43 Rumors – Page 1891 – Panasonic and Olympus Digital Camera News

Nokton 17.5mm f/0.95 shipment postponed to April 29th!

March 14, 2012
news
25 Comments

If the price wouldn’t be that high this would certainly be the ONE lens I would always use on my Olympus E-P1 and Panasonic GH2. Today Cosina announced that the new Nokton 17.5mm f/0.95 lens will start shipping from April 29th (via DC.watch). The lens sale shipment was due for March but because of an exceptional high preorder demand the shipment had to be postponed! I am surprised to hear that the lens had such a high demand. The price is high (120,000 yen or 1.299 Euro), currently no website did post any image samples, there is no preview, and even bigger stores are not offering any preorder option. In fact there is zero Marketing around that lens! My guess is that the lens promotion is ongoing “underground” at the very basic Internet user level. The specs are amazing, Cosina is also known for making good quality lenses. Maybe that’s enough to push you guys to buy the lens.

The only two image samples that I found on the Internet are on Flickr (Click here) and (Click here). Europenas can preorer the lens at [shoplink 29368 ebay]Digitalhandel (Click here)[/shoplink] and [shoplink 29367 ebay]Bayern Fotoversand (Click here)[/shoplink].

P.S.:A cheaper alternative is the [shoplink 29238 ebay]Schneider 17mm f/0.95 (Click here to see it on ebay)[/shoplink] C-mount lens.

New Panasonic 12-35mm X lens already gets dissembled!

March 13, 2012
Rumors
116 Comments

For seven months now we are waiting for Panasonic’s official 12-35mm X lens release. We only saw prototype versions during the latest shows. Today a mysterious forum user from Mobile01 (Click here) posted a picture of a dissembled 12-35mm X lens. He didn’t unveil any info about the price and official release of the lens. All we know is that it has a constant f/2.8 aperture, a 0,25m close focus distance, Power O.I.S. and weather sealing. Panasonic didn’t go for a constant f/2.0 aperture because they wanted to keep a reasonable size. The [shoplink 25320 ebay]Olympus 14-35mm f/2.0 (here on eBay)[/shoplink] is indeed quite a big bigger.

And here is a mysterious part of the story: The same guy posted also the logo of Konica Minolta and said “it connects to the X lens picture“. Have no idea what he is referring to! Maybe some special feature of Konica is coming with the Panasonic lens? Do you have an idea what it could be?

Anyway, my guess (and hope) is that the lens will be officially announced right before the NAB show in April.

Panasonic GX1 versus Canon G1X

March 13, 2012
reviews
48 Comments

Comparison at 1.600 ISO

Canon first attempt to fight against the mirrorless world is represented by the fixed lens Canon G1X camera ($800 at Amazon).The camera uses a Four Thirds ratio sensor that is just a tiny bit bigger than our Panasonic/Olympus Four Thirds sensors. Being used to compare our m43 image quality with the larger APS-C sensor I thought it might be interesting to see how the image quality of the two almost equal sized sensor would be (18.7 x 14mm vs. 17.3 x 13mm)

DCfever (Click here) compared the JPEG quality of the Canon with the one of the [shoplink 26836]Panasonic GX1[/shoplink]. Please notice that Panasonic has an average JPEG engine while Canon is known to be much better. A RAW image comparison would probably show a more “real” sensor performance. The JPEG comparison show a slight advantage of the Canon at Low ISO while at High ISO the difference is less pronounced. I think you want see any difference when looking on real printed images.

The Canon G1X is a very strange concept I can’t fell in love with. It will be much more interesting to see if Canon will launch their new interchangeable lens mirrorless system with exactly the same sensor size of the G1X! …P.S.: Don’t even think Canon would join the m43 system, that’s impossible…or not? :)

New Olympus E-M5 shoots with faster frame rates than expected!

March 13, 2012
reviews
64 Comments

Continuous shooting test (via DSLRcamera).

Four Thirds User (Click here) tested the fps speed of the E-M5. The good news is that the E-M5 actually shoots 10fps instead of the indicated 9fps on all four tested cards: “Olympus also told us that IS would slow the shooting rate down, which it clearly didn’t. Curiously, two of the higher-specification cards, the Lexar Pro and Kingston XX Ultimate, although they shot 12 frames in the sequence, the last frame took twice as long to register as the previous one, so we excluded it, only counting the 11.”
This has to be a marketing trick from Olympus to get positive feedback from reviews ;) Thanks FourThirdsUser for sharing that interesting test!

