microfourthirds

Today I received an Experimental Lens Kit from Lomography and immediately took it on a test ride while having my lunch break.

Great news, Micro Four Thirds shooters -- you no longer need Instagram filters and the like to make your photos look... how shall we put this... distressed.

That's because toy camera powerhouse Lomography has just released an arsenal of plastic lenses that can add multiple-exposure, fisheye, color tint and other effects to previously ordinary shots.

Small interchangeable lens cameras (ILCs) usually come with small sensors and a diminutive spec list. Take the Pentax Q7 for example, its 1/1.7-inch sensor was a big (or rather a small) deterrent for serious photographers who want a small yet capable camera of their own.

Fortunately for those photographers, however, Panasonic has their back with the newly-announced GM1. It's not, as previously rumored, the world's smallest ILC, but it isn't far off, and it does grab the title of smallest Micro Four Thirds (MFT) camera.

We told you about the upcoming Panasonic GM1 back in September when the rumors first surfaced, but now we have the first leaked photos of the camera that intends to claim the title of "world's smallest interchangeable lens camera" without compromising on quality.

The Olympus OM-D E-M5's retro styling drew a lot of looks when the camera was first announced back in February 2012. Glowing reviews of the camera subsequently showed that it was more than just a pretty face.

Today, Olympus has finally unveiled a followup camera to continue the new OM-D line: the E-M1.

On Monday, a massive set of Sony Lens Camera photos leaked online just a couple of days before the official announcement was made. Well, the same thing has happened to Olympus, whose upcoming OM-D E-M1 Micro Four Thirds camera was just outed in photos that show it from just about every angle imaginable.

It's the newly released Olympus E-P5 PEN. A 16.1MP Micro Four Thirds retro-styled pocket shooter capable of 9FPS. But will it raise your heartbeat to 100BPM? Let's find out.

Panasonic has officially announced the GX7, a sleek new high-end mirrorless camera with some features that are being introduced for the first time in a Panasonic mirrorless camera, including in-body image stabilization and a tiltable electronic viewfinder.

Panasonic is having a hard time keeping a lid on its upcoming rangefinder-styled GX7 Micro Four Thirds mirrorless camera. Just last week, the first images and a list of specs leaked through an online photo magazine, and now we have a full set of specs and product shots to look at.

Earlier this month, we told you that Panasonic was planning to jump onto the retro-style bandwagon sometime in August with the release of its GX7 Micro Four Thirds mirrorless camera.

At the time we only had a few illustrations and some preliminary specs, but now that we're about a month out from the announcement, some official photos and a more comprehensive spec list have both surfaced.

Check out this photo of a gigantic Canon 9.3-930mm broadcast lens mounted to a tiny Panasonic GH2 mirrorless camera. The size difference is so great that it might be more accurate to say that the camera is mounted to the lens.

The first fruits of Kodak's partnership with JK Imaging are starting to emerge. Chinese camera site DCFever has published some photographs of the Kodak S1, a new Micro Four Thirds camera that was announced at the beginning of the year.

Back in January 2013, lens adapter company Metabones rocked the camera world by announcing the Speed Booster, an SLR-to-mirrorless lens adapter that can magically increase your maximum aperture, sharpness, and angle of view.

So far the adapter has been released for Sony NEX and Fuji X cameras, but greater things are on the horizon: Metabones will be releasing the Speed Booster for Micro Four Thirds cameras as well.

After weeks of rumors and leaks, Olympus' new PEN E-P5 finally became official today. It's the company's new flagship Micro Four Thirds PEN mirrorless camera, and features both retro styling on the outside and powerful specs on the inside.

Less than a week after first photos of the upcoming Olympus E-5 leaked onto the web, new photos have emerged showing additional views of the flagship Micro Four Thirds camera.

Panasonic this morning announced two new cameras: a Lumix G6 Micro Four Thirds mirrorless camera and a Lumix LF1 high-end compact camera. Both cameras offer some pretty solid specs for photography enthusiasts.

Panasonic is expected to officially announce its new GF6 Micro Four Thirds camera tomorrow, but the camera has pretty much been outed already thanks to major leaks. Last week a review of the camera made a brief appearance on the Web, and today official press photos and specs were leaked as well.

Panasonic had quite a leaky day today. New details of its upcoming GF6 Micro Four Thirds mirrorless camera hit the Interwebs via separate sources, giving us a better idea of what should be expecting very shortly. The camera will reportedly be announced on April 9th, so we're less than a week away from hearing about this camera straight from the horses mouth.

