The new flagship Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II is a speed demon, plain and simple. With your autofocus locked, its electronic shutter can shoot 60fps. And even if you keep autofocus on and tracking, it can still pump out full-res RAW frames at a jaw-dropping 18fps.
Camera companies were overshadowed yesterday by Nikon's major announcements (i.e. the D5, D500, and new action camera), but there was other gear unveiled as well.
Panasonic announced two new serious compact cameras and a new Leica 100-400mm lens for Micro Four Thirds cameras.
The innovative folks at DJI continue to design drones that push the limits of aerial photography (and empty the wallets of eager onlookers). A new edition of the Inspire 1 with an added Micro Four Thirds camera system recently arrived on the scene, and we just had a chance to test it out. Let’s see if it lives up to the high demands of its price tag.
Samyang Optics has announced two new lenses due out this October under their Rokinon branding. The first piece of glass announced is a 50mm f/1.2 lens, while the second is a 21mm f/1.4. Both products are compatible with Canon EF-M, Fujifilm X, Micro Four Thirds, and Sony E mounts. The lenses are entirely manual focus but feature aspherical elements, with the 21mm housing an extra-low dispersion element, for increased image clarity.
Last week, Chinese lens company Zhong Yi Optics started teasing a new Mitakon 25mm f/0.95 lens for Micro Four Thirds cameras. That lens has now been officially announced.
The new Mitakon Speedmaster 25mm f/0.95 is an ultra-fast, manual-focus prime lens that's the 35mm-equivalent of a 50mm lens when mounted to a Micro Four Thirds camera.
DJI today announced their new ZENMUSE X5 series of Micro Four Thirds Cameras for the Inspire 1 drone system. Featuring increased dynamic range, interchangeable lens compatibility, remote focus and aperture control, and lossless 4K RAW video recording, the ZENMUSE X5 series is ready to take on the high-performance world of aerial photography with two distinct models.
In 2008, both Olympus and Panasonic teamed up to create the Micro Four Thirds sensor standard for mirrorless cameras. Seven years later, I sit with the Olympus E-M10 Mark II in front of me. It's a more affordable camera than its older siblings, the E-M5 and E-M1, and today we'll be taking a look to see what the company’s ‘budget’ OM-D has to offer. There's an OLED viewfinder, Wi-Fi control, 8.5fps burst shooting, and five-axis stabilization -- we are expecting a smooth ride.
Panasonic has introduced a brand new lens to their Micro Four Thirds system lineup at IFA 2015 in Berlin, along with color tweaks for three of their existing pieces of glass. The new Lumix G 25mm f/1.7 ASPH is making its debut, while the company’s existing 14-140mm f/3.5-5.6, 45-150mm f/4-5.6, and 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 will soon all be offered in a ‘matte black’ color finish.
It's not every day that a startup company launches a new camera to challenge the likes of heavyweights like GoPro and Panasonic, but that's what the Las Vegas-based company Z Camera is doing. It just unveiled the 4K-capable E1, the world's smallest Micro Four Thirds camera that combines the size of GoPro with the interchangeable lenses of mirrorless cameras.
Panasonic has just announced the new Lumix GX8, a new Micro Four Thirds mirrorless camera that boasts a resolution of 20.3 megapixels -- a first for an MFT camera. This is up from 16MP in the camera's predecessor, the GX7.
Here's a behind-the-scenes look at how Japanese lens maker Kowa creates its Prominar line of lenses for Micro Four Thirds cameras. The 3-minute "how it's made" video above steps through each of the stages of manufacturing, from designing the lenses on a computer to putting the components together into a final product and testing its optical qualities.
What do you get if you mount a giant $60,000 broadcast lens to a tiny mirrorless camera? That's what YouTube user SirJonnyCargo recently set out to find out. He used a Fotodiox lens adapter to mount his Panasonic GH4 onto a Fujinon XA55 lens. The results were actually very impressive.
Panasonic has just officially announced its new Lumix G7 Micro Four Thirds mirrorless camera, a compact camera that's designed with both serious photography and serious videography in mind.
Last month, Kipon announced the world's first autofocus-capable adapter for using Canon EF lenses on Micro Four Thirds cameras. If you've been thinking about picking one up, here's some good news for you: the autofocusing speed appears to be quite fast.
Japanese Kipon distributor SHOTENKOBO has released the 2-minute video above that shows some tests of the adapter using a Canon 70-200mm f/4L IS lens on a Panasonic GX7.
