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Looks like the CP+ show is going to be particularly boring this year. After the Olympus 75-300mm lens update also Panasonic will release a minor update only. There will be a new 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 OIS lens. It is a HD lens that will have improved tracking focus support improved OIS, silent auto focus and exposure control. The lens is also lighter and smaller and the filter sized has been reduced from 52mm down to 46mm. Price is the same of the current 14-42mm lens and official availability is March 2013.

Egami (translation here) spotted another Konica-Minolta patent describing a normal 14-42mm or (as variation) 12-42mm lens. The interesting news here is that the lens is made to cover a Four Thirds sized sensor. And as you may recall there already is another patent for a 43mm f/1.4 MFT lens from Konica-Minolta (43rumors article here). I haven’t heard yet about a possibility that Konica-Minolta may join the MFT system. But it’s interesting to see that they are patenting MFT lens designs. Where there is smoke there is fire or not?

Reminder:
Konica and Minolta have a long history of lens design for rangefinder cameras. Konica designed the [shoplink 33268 ebay]Hexanon M-mount Lens series (here on eBay)[/shoplink]. That includes the superb [shoplink 33269 ebay]Hexanon 50mm f/1.2 (here on eBay)[/shoplink]. Minolta made the famous [shoplink 33270 ebay]Rokkor M-mount lens series (here on eBay)[/shoplink]. That includes for example the [shoplink 33271 ebay]40mm f/2.0 pancake (here on eBay)[/shoplink]. This is just to say that Konica-Minolta would add a very high value to the whole Micro Four Thirds system! Here are the images of the 40mm lens (left) and 50mm Hexanon (right):
[shoplink 33271 ebay][/shoplink][shoplink 33269 ebay][/shoplink]

And here it is the first picture of the “reworked” Olympus 75-300mm II Micro Four Thirds lens. It will be announced next week and be cheaper (in terms of price) than the current 75-300mm lens. And as I told you a couple of days ago you see it comes in Black only. And I guess we should be happy that Olympus doens’t make us pay more just because it’s black ;)

This is it with the “Big Announcement” advertised by GetOlympus. I will tell you, there will be a big announcement in Spring (March?) for a new MFT camera and new high quality lenses. That is what I define as “Big” :)

UPDATE: And here are more pics of the XZ-10:

also via Digicaminfo.

And here is the one camera Olympus advertised as “Big announcement”. As anticipated on 43rumors it is the XZ-10 compact camera :(

The camera will be announced next week along other compact cameras and an updated version of the 75-300mm Micro Four Thirds lens. The XZ-10 has a f/1,8-2,7 lens and will be cheaper than the current [shoplink 36288 ebay]XZ-2 model (here on eBay)[/shoplink]…it costs 399 Euro. The 75.300mm lens costs 599 Euro.

via Digicaminfo