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.

Epson Digital Rangefinder Analog Dial

Epson has announced that they’re going to update their Leica-mount digital rangefinder!

As a piece of mechanical art, these things are Monets, I just can’t help being charmed by the wonderfully beguiling analog top-plate dials:

Epson Digital Rangefinder Analog Dial

Here’s the main site that’s got all the details in Japanese.

If, like me, you can’t afford that Leica M8, this might be just the ticket. Visit the guys at the RangeFinder forums for more info!

Fake Canon Blogs Get Takedown Notice

What happens when a company has a dedicated, loyal fanbase who yearn for information and virtually none is forthcoming? Right- they go out of their way to speculate, make it up, and overblow the slightest little hints.

So it shouldn’t be surprising when pointless blogs open up and start filling in the information the companies won’t tell us.

On occasion, it’s taken too far though, and the companies object. Well one of the Canon guys took it a bit too far and has been reprimanded for by it several high-priced, humorless lawyers.

This is a shame all around- it’s up to the speculators to try and not take it too far and it’s up the companies to put enough info in the pipeline to keep everyone appraised of what’s happening. It’s become a whole different world over the last few years- it’s no longer just a few people in a local camera club gossiping and if the companies don’t like what they’re seeing, they should simply give us official information and sites that speculate and put out rumors will simply cease to be appealing.

And hey, what a good time to remind everyone that NikonWatch has no official relation to Nikon Corp or subsidiaries and has not been approved by them. The Nikon Watch logo is a parody of the official Nikon logo.

Every attempt has been made to ensure that NikonWatch is not confused with Nikon itself.

Japan’s Canon Inc reported an 81.5% fall in quarterly profit as a deepening recession hit demand for cameras and office equipment, and it forecast a bigger-than-expected profit decline for 2009.

Operating profit at Canon, the world’s largest digital camera maker ahead of Sony Corp and Nikon Corp, came in at ¥35.8 billion ($401.7 million) in October-December, down from ¥193.58 billion a year earlier.

…For 2009, Canon forecast an operating profit of ¥160 billion, down from ¥496.1 billion a year earlier and compared with the consensus forecast for a ¥309.8 billion profit in a poll of 16 analysts by Reuters Estimates.
…

So, the hurt is all over the place!  Canon’s definitely more diversified than Nikon though.

What’s interesting to me is that most large international companies hedge currencies so that if there’s a dramatic up or down swing, they don’t lose as much money. I wonder to what extent these companies are doing that.

Canon 5D MarkII vs Nikon D700

Photography Bay has a really quick noise comparison between the Nikon D700 and the Canon 5D Mark II.

No huge surprise, the Nikon does better all around in my view, but this is clearly meant as a cheeseball comparison.

(Hat-tip to Leonardo)

Say what you will about Canon, but this video taken with the EOS5D-mkII looks pretty good to my eyes- it’s even shot at night and I can’t see any particular noise or anything. It’s on a tripod, so there’re no jello shots.

It’ll be interesting to see if the D3x has video or when we’ll be seeing a top of the line Nikon body with video.

I’d love to see the same thing compared against the drool-inducing 85mm f/1.2.

Canon EOS5DmkII, One night in Beijing. from Dan Chung on Vimeo.

Red finally came out with details on their Digital Stills and Motion Camera (DSMC, as opposed to DSLR) cameras. How long has the “modular” Nikon body rumor been around? I’ve even seen reports from pro’s saying that the thing actually exists, but Nikon keeps it under wraps. What a shame we don’t see things like this coming out of the Nikon labs! Hopefully this will kick Nikon in the butt and we’ll get something like it- I would love to see a replaceable sensor instead of having to buy a new body every 2 years to get the best image quality.

Red Scarlet Modular Body- 1 possible configuration

This shot simply shows a possible configuration- 7 different sensor backs you can choose from depending on the mount, sensor size, FPS! There’ll even be (presumably, this won’t be vaporware) a 28kMP back that does 25fps in 2010.

Oh hey! Notice something else we don’t see in the camera companies- a F’ING CLUE about what they’re likely to bring out in the future- Red’s actually establishing a baseline roadmap for what they expect to achieve in 2 years!

Want to see the rest of the images that you can attach to this camera?

So- to get a minimal Nikon F-mount-based system, you’re looking at:

Scarlet 5k/39fps @ $7,000

Red Handle @ ?

Lens Mount @ ?

Battery @ ?

