The new MS-Optical 40mm f/6.3 macro lens for Leica M is now listed on eBay (Click here).

Description via Japancamerahunter:

Miyazaki has been a very busy man lately. Not content with releasing a series of new regular lenses, he has also started working on the History Series of lenses.
And this is the fist in the series. The Prot 40mm 6.3, based on a classic design known as the Protaria lens formula which was designed by the legendary Rudolph Zeiss. I am still awaiting a full translation of the accompanying text about the lens.
This is a minute lens, weighing in at only 47 grams. it has a close focus of 60cm. 4 elements in 2 groups.
A fascinating little lens and something quite a bit different from what you usually see. A slower lens for a slower pace.

No camera could be complete without a lens – the glass technology that brings the world into focus. Dive into the history of the lens from it’s early beginning as a fire starting tool to the plethora of modern designs.

You can now check out the full size samples shot on the 16 camera. Pixel peepers en garde!

Found via hi-lows-note.blog.so-net.ne.jp

We can finally see more of the new RED Hydrogen system camera phone…I actually don’t know how to call it :)

Marques Brownlee just posted this exclusive first hands-on video:

This is how it compares with other phones:

And this the Hydrogen with a Triplet Lens module attached:

What Marques couldn’t show is the holographic feature. But RED promised to show a more finalized prototype in 1 month or so.

Overall this looks exciting and expensive!

CIPA released the June unit shipment report. There is good and bad news:

The Good news is that in June 2017 we sold far more cameras than in 2016. But to be fair 2016 was very bad also because of the Kumamoto earthquake aftermath.
The Bad news is that June 2017 still sold far less than in 2015.

To sum up, there is no more decline in the camera unit sales. But a real recovery is not to be expected.

Ricoh published their quarterly financial report (PDF file here). As a whole the profits went up 74% compared to last year. But the camera business seems to not do so well. Ricoh doesn’t share exact numbers but they write this note:

“decrease in income and profit in the camera business due to the decreasein amounts of sales of digital cameras.”

One more news: The next camera to be announced by Ricoh will be the new Theta V camera.

The interchangeable-lens camera market continues to recover from the impact of last year’s earthquake, particularly in developed countries. As such, the pace of market contraction has been gradually slowing on a global basis. Within this business environment, we sold 1.43 million units in the second quarter, as we limited the decline to 5%. And for the half, we secured the same level of unit sales as in the first half of 2016.

In this quarter as well, sales remained strong, particularly for mirrorless cameras. Within this trend, we grew sales of the EOS M6, a new mirrorless camera that has been highly rated not only for its high image quality, but also for its compact and lightweight form factor. This camera was designed to capture demand from people who, for example, are considering a step up to a camera with more features and better performance. Including this factor, first half unit sales of mirrorless camera grew more than 70% compared to the same period last year, leading to overall sales growth for interchangeable-lens cameras.

As for compact cameras, we continue to alleviate the pent-up demand following the earthquake last year. Under these circumstances, although our second quarter sales declined 8% to 1.07 million units, we significantly expanded unit sales of our G-Series brand of premium models that have been well received by the market for their design and portability, which subsequently contributed to revenue growth.