I got this from a source:
Seems like Olympus is having a 3 day event in Austin, Texas on August 10th. My guess is a camera announcement.
I am yet not sure they will really launch a new camera in mid August (odd timing). But for sure there will be a new OMD camera announcement in lae Summer!
Olympus released the full 2019 fiscal year report. And while the company as a whole did well the Imaging Segment suffered some severe losses:
-19% revenue and 17,1 bilion YEN loss
But there is a big one time cost included in these losses which should bring some benefits in the next year: The production has been moved from China to Vietnam. That’s why the 2020 forecast is rather positive. For the fiscal year 2020 Olympus expects:
“Breakeven to be achieved in the latter half of FY2020 due to production transfer to Vietnam and the launch of new products”
See the Imaging forecast here:
And this is the forecast for the full company:
Indeed those are not good results, but the company seems to be confident they can do a lot better this year! Now bring on the new E-M5III and other new MFT cameras and lenses :)
I got word from one single reliable sources that Olympus did kill the PEN-F line. I am awaiting confirmations from other reliable sources just to be 100% sure about this. But I fear this “rumor” will get positive confirmation.
The sources told me that the PEN-F simply didn’t sell well enough and Olympus had lost hope that a new PEN-FII would sell better.
AT that point I am might ending up buying the PEN-F as I bet it will become a classic one day
Dpreview had a chat with Olympus. Once more they confirm they have no plan to move to Full Frame, that the E-M5III successor is coming and that more high quality lenses woll be announced before the 150-400mm lens launch in 2020:
E-M1X sales:
“E-M1X Pre-sales orders are at expected levels and we have had a good start worldwide.”
Professional MFT photographers:
“Actually, we are seeing that there are many photographers who started using the Micro Four Thirds as their second camera, are going on to use it as their main camera.”
Lens roadmap:
“We plan to launch several lenses every year and, of course, there will be releases of lenses before the 150-400mm PRO launch in 2020. So, please look out for a more information about our forthcoming product releases.”
Technology vs Marketing:
“As you know, we are a very R&D-orientated company: we focus on the technology which is necessary. We’re not from the marketing world, so we can look at these technologies solely from the perspective of whether they’re valuable for photographers.”
E-M5II successor:
“The E-M5 line is important: we can reassure users we are planning a successor model.”
In the non Full Frame system we now have mainly two big competitors: Micro Four Thirds and the Fuji X-mount.
It’s interesting to learn that Sigma CEO told this at Dpreview:
“Fujifilm doesn’t really disclose the protocol between the lens and camera, so we need to do the reverse engineering by ourselves.
It’s a really time-consuming process so we need to prioritize support for Sony E mount, our L-mount system, existing DSLR mounts and Micro Four Thirds.“
Good to hear MFT is high on their priority list!
Newsshooter is the first website having tested the new Sharp 8K Micro Four Thirds camera. This is an early prototype and this is their first impressions:
The camera is certainly capable of producing nice, sharp images. Given the fact that the camera can currently only operate in an auto WB mode, I was surprised by how well it performed when it comes to color accuracy. We were shooting out on the Las Vegas strip where there are many different types of light sources, yet the camera did a very good job of maintaining a nicely balanced image.
For a camera that is only currently shooting in a REC.709 color space it wasn’t crushing the blacks and we didn’t see clipped highlights turning into ugly colors.
We did see some banding in the sky on a few shots where we shooting into the sun. The cameras 4:2:0 8-bit codec does struggle occasionally in certain situations.
Here is a link for you to download some original files from the camera.
Sample video:
No info yet about pricing and shipping date. And as far as I understood from this early review it certainly doesn’t sound like this camera is going to be on market any time soon…
Preorders:
G95 at Amazon, BHphoto, Adorama, FocusCamera.
14-140mm II lens at Amazon, BHphoto, Adorama, FocusCamera.
Reviews:
Preview at DPreview. Image samples at Dpreview. Hands-on at ePhotozine. Review at CameraJabber. First look at CameraLabs. First impression at Photographyblog.
Press text:
G90 press text at Dpreview.
14-140mm II press text at Dpreview.
Panasonic G9 vs G90 via Apotelyt:
Videos:
43rumors
