Olympus E-P1- Almost a digital rangefinder...

It’s not a digital rangefinder, it’s also not a Nikon product, but I’m betting that most people arent’t going to worry about it too much– I’m certainly not. Olympus will be getting my money.

What they been able to do is squeeze a micro 4/3’s sensor into a tiny metal camera with a pleasant retro look with interchangeable lenses.

That last bit about changing lenses is the tipping point between “Matt keeps the money in the bank” and “Matt gets to explain why there’s another camera in the house.”

This one goes to 11.

Engadget China has a hands-on review here. See everything Engadget’s got here.

dpReview has a full review here and video from London here.

In a brilliant move that Nikon’s Ashton-Kutcher-loving marketing agency could learn from, you can watch it get destroyed in a blender here. Oh yeah- the Olympus engineers have thought of everything, even making sure it blends.

You can find the full specs in the dpReview or on the Olympus site, but the main items are:

• Max resolution: 4032 x 3024
• Max Video Res: 1280×720
• Has a full-manual mode
• ISO to 6400 (if you’re crazy, (I’m betting that it’s decent until 400 or so)
• There is a raw format
• Top shutter is 1/4000
• Weighs less than a pound without lens and battery
• $799 for the body and 14-42mm zuiko zoom.
• $899.99 for the body and 17mm pancake lens
• $749.99 for the body only (that zoom must be CHEAP!)
• Buy it all here.

The only thing missing is a built-in flash (there’s an accessory, hot shoe mounted flash) and I’d love to see a range-finder like viewfinder, but the liveview should handle it alright.

There are aftermarket adapters for Nikkor lenses, and maybe more interesting, there’re adapters for Leica M-mount right now.

Ship date? Julyish through September depending on what you’re trying to get.

Well this is mildly interesting. Foveon deserves our sympathy- she was so pretty and full of potential nearly a decade ago, but she started to hang out with bad company-  Sigma, maker of the kind of lenses you should use to prop a door open or use to send ants to a fiery hell.

Now she’s marrying Sigma… I feel sorry for Foveon- she had great promise. I guess I knew it was all going nowhere when Sigma was the first camera maker to implement Foveon’s sensor. If it was so great, surely Nikon or Canon would have used it.

engadget has an article on a new camera that Olympus has come out with using their micro 2/3 format. Not too much info on it, but it’s basically a P&S with removable lenses, and it looks pretty sweet.

At the moment, it’s just a concept, unfortunately.

Leica S2 37mp, Larger than FF 35mm

Wow-I swore this company was breathing its last breaths- the Leica M8 rev2 was weak tea at best and I figured that’s the best they could manage to pull off.

But here it is in all of its 37mp, larger than 35mm fullframe sensor glory.

It’ll come with 9 new lenses- some with leaf shutters (!) and a new AF system that they say is twice as fast as Hassy’s got to offer.

Oh, and sorry, “The R system (Leica’s previous SLR system) is far from dead,” according to a rep. (ed: Sorry! Got that wrong on the first read.)

No prices, no ETA on availability, no test shots, no reviews– but this is a big deal.

If LEICA, for godsake, can pull this off, you have to wonder what Nikon has got up their sleeves.

Here’s the link to a scan of the article this info came from.

Here’re some movie samples from Canon’s latest. They look good to me- but putting hot chicks in your samples always works for me so…

Canon eos 5d mark II movie samples

Here is an official sample landscape from Canon taken by the Canon EOS 5d Mark II.

Now- we all know I ain’t no landscape pro (if fact, I’m not a pro at all- I can’t take the vests, they’re so unstylish) but you tell me if this looks great to you:

Canon EOS 5d Mark II

Here’s a portrait and it looks better but I’m not wowed.

So I’m curious, if this is about what we can expect from their new camera, then it looks like all they’re getting is a bigger file.

Maybe this camera will actually be able to focus too! We wish Canon luck.

The sky is not falling- it’s just Canon dropping bombs on our heads.

Canon has announced a new full-frame SLR able to take “full HD” (1080p?) movies.

Oh, and what’s the price? Body-only for $2,699 or $3,499 with Canon’s 24-105mm f/4L IS USM zoom lens.