Olympus first ushered its PEN brand into the digital age back in 2009 with the E-P1. Since then, the lineup has split into three distinct tiers: the E-P line for standard PEN cameras, the E-PL line for smaller "Lite" models, and the E-PM line for even smaller "Mini" models. Goldilockean photographers can therefore choose the size and feature set most appropriate to their needs (and hands).

It's a big day for lens announcements, and we're not even done yet. Sigma showed MFT and E-mount some love, and now it's Tamron's turn to make mirrorless owners happy. Earlier today, the company officially announced development of its first ever Micro Four Thirds lens: the 14-150mm F/3.5-5.8 Di III VC.

Kodak had quite the surprise for the camera world today: the company announced that it will be soon joining the Micro Four Thirds standard with a new mirrorless camera called the S1. We had reported earlier this week that the company would soon launch a mirrorless camera (just like Polaroid did recently), but it seems most people didn't expect that the news would have anything to do with the Micro Four Thirds standard.

In a recent interview with Quesabesde, Miguel Angel Garcia, the CEO of Olympus Spain, dropped another "official" hint at what the camera company is cooking up to replace the E-5. The subsequent article, which initially said that the camera would be compatible with both Micro Four Thirds and Four Thirds Lenses, has since been reworded to state simply that the replacement for the E-5 will be "capable of harnessing the full potential of Four Thirds lenses."

Olympus currently offers a $144 adapter called the MMF-2 for photographers who want to use an existing collection of Four Thirds-mount lenses on a Micro Four Thirds camera. The accessory makes the lenses mountable and acts as a middleman between the lenses and the cameras, but its features pretty much end there. It appears that Olympus is working on a much fancier adapter: one that actually contains lens elements and contains focusing/stabilization features as well.

Attention Micro Four Thirds shooters: there's a new speedy "35mm prime lens" headed your way. Okay, it's actually a 34mm equivalent lens in 35mm terms, but it still boasts a f/1.8 aperture. It's the new Olympus M.ZUIKO 17mm f/1.8, a lens that designed for street photography, landscapes, and shooting in low-light environments.

Regardless of how you feel about Hasselblad's idea of taking a $1,100 Sony NEX-7, souping it up, and selling it for $6,500 as a Hasselblad Lunar, I think we can all agree that there needs to be honesty in marketing the camera. Well, that's what a couple of sections over on the Lunar website seriously lack. Check out the page boasting about the camera's APS-C HD CMOS Sensor, which contains a side-by-side comparison showing the common APS-C sensor size next to other popular sizes. Does that look like a Micro Four Thirds sensor to you?

Olympus is entering Photokina week with three new cameras: the E-PM2 and E-PL5 for its PEN Micro Four Thirds lineup, and the X-Z2 as a flagship compact camera. Both PEN cameras feature a 16.1MP CMOS sensor, a max ISO of 25,600, in-body image stabilization, a 3-inch touchscreen, touch shooting, 8fps continuous shooting, photo filters, RAW files with in-camera editing, and 1080i HD video recording.

Compact cameras feature lenses that automatically "cap" themselves when retracted and not in use. Interchangeable lenses, on the other hand, usually don't. The X-Cap changes that. It's a Taiwan-designed lens cap that snaps onto the front of certain lenses that feature a retracting front element (the Micro Four Thirds system has lenses like this). When the front element retracts, the cap automatically closes -- great for people who hate dealing with lens caps.

If you own a Micro Four Thirds or Sony NEX camera and you've been dying to use your Canon glass on it, thus far your only options have been sadly manual in nature. Because the adapters on the market today don't make the electronic link between the camera and the lens, you're left focusing and (if you can at all) adjusting the aperture by hand. Fortunately, lens adapter company Kipon has a couple of solutions around the corner that it has decided to tease us with.

Here's an interesting project that photographer Gabriel Verdugo Soto put together this last weekend by slapping together an old polaroid lens/aperture mechanism and a micro four thirds camera. In order to keep the lens in focus, he measured the distance from the lens to the polaroid paper in the orignal camera and used macro tubes to ensure the same distance was maintained between the lens and the sensor. The whole thing was then attached to a 52mm ring, and held together using that white epoxy clay you see in the pictures.

Panasonic has officially announced the Lumix GF5, conveniently skipping over the GF4 from the GF3. The tiny Micro Four Thirds camera is geared towards beginners and offers some subtle changes from its predecessor. While the 12.1-megapixel sensor hasn't changed, the new camera offers a new max ISO of 12,800, faster autofocus, a new 1080/30p HD view mode, a stereo microphone, a higher-res 3-inch touchscreen, a refined user interface, and an increase to 4fps (up from 3.8).