It’s not a secret that Pentax is close to release their first mirrorless camera. The chinese blog Sina (Click here) found that picture (not) showing an upcoming new Pentax product. According to Sina that product is positioned above the P&S cameras. Sounds like the rumors we posted the past few months could be true. Read more at http://www.mirrorlessrumors.com/hot-first-pictures-of-the-pentax-nc-mirrorless-system/

Pictured above. The old analogue Auto 110.

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It’s not a secret anymore that Pentax will announce their new mirrorless system in March (Updated, it’s May!) And as Mr. Hamada from Hoya-Pentax said a while ago: “we would like to release products with an individuality that shines through“.

The biggest challenge for all mirrorless system is to find the right balance between size (as tiny as possible) and image quality (sensor size). So what is Pentax going to do?

According to our sources Pentax wanted to create a sort of digital version of the popular and very tiny Pentax Auto 110. That’s why the new system will use a 5.6x crop sensor! By comparison: Micro Four Thirds uses a 2x crop sensor and Sony/Samsung are using 1.5x crop sensors. Note that there are rumors saying that Nikon will also use a very small sensor for their mirrorless system. Pentax made a very risky but also intriguing choice! We have been reported that the camera is much smaller than the current smallest mirrorless body (which is the Sony NEX-3/5).

The sensor itself has 14 Megapixel which can record HD h.264 movies. May this is a coincidence only but the new Kenko mirrorless system uses a 14 Megapixel 1/2,33″ (crop factor 5,6). Will Kenko and Pentax share the same sensor?

What about lenses? For now we only know that two lenses will be announced along the camera and that three more will be launched by end of the year.
UPDATE: We just got the lens specs! There will be a prime 8.5mm f/1.9 (almost 50mm equivalent) and a zoom 5-15mm f/2.8-4.5 (28-80mm equivalent)!

In Summary:
- One camera (Pentax NC-1?) and two lenses will be announced in May.
- 8.5mm f/1.9 (almost 50mm equivalent) and a zoom 5-15mm f/2.8-4.5 (28-80mm equivalent)
- New mount
- 5.6x crop 14 Megapixel sensor (Sensor size around 1/2.33″)
- HD h.264 recording
- smaller than NEX body
- hot shoe
- Three more lenses to be announced later (very likely in September 2011)

As soon as we have more info we will post them here on mirrorlessrumors. Also Nikon,Panasonic, Olympus and Sony will release new products within the next three months! So stay tuned! Do not miss any of our future rumors and news:
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See you!
The Mirrorlessrumors guys!

P.S.: We published the rumor one hour earlier before of the end of the countdown. We didn’t want to make you suffer to much!

PUBLISHED!

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We just got a few info from our best sources about the future Pentax mirrorless camera. We will post them in a few hours (see the countdown). This is the way we want to celebrate our first Pentax leak

We will give only a few hints about sensor, sensors size, lens numbers and video! No images yet! As you already know the NC-1 will be a sort of digital Auto 110 compact mirrorless camera.

Do not miss any of our future rumors and news:
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P.S.: This is not an official Pentax announcement. That’s just we posting a rumor about it!

Authors: Andrea&Alejandro

The picture above shows the very first mirrorless design made by Pentax in 1997. Yeah…that wa slong before Micro Four Thirds came! And it is no secret anymore that Pentax will soon show their first mirrorless camera. According to Photorumors that camera could be the “NC-1″. There are no spec now but the camera should feature a smaller than APS-C sensor and be announced in March.

But before that Panasonic will launch a new G3 camera in February. New sensor new design and FullHD recording are the main improvements (Source: 43rumors).

Also Nikon, Olympus and Sony are ready to drop their bombs. So who is missing? Canon! Where are you?

According to Nikonrumors “Nikon’s Mirrorless Interchangeable Lens Camera could be announced at CES 2011″ and they also found more mirrorless patents.

Meanwhile Canonrumors says that we will not see any new mirrorless system from Canon before 2012.

K-rumors said that Pentax will announce a new APS-C mirrorless system in February.

According to X-rumors Samsung will announce a new NX camcorder within a few months.