Canon 5d Mark II

This is actually really good news for us Nikon watchers- given that Sony has a high MP camera (A900) and now Canon has another full-frame high MP camera WITH movies- we’re likely to see a swell machine come out of Nikon sooner than later, I’m guessing.

With the Canon selling for about the same as the D700, it’ll also hopefully put some downward pressure pricing on Nikon too!

(via Engadget) An Asian (chinese?) forum purports to show a leaked ad of the upcoming Sony Alpha full-frame 24.6 megapixel slr body (link goes to a larger version of the image):

The red specs at the bottom of the ad say:

• 24.6 megapixel
• Full-frame
• 100% viewfinder coverage
• 3″ hi-res LCD
• 9 point AF – cross sensors
• 5 frames per second
• Body-integrated image stabilization

Wow! Sony delivers! I’m really wondering wtf Minolta was doing- is Sony throwing immense amounts of money at their camera division or was Minolta dragging their heels?

It’s hard to tell if this is good news or bad for Nikon. If Nikon doesn’t have the D3x ready to go, then Sony steals their thunder. If the “D3x” doesn’t have either higher MP or at least a good reason for not being higher (like great ISO and dynamic range), then Sony will have caught Nikon flat-footed, which I doubt since they appear to be working relatively closely together.

So I’m guessing that this really means that the “D3x” will be out after the Alpha 900 and it’ll be higer than 24.6mp, maybe in the 30 MP area?

Wow! Phase1’s head of R&D shows their digital backs working after being frozen in dry-ice for half an hour and also working with 1000lb’s (or so, that’s ~453kg) of an SUV on top of them.

You have to admire their willingness to destroy $30-$50k worth of camera backs. I wish I had one, I wouldn’t treat it half as harshly as that!

Rohan also says:

No problem. He also mentioned a 40 mp Leica / Phase One camera with 35 by 45 mm sensor that is planned. New R10, completely new body and lens system.

If you love cameras, I think you have to love Leica- they just look so cool and are/were widely renown for their magnificent lenses, mechanics, and reliability.

I can’t wait to see what becomes of the long-rumored R10.

[Updated: Per Zoetmb, ClarityDC2, and others

The DP-1 has a sensor that is 20.7×13.8 mm. The Nikon DX format is 23.6×15.8mm making the DP1 76.6% of the DX area.

The DP-1 sensor is only 33.2% of FX. The DX is 43.3% of FX.

And the Leica M8 is 27×18mm or 30% larger than Nikon DX and 56.5% of FX.]

dpReview has put up a review of the Sigma DP1 camera which is basically a point and shoot with an APS-C (d300-sized) Foveon (non-Bayer) sensor.

Why is this cool? Because the P&S cameras that Nikon et al put out use a tiny chip with terrible high ISO performance and simply ok at best image quality. It’ll do for your grandma, but I’m not trusting anything I care about to it!

So Sigma decided that there’s a market (and I agree) for a higher-end P&S with a large SLR-style sensor that also allows manual control over everything- basically, it’s what you’d use when you can’t use an SLR or just don’t want to carry one.

It’s also cool because there aren’t any others like it and lots of us have been after Nikon to make a ‘digital rangefinder’ that might be something like this. I don’t see a true rangefinder happening, but I’d buy the D300’s sensor in a camera body like this, even if focusing was slow!

Let’s hope Nikon eventually lets a few engineers work on it– how many Coolpix’s do we need?

Well look, if Sony (according to Engadget) can get out the 24MP a900 in September-ish, then how far behind can the D3x be?

Surely, it’s all marketing, but if Sony releases first, then it doesn’t look all that hot that Canon, and EVEN SONY/Minolta-Konica have a high-resolution 25-ish megapixel or similar sensor!

To keep Sony from scooping them, I’m wondering if Nikon might not put out a D3x before then?

Any HOW REFRESHING it is to see a company telling us what the hell they’re up to and roughly when!

How did I miss this? Amateur Photographer (UK) has an article where they say:

Leica’s chief has dropped strong hints that the firm is planning to launch a full-frame 35mm sensor-based digital rangefinder camera.