Five years ago, the Shanghai, China-based lens adapter company Kipon became the first to offer a Canon EF to Micro Four Thirds adapter with electronic aperture control. The company is now taking its adapter another big step forward: its new Canon EF to MFT adapter is the world's first to feature autofocus.
Olympus has announced that popular drone manufacturer DJI is the latest company to join the Micro Four Thirds System standard. The news suggests that there may be MFT-system camera drones somewhere on the horizon.
Olympus has announced the OM-D E-M5 II, the successor to the popular E-M5 that shook up the industry back in 2012 with its retro styling. It's a 16MP Micro Four Thirds camera that boasts a special high resolution shot feature that uses sensor shifting to capture 40MP images.
Here's the first leaked photo of the upcoming Panasonic GF7, the followup to the GF6. As you can see, the company is going after a much more "retro" look with this camera line (as is popular in the industry right now).
The camera is rumored to have a 16-megapixel Four Thirds sensor, an ISO range of 200 to 25600, and a 1.04-million-dot tilting LCD screen that swings open 180 degrees.
The three lenses above let you see equally far, but one of them will fit comfortably into your bag while the others probably wouldn't fit comfortably anywhere. Can you guess which are which? Go ahead... think it over... we'll wait...
Today has been all Leica at Photokina, and we're not even done yet. Beyond the new big guns in the S-series, the LCD-less digital rangefinder and the all-mechanical M-A film rangefinder, Leica also improved its compact camera lineup with a number of new additions.
Specifically, they announced the Leica X, Leica X-E, Leica D-LUX and Leica V-LUX.
In the ongoing effort to provide the biggest punch in the smallest package, Panasonic has just announced the LX100. Considerably the most sophisticated compact camera Panasonic has ever created, the LX100 looks to set itself apart from the competition with a Micro Four Thirds (MFT) sensor, a Leica-branded lens and 4K video capabilities.
Metabones already has an impressive lineup of Speed Boosters -- the lens adapters that can bypass crop factors, increase maximum aperture and more -- but they made headlines yesterday when they added a much sought-after adapter to the lineup: the Canon EF to Micro Four-Thirds model.
Tamron broke new ground in MFT lenses yesterday with the release of the 14-150mm f/3.5-5.8 DI III, the company's very first all-in-one zoom lens for Micro Four Thirds cameras.
The first post I made on sensor-stack thickness wallowed deeply in PhotoGeekery. This one is meant to be of practical use so I’ll try to leave the Geek stuff out. We’ll start with the simple facts.
NOTE: This is a Geek Post. If you aren’t into geeky photo measurements, or into adapting lenses from one brand of camera to another, you’ll not be interested.
A year or two ago, I wrote a blog post where I basically showed lenses shot on adapters on other cameras aren’t acceptable for testing. If you run them through Imatest the results aren’t accurate. I suggested that reviewers shouldn’t test lenses on adapters, although obviously adapters are a great way to use interesting lenses to take pictures.
There’s some exciting news making its way through the rumor mill if you're an Olympus fan: it seems Olympus is currently working on and will be announcing a new, 7–14mm f/2.8 Zuiko MFT lens “very soon.”
Apparently NOT April Fools' joke, the world's fastest purchasable camera lens looks to have been posted -- and now sold -- on eBay earlier today. Supposedly in impeccable condition, with all caps and T-mount adapter included, the Canon 50mm f/0.75 went for a rather measly $500 in a quick "Buy It Now" purchase.
If you believed the rumors, today was supposed to be the day Samyang debuted its first AutoFocus-capable lenses. But that, it seems, wasn't in the cards. What Samyang did announce today (and what they have apparently been teasing all week) was a new 12mm f/2 and several revamped older models that will now work with APS-C and MFT mirrorless cameras.
After months of rumors, spec and image leaks -- including a full press text leak... yikes -- Panasonic has is finally launching the much-talked-about GH4: a Micro Four Thirds shooter with 4K video capability that the company is calling the "ultimate photo/video hybrid Digital Single Lens Mirrorless(DSLM) camera."
There's one final gear announcement from CES that we just didn't manage to get to this week, and that is the new line of Kodak-branded products that JK Imaging showed off at the trade show. From lens cameras that look an awful lot like cheap knock-offs of Sony's QX10 and QX100, to an updated line of superzooms, a Micro Four Thirds model and a couple of 'rugged' action cameras, here's what JK/Kodak brought to the CES table.