GH3-press conference-short-4 from Dieter Knüttel on Vimeo (featured by personal view)

GH3 and the semi pro market:
An interesting news comes via Handelsblatt (Translation here / via SKF). They talked with Mr. Izumi Tomozawa from Panasonic and he said:
– Unlike the cellular and TV market the Camera market has still a profit margin. But the profit margin is in the high end amateur and Semi-PRO market (not on very consumer level cameras).
– The old Panasonic strategy was to focus on the amateur market. But this is about to change. We want to go on the high end amateur (or semipro) market where the margins are higher.
– The GH3 is considered by Panasonic as the first semi-pro m43 camera.
I guess the GX2 will be the next semi-pro camera to come!!!

Olympus roundup:
The GH3 has stolen the show of the new PEN cameras. It even shows up in the Amazon rankings (GH3 on top and PEN’s lost somewhere). I have to catch up and here is a short Olympus news roundup from today: In Japan the 15mm lens cap comes for free with the new PEN cameras (Source: DC.watch). Some pics of the Olympus 17mm f/1.8 prototype lens have been posted on DC.watch. Image sample taken with the 15mm Olympus lens cap at Petapixel. XZ-2 hands-on at Popphoto. Macro lens hands-on at ePhotozine. Olympus stand report at Dpreview.

Panasonic and Olympus Preorder Links with specs and price:
Special GH3 page at Amazon (Click here) and a full Olympus presentation page at Amazon (Click here).
GH3 at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here), Bhphoto (Click here) and in Europe at Wexphotographic UK (horrible price in UK!).
35-100mm X lens at Amazon (Click here), Bhphoto (Click here).
E-PL5 at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here), Bhphoto (Click here).
E-PM2 at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here), Bhphoto (Click here).
XZ-2 at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here), Bhphoto (Click here).
60mm macro at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here), Bhphoto (Click here).
12mm Black prime lens at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here), Bhphoto (Click here).
15mm cap-lens at Adorama (Click here).

There were some errors on press releases here and there and this caused some discussions on 43rumors. As you can see from the nice comparison on top (Click on it to see a bigger version) the GH3 has NO(!) multiaspect sensor. The GH3 also has uncompressed HDMI output with 4:2:0 (and not 4:2:2) Chroma subsampling according to the German website Slashcam. But I would expect an official Panasonic statement before to be sure of that!
Those of you concerned about the pure photographic qualities of the camera should check out these nice samples at Panasonic.net. And RWA files are available at Personal View. A Panasonic stand report is available at Dpreview.

And now there is the tricky question for you. Is the Gh3 using the same [shoplink 29074]Olympus E-M5[/shoplink] Sony sensor? ;)

Panaosnic and Olympus Preorder Links with specs and price:
Special GH3 page at Amazon (Click here) and a full Olympus presentation page at Amazon (Click here).
GH3 at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here), Bhphoto (Click here) and in Europe at Wexphotographic UK.
35-100mm X lens at Amazon (Click here), Bhphoto (Click here).
E-PL5 at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here), Bhphoto (Click here).
E-PM2 at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here), Bhphoto (Click here).
XZ-2 at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here), Bhphoto (Click here).
60mm macro at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here), Bhphoto (Click here).
12mm Black prime lens at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here), Bhphoto (Click here).
15mm cap-lens at Adorama (Click here).

Today Zeiss announced three new Sony NEX and Fuji X autofocus lenses. The bad news is that these will yet not be available in native Micro Four Thirds mount. Regarding this Zeiss said that: “We intend to concentrate initially on the biggest sensor size in this segment which is APS-C. It would be possible for us to make lenses for Micro 4/3-bajonet as well but we have not made a decision on that yet. If current APS-C lenses were also used for the Micro 4/3-bajonet, we wouldn’t be able to achieve the best tradeoff between lens size (weight), and image quality”

Source: Zeiss.

After yesterdays Olympus and Panasonic big announcement day we have to catch up with some other very good m43 news. Schneider Kreuznach posted some more info about the three new m43 lenses (Click here to download the pdf file). As I told you yesterday we will have following three lenses by end of 2013:
Super-Angulon 2,0 / 14
Xenon 1,4 / 30
Makro-Symmar 2,4 / 60
–
All will be priced a bit below 1.500 Euro. And these are the characteristics of the lenses:
High-refractive lenses and special lens elements
Internal focusing
Very high resolution across the entire image area, even at full starting aperture
High-quality aluminum casing, robust mechanics
Hydrophobic coating of outer elements
Protection against dust and splashing

Sounds good! By the way, the description contains an error. The Super Angulon should be f/2.0 and not f/2.8.