Steven Lee, chief executive officer of Leica Camera AG, today told Amateur Photographer that the camera could form part of a future upgrade option for the current M8.

But he said Leica wants to make sure that a full-frame option is ready before launch, in a bid to avoid a repeat of issues that dogged the M8 launch.

This is inevitable and there’ve been strong M9/M10 rumors for a while. I’ve lot to see this sooner rather than later though- maybe it’ll light a fire under Nikon and also put some price pressure on them– I can’t see Nikon making a $4k DX-sensor rangefinder if Leica’s got a fullframe version for $5k.

It’s also really cool to see that they’re actually attempting to make it so that M8 owners might be able to upgrade- maybe their new shutter is from the R&D they’re doing on the M9…

I’m having a lot of fun shooting near darkness handheld with my D3, but the Japanese don’t think that’s good enough! They’ve gone ahead and figured out how to make them even more sensitive by putting a layer of copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) on the sensor too.

TheInquirer (a great site!) reports that this will make it 6 times more sensitive to light than sensors without that layer!

Wow, guess I need an Alpha graphic! Engadget’s got some shots of Sony’s 25MP (24.8MP but who’s counting?) camera here.

Given that Sony will produce this camera, it’s time for Nikon to tell us what they’re planning to do with a high-megapixel body. Unfortunately, you can count on them not telling us in an idiotic desire to keep competitors in the dark.

But what’s the point? Canon’s already got one of these, now even Sony (/Minolta) who is not in the same league (yet…) as Nikon and Minolta has one.

Is Nikon going to leap-frog Canon and Sony/Minolta in the high MP sensor arena? I doubt it. I could see a few more MP, but I’m better fewer and more light sensitive in the same fashion as the D3. But if I was a pro, I’d be pretty unhappy having to guess here.

Sony continues to impress. Might we see this in the surely forth-coming D3x? Might we see a variant in the forth-coming D3x? Heck, the 24.81mp might be for Sony’s cameras and Nikon might be engineering an even higher-MP variant!

I’m better on fewer pixels and more light sensitivity, but who knows?

Can’t wait for this one to come out. Hopefully, it’ll be worth the wait and maybe get Nikon off their duff to do something similar- either a large-sensor P&S or a digital rangefinder.

Xitek forums have a post that shows an unreleased Sony Alpha with a flip-out LCD.

I know a lot of people poo-poo this and I know that Hoodman has a crazy LCD extender if you want one (not cheap either), but this really needs to be built-in (as far as I’m concerned), especially now that we have live-view.

I’ve gotten a lot of really nice shots with my Canon Powershot G3 solely because I was able to flip the screen and point it at people without them realizing it. Their reactions later are always, “I didn’t even know you had a camera at that event!” and I miss being able to do that.

Another option (as I’ve suggested before) is to have the top-plate LCD  function similarly to the back LCD and show you a small version of what you’d see on the rear LCD when in live-view mode. But I’m betting the bean-counting MBA’s will squash this idea for another few years.

This is the huge, big match-up that we’re all curious to hear about. The Canon’s got twice he megapixels and is supposed to be really good at high ISO.

Since I own both systems, and am not endorsed by either, and in fact, have been critical of both, I think I can take an unbiased look at each camera. My most critical concern was noise, and I don’t shoot sports, so, for example, fast focus-tracking is not a top priority for me. I‘d dropped $20k on a Canon system, having been a die-hard Nikon photographer, having found the noise in my D2x files at iso640 and above offensive. Couple that with Nikon’s failure to address or even acknowledge that elephant in the room was just down-right inconsiderate. Then, you have the absolute failure of Canon to admit to their focus problem in the 1D Mark III, until Rob Galbraith essentially (and rightfully) creamed them in his review, which all but shut down the entire new line of cameras. So, I too was a bit leary of the 1Ds Mark III.

…

[ed:The D3] The camera is damn noisy. I didn’t put a dB meter on it, but it sure is loud. Further, why on earth they would put self-cleaning technology on the D300 and not on the D3 is just an example of incompetence and lack of due consideration. However, where it really matters, in file clarity and noise, Nikon really shines, and I was duly impressed.