Some more E-M5 bits:
The latest Robin Wong E-M5 review created a lot of buzz and Robin clarified a couple of things on his blog (Click here). P.S: Personal message for Robin: You are doing a great job! Don’t care too much about negative or non sense critics! It’s the price you pay for the popularity ;)
Gabrielle Motola contacted me yesterday because you bad 43rumors readers made crash her website :) She now managed to restore it! Seriously speaking, she was happy you visited the blog ;)
One more fashion image taken with the E-M5 at Damian Mcgillicuddy (Click here). No nude pic that time ;)

E-M5 preorders:
Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Jessops, Amazon UK, Amazon Deutschland and Amazon Japan.

Next US superdeal: Olympus E-P2 body for $249.

March 12, 2012
deals
35 Comments

And here it is the next Super Deal for our US readers. The Olympus E-P2 (body only) sells for $249 at Amazon (Click here). That’s a $40 price drop over last week. For $249 you get an excellent camera that costs less than most average compact cameras with super tiny sensor! Yep, that’s the new digital world…two years ago the Olympus E-P2 price was close to $1,000! This should remind us to invest our money in good lenses more than in cameras! A lens like the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 that has been announced about the same time of the E-P2 kept the same value over the two years!

P.S: We Europeans have to look at [shoplink 22691 ebay]Olympusmarket[/shoplink] to find some similar deals. Currently there are [shoplink 29691 ebay]E-PL3 (Click here)[/shoplink], [shoplink 29692 ebay]E-PM1 (Click here)[/shoplink], [shoplink 29694 ebay]E-PL1 (Click here)[/shoplink] and [shoplink 29695 ebay]E-PL2 (Click here)[/shoplink] on auction.

Olympus E-M5 versus Fuji X PRO 1

March 12, 2012
reviews
100 Comments

Of course this is a pretty unfair comparison. We are comparing apple with oranges. Both cameras are different priced, have different specs, and different strengths. The [shoplink 29074]Olympus E-M5[/shoplink] is cheaper, has a faster AF, weather sealed body. The X PRO 1 has a super image quality and a very innovative hybrid viewfinder. But ultimately isn’t it interesting to see how great the image quality difference is? :)

Our reader Gabrielle Motola sent me the link (Click here) to a short test made with both cameras. Gabrielle explicitly says that is not a regular and scientific test. Her impression is that “this test clearly showed me is that both cameras are capable of providing an outstanding image. The choice of purchase comes down to preference and operational flow.”

Here are the images:
E-M5: Full Size and 100% crop.
X PRO 1: Full Size and 100% crop.

X PRO 1 lens test:
A great lens test has been published by Valentin Sama. read more at MirrorlessRumors.com

Price difference:
The E-M5 costs $700 or 500 Euro less than the X PRO 1:
E-M5 at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Jessops, Amazon UK, Amazon Deutschland and Amazon Japan.
Fuji X PRO 1 at Amazon, Adorama, Bhphoto, Epxansys US, Expansys Canada, Jessops UK, Expansys UK, Amazon Japan and eBay Japan.

Samyang: “more Micro Four Thirds lenses are planned”.

March 12, 2012
Rumors
89 Comments

Image courtesy Photozone.

Samyang is one of this small companies that does an incredible good job with lenses. Most of the times their lenses have the right specs for what they need to do. They are also cheap (in terms of price) and absolute of good quality. As you know the first lens they released for the m43 system is the [shoplink 29106 ebay]Samyang/Rokinon 7.5mm fisheye lens (Click here to see it on eBay)[/shoplink]. The lens is pretty compact and Klaus from Photozone (Click here) said the lens is Highly Recommended! And Klaus is really severe in his Judgement! I am eagerly waiting to see what’s coming next from them. Samyang confirmed at Techradar that “more Micro Four Thirds lenses were planned“. There are no specs yet about the possible next lenses but I hope it will be some kind of fast prime and pancake lens. Something in the category of the [shoplink 14796]20mm f/1.7 lens[/shoplink] would be my choice :)

One more thing: Samyang is the only company the made lenses for the Four Thirds system during the last three years! The amazing [shoplink 29677 ebay]Samyang/Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens (here on eBay)[/shoplink] is an example!