Electronic Viewfinder @ ?

Recording Module @ ?

Then what you still don’t have is autofocus, so I hope you’re good at that!

If you want a FF 35mm sensor, you’re going to shell out $12k.

Then because all of this dreamy tech wasn’t enough, they decided to cobble together a 3d setup:

3d Scarlet Setup

If I didn’t already have a ton of cash invested in Nikon- this would leave my wondering if investing in Red gear wasn’t the way to go- the fact that they’re able to come out of virtually nowhere a couple of years ago and even have the audacity products like this tells me they’re not going to sit on their asses while people keep begging to buy things like new AF-S primes, updated 70-200mm, Apheric 28 f/1.4, another Noct, etc.

If I was Nikon, I’d change my pants, then ask how much cash we had on hand and maybe make them an offer. Failing that, I’d be dusting off all those cool ideas we’ve been playing with but not actually seriously considering making into a product, and taking some risks!

After all of that was done, I’d have an extremely frank and open discussion with our customers explaining where we’re going over the next years, produce a truthful product roadmap, and set some audacious R&D goals.

If I was Red, I’d figure out how to get autofocus in there- but I’m not a motion guy, maybe it’s not as useful as I’d think. I’d also think about heavily targeting still photographers as soon as the motion guys are satiated.

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.

RED corp, founded by the guy who started Oakley sunglasses, had a cool idea a couple of years- make a digital video recorder that can use interchangeable lenses (even Nikon and Canon lenses with adapters) with quality as good as 35mm film and sell it for ($17,000) a whole lot less than normal professional movie cameras ($100’s of thousands).

Surprisingly to me, and probably others, they delivered. It’s surprising because it’s not at all unusual for a company to come out of nowhere and promise of disruptive technologies and never hear from them again (hey, remember Silicon Film? They went from ~1997 announcement to 2008 bankrupcy?)

Well lately, they’ve been talking about coming out with an SLR, or video camera with SLR-like capabilities using their movie camera’s 25mp chip (presumedly).

This might be nothing for Nikon and Canon to worry about but it sure would be interesting to have a movie camera capable of good stills, that didn’t suffer from Jello-Shots, and could use just about whatever Nikon or Canon (and others with proper adapters) lenses you wanted to throw at it.

Unfortunately though, the RED cameras (so far) don’t have any sort of autofocus, so I wonder about these in fast-action situations.

If I was putting money on it, I’d think this’ll be interesting to watch but won’t give the Dynamic Duo (Nikon, Cannon) and sleepless nights, at least for a few different revisions of their new system.

Ok, she ain’t a dedicated HD video camera, but she actually does pretty well against real video-only cameras if you don’t wobble the camera too much while you’re shooting.

If you can get past the ads between every page, you’ll eventually come to the conclusion- and keep in mind, these are video dorks, not stills-dork (like me):

Comparing the Nikon D90 to HD camcorders may be unfair, but, being the first of its kind, its the only product we could put it up against. The Canon EOS 5D Mark II, the second SLR to record video, has impressive specs—a 1920 x 1080 video quality, stereo microphone input, and an H.264 video compression codec. The question will be, would you rather pay $999.95 ($1299.95 with the lens) to play around with video on the Nikon D90, or shell out $1700 more to get your hands on the Canon? Then, of course, you need to question whether a first generation product is ever a good investment. Stay skeptical.

dpReview posts a nice review of the Sony a900 and includes a wad of shots for comparison at the different ISO’s from 50-6400. But come on, it’s unfair to compare the D3/D700 sensor to anything else at high iso!

And while Sony’s clearly kicking ass and taking names in the megapixel race, it still isn’t up to the competition provided by the Dynamic Duo- Nikon and Canon.

Sony a900 @ 6400iso

Nikon d700 @ 6400iso

PCWorld (huh?) reports that Hasselblad CEO Christian Poulsen says they’ve got a 60 megapixel H3DII-60 that yields 94% fullframe coverage on their 645 format.

Hasselblad 500cm

“We feel that it’s important to emphasize the 94% coverage, because, although we hear the phrase ‘full-frame’ being used quite frequently, no manufacturer has yet achieved true medium format full-frame,” said Poulson at the huge German photokina show.

My 500cm, dejected, weeps on the corner. “Don’t worry little 500cm, you’re still the only Hasselblad I can afford I’ll ever love. We’ll be together as long as they’re making Provia 120, 100iso.” (I’m not very romantic…)

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.

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!