…

Next up is the Nikon, at iso12,600. Sorry, but Canon can’t go that high. Look at the results! I would be comfortable delivering an image from a dark Congressional hearing, or a candle-lit church ceremony with this iso. The colors are more than fine, as is the sharpness. Moreover, the noise looks more like film grain than the noise of days gone by. The noise in the Canon above looks less like noise than it’s predecessor, but it looks more like noise than the Nikon does.

…

At 3200 and above, especially in Nikon’s range, I would turn to my client and say “what do you mean I can’t use flash for this assignment? I’ll give you the best I can”, and these would be my results.

…

These results, for me, essentially kill the megapixel issue for me. Size, with the proper chip and internal camera processing software, is no longer a comparison point for me.

…

the Canon camera keeps you face further away from the back of the camera than the Nikon, meaning less smudge on the screen, and less “nose control” of the back navigation wheel/dial/plate. [Ed: as I've said before, this issue has always annoyed me on the D2x, I don't have this with any other camera I've ever used. Hopefully, the D3 will be a lot better.]

…

I feel that the Megapixel race is over, and that it’s no longer about chip sizes, especially since Nikon has essentially returned to Full-frame with their FX sensor. It’s going to be clarity and fidelity and bit-depth moving forward.

…

One of the key points that was made when I interviewed Steve Heiner at PhotoPlus, was that he was saying how great it was for the sports photographer and photojournalist. He, and I’ve heard this elsewhere, others, are positioning the camera as one that shoots fast and so forth. They are not referring to the commercial photographers. Why? Well, because of the D3x, that’s why. Following in the footsteps of the D1, and the D2, so too will there be a D3x. I’ve heard that it’s comparable to the Mark III as to file size. If the D3x has a comparable filesize to the Mark III, and the high ISO’s of the D3, it’ll trounce all over the Mark III, but I’ll not hold my breath for that “perfect storm” of capabilities. It’s coming in the Spring, certainly in time to get into the hands of photographers before the Olympics.

Will the capabilities of the Foveon chip, with it’s Leica-like clarity make it’s way in some altered form into the next generation of Nikon or Canon cameras? Who knows. I do know that when the D3x hits the stores, it will forever relegate my D2x to copy-work, and I’ll begin re-thinking the notion of an 18 month technology life-cycle for cameras.

Well big surprise, we know there’s a D3x on the horizon. Simply halve the size of the microlenses and receptors and there you are. He’s talking about a Foveon-type sensor possibility and we’ve seen that Nikon patent for something close-ish, but I don’t see this happening. Alter the D3’s sensor design and you’ve got, let’s say 18MP and less noise than Canon…

[Update: More Info from Sigma]
Sigma’s put out an official statement here. Here’s an excerpt:

The images looked okay, but they clearly did not have the special image qualities that we see in our SD cameras: delicate, refined and 3-dimensional images rendered in fine detail. After a careful evaluation, we found that the image processing pipeline we had developed for the DP1 was not ideal for achieving the best image quality as it was intended for the faster image processing speed, and we needed to make major revisions to it. At that time we had a choice between compromising image quality and moving forward or taking a different path. After long and sometimes intense discussions, we finally decided to change the entire image processing pipeline.

[end update]
Remember that great concept for a point and shoot with a pro-sized sensor like the D300 has or the concept of the digital rangefinder that Nikon doesn’t seem to be interested in?

Well, Sigma appears to be giving it a go with the Dp1. Unfortunately, it looks like they’re having trouble with it, so it might be a while.

I’m guessing this is another case the MBA’s over at Nikon getting in the way of a great product that could own the high-end point and shoot market (for times when I’m simply taking snapshots and I don’t want to lug around 5-6 lb’s and $7k of a D3 and 24-70mm…)

The tech is there- if there’s any engineering hurdle, I’m guessing that the current Nikon P&S image processors aren’t up to the task of handling such a large chip, and I’m betting the Expeed chipset isn’t happy to be put onto a low-power battery diet like point-and-shoots (P&S) require.
But please God, no hot-shoe mounted finders! Live view would be just fine if we can’t have a real rangefinder…