Panasonic announced that they will reduce nine percent of the global workforce due to restructuring efforts. 35,000 people will loose their job. Engadget said: “The cuts will come over two years. The news comes as Panasonic reported a ¥40.7 billion ($499 million) loss for quarter, largely on account of a ¥61 billion ($748 million) restructuring cost. Panny says that its bottom line was also affected by a strong Yen, stiff competition in television sales, and the recent earthquake and tsunami.”

That’s a terrible news for all the workers and maybe for Panasonic too. If you have to cut 9% of your employees means that something isn’t working very well inside your company. A wonder what kind of influence this will have on the Digital Imaging division and the future Micro Four Thirds products strategy.

UPDATE: Photoscala published the financial results from Panasonic. The bad news is that Panasonic had a 10% turnover drop on digital camera sales. The last quarter had the worst result since two years. See the image below (Image courtesy: Photoscala)

Doesn’t look good at all.

FIGS. 8A to 8F are diagrams showing a comparison of the temperature distributions of different heat radiating structures.

If you want to know how Panasonic solved the possible [shoplink 16254]Panasonic GH2[/shoplink] heating issues than you may have a look at the United States Patent 7933516 (Click here to read the full patent at freepatentsonline). That’s the description:
“When the camera body is made smaller, however, this reduces the space surrounding the electronic parts, such as an imaging element unit that includes an imaging element and an imaging element circuit board that controls the imaging element, or the main circuit board on which the camera controller is mounted, which means that these electronic parts are packed together more densely. Meanwhile, as image quality rises, the imaging element and the camera controller consume a greater amount of electrical power, so these electrical parts generate more heat. In particular, when a large amount of heat is generated by the imaging element, heat is transferred from the imaging element to electronic parts such as the main circuit board on which the camera controller is mounted, and it is possible that the heat will damage the electronic parts. With the camera controller and imaging element described below, heat damage to electronic parts can be prevented.”

“The main circuit board is disposed on the opposite side of the imaging element from the body mount, and includes a camera controller. The heat radiating plate is disposed between the imaging element and the main circuit board. With this camera body, even if heat is generated by the imaging element, since the amount of heat transferred from the imaging element to the main circuit board is reduced by the heat radiating plate, an increase in the temperature of the main circuit board can be suppressed. This prevents heat damage to electronic parts.
As shown in FIGS. 8A to 8F, a comparison of the heat radiating structure in this embodiment with the heat radiating structure in the reference example reveals that the temperature of the CMOS image sensor 110 and the main circuit board 142 is lower in this embodiment. The reason for this seems to be that the heat of the CMOS image sensor 110 is efficiently absorbed by the heat radiating plate 195 and the thermal conductor 196, and that heat is efficiently released from the CMOS image sensor 110 via the thermal conductor 196 extending to the front side.
It can also be seen that the temperature of the bottom face 101a of the camera body 100 is lower in this embodiment. The likely reason is that part of the heat transferred from the CMOS image sensor 110 to the main frame 154 is radiated to the outside of the thermal conduction path by the heat radiating member 198.
These results tell us that the heat radiating structure of this embodiment is effective at suppressing an increase in the temperature of the main circuit board 142, and suppressing an increase in the temperature of the bottom face 101a of the camera body 100.”

The japanese blog Egami (Clic here) found a patent which describes a possible new Olympus XZ-2 with 28-112mm f/1.8-3.8 lens.

Not a big deal….

Image courtesy: http://pampurinet.fatcow.com

The GH1/GH2 hacker Vitaliy Kiselev hasjust launched two new hack projects on his own website (http://www.personal-view.com).
1) Project Lenin:
The goal is to hack all current un-hackable [shoplink 14826]GH1[/shoplink] cameras.
2) Project Stalin:
The goal is to hack the [shoplink 16254]GH2[/shoplink] and to add 25p video recording. But there are also many other features he might could add (60p? 4:2:2 colo space?).

He also started a long discussion (divided in three parts) about the future of the camera world involving Thom Hogan, Mitch Aunger and…me :)
http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/4/looking-ahead.-future-of-camera-world.-part-1.
http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/3/looking-ahead.-future-of-camera-world.-part-2.
http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/2/looking-ahead.-future-of-camera-world.-part-3.

Links to the current GH cameras:
GH1 at [shopcountry 14826]. Read or add your user rating on 43rumors (Click here).
GH2 at [shopcountry 16254]. Read or add your user rating on 43rumors (Click here).

The video on top shows how the amazing [shoplink 15659 ebay]Voigtländer Nokton 25mm f/0.95[/shoplink] gets assembled in the Cosina factory from Nagano (starting from 2:15min). It shows how much handwork is necessary to make that unique lens. The video does also contain an interview with a Cosina engineer. It’s not casual that our readers voted it as lens of the year 2010 (Click here to see the 43rumors poll). Damn, that video makes me even more like my Nokton lens :)

P.S.: As I already told you two days ago it’s almost impossible to find that lens in Stock. BHphoto (Click here) sells it for $815 only but they don’t know when they will receive supply from Japan. On eBay prices are usually higher. The most decent offers do come from a german [shoplink 21676 ebay]eBay store (Click here)[/shoplink] and a [shoplink 21679 ebay]Thai eBay reseller (Click here)[/shoplink].