a very low budget.

OK, now I am sure that Olympus will soon announce one more thing along the already coming 17mm f/1.8 prime lens! I am working on the specs…but need some help from sources: Can you confirm me the specs and price and announcement date of that “thing”?  So that I won’t make any mistakes. You can contact me anonymously by just dropping a message via contact form you see here on the right. Thanks!!!

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Rumors classification explained (FT= FourThirds):
FT1=1-20% chance the rumor is correct
FT2=21-40% chance the rumor is correct
FT3=41-60% chance the rumor is correct
FT4=61-80% chance the rumor is correct
FT5=81-99% chance the rumor is correct

We have to upgrade our Olympus lens rumor from FT4 to FT5. Other three sources (including Lepidi) confirmed that the 17mm f/1.8 lens will hit the stores in early-mid December. We expect an official Olympus press release any time soon. What I don’t know yet is if Olympus will announce “something else” along that lens…

As reported before the lens will have the same build quality of the 12mm lens and be priced at 550 Euro. I don’t know the price in Dollars yet but let’s make a rough estimation: The 12mm lens costs $799 at Amazon and around 620 Euro lowest price on eBay. Having that conversion rate as reference the 17mm lens should cost around $710.

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P.s.: Lepidi also got his 12mm Black limited lens.

Few weeks ago we got Yahoo Taiwan listed the new Olympus 17mm f/1.8. And now we got a more specific info confirming that the lens will hit the stores in mid December. The rumored price in Taiwan is $16,900 NTD and in Europe price will be around 550 Euro. Olympus already said that this lens will have the same build quality of the [shoplink 23576]Olympus 12mm f/2.0[/shoplink] lens. I will certainly grab one of these!

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Rumors classification explained (FT= FourThirds):
FT1=1-20% chance the rumor is correct
FT2=21-40% chance the rumor is correct
FT3=41-60% chance the rumor is correct
FT4=61-80% chance the rumor is correct
FT5=81-99% chance the rumor is correct

Yesterday Panasonic announced the new MFT videocamera. So while the rumor about an early November Panasonic announcement were correct we are still missing the release of the new GX2. There is a weird silence around that product. Back in Spring Panasonic itself said that: “We will define more clearly what GH and GX means this year, so consumers have a better idea of what their characteristics are.” (Source: Amateur Photographer). And the GX1 price fell down at the same level of the GF5 (GX1 $460 Amazon and GF5 $449 again at Amazon).

But that weird silence may be a sign that something has changed within the Panasonic roadmap. And indeed Digicaminfo (translation here) got the info that Panasonic decided to release the GX2 in Fall 2013 only! This is not a rumor from their best sources, so it may be not correct. But according to the rumor the Panasonic decided to take time to develop the new GX2 so that it will have some features that “do not exist on current Panasonic MFT cameras“.

What these features could be we don’t know but I already spotted some patents about 1) rangefinder styled GX camera and 2) Built-in sensor stabilization. But we know, patent do not really disclose what’s coming in the near future.

The other info is that the GF6 and G6 will be released in Spring. That is definitely not a surprise. Panasonic is known for releasing the G and GF successors in Spring :)

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The Sony NEX-6/7 (Click here) and the Fuji X cameras (Click here) are for now the only mirrorless cameras with such a rangefinder styled design.
The [shoplink 23692 ebay]DMC-L1 eBay (Click here)[/shoplink].
The [shoplink 26385 ebay]DMC-LC1 on eBay (Click here)[/shoplink].

Rumors classification explained (FT= FourThirds):
FT1=1-20% chance the rumor is correct
FT2=21-40% chance the rumor is correct
FT3=41-60% chance the rumor is correct
FT4=61-80% chance the rumor is correct
FT5=81-99% chance the rumor is correct