The day after: Panasonic to focus on the Semi-PRO market? And Oly news roundup.

September 18, 2012
news
93 Comments

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.