Five new products got announced today:

Nikon announced the Coolpix W300 (info at Dpreview).
Nikon announced the 28mm f/1.4 lens (specs at Amazon)
Nikon announced the 8-15mm lens (specs at Amazon)
Nikon announced the 10-20mm lens (specs at Amazon)
Canon announced the new C200 EF mount camcorder (info at Cinema5D).

There is still one more Sony announcement coming this week!

Kevin Raber interviewed Michael Hejtmanek from Hasselblad. Some of the discussed insights:

• wider angle lenses and zoom lenses are on the roadmap. Also tele lenses will be made
• H line will continue
• DJI acquisition will not change the Hasselblad product core

Doesn’t sound like the DJI acquisition will change a lot in the companies structure and philosophy.

The Japanese news site Sankeibiz.jp reports that Nikon could risk a sales ban of their cameras on the USA if the patent infringement gets certified by the US authority. As you know there is an ongoing “patent war” between Nikon and Zeiss (Source: Dpreview).

If the ban is really going to happen it will be a devastating news for Nikon finance…which is already suffering because of the declining camera market.

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via Digicameinfo

The new Ricoh WG-50 camera just got announced and is now available for preorder at BHphoto, Adorama and Amazon.

DJI announced their new entry level and super tiny Spark Drone. You can preorder it now at Bhphoto, Adorama and Amazon. Now, to learn what it is and how it works (it has gesture control!) just watch those videos from Kai and Casey Neistat:

Anhui China, May 23, 2017 – Venus Optics, the camera lenses manufacturer who had previously launched a number of unique Laowa camera lenses, is proud to announce the Laowa Magic Format Converter (MFC), the world’s first Fujifilm GFX adapter with optics for Canon/Nikon Full Frame lenses. The patented optics system inside the MFC will enlarge the image circle of any full frame lenses and fit it onto the relatively larger Fujifilm GFX- 50s camera sensors. It has a focal length multiplier of 1.4x and reduces the maximum aperture by 1-stop.

The Laowa Magic Format Converter (MFC) is different from the simple GFX adapter existing in the market. The GFX adapter currently available in the market simply adapts the Canon/Nikon lenses onto the Fujifilm G-mount body with no resizing on the image circle. However, due to the relatively smaller image circle of Canon/Nikon full frame lenses, most of the them are not able to completely fill the Fujifilm GFX sensors, resulting in a vignetting (Dark Corners) or heavily degraded peripheral sharpness in the images.

Our Magic Format Converter (MFC) took advantage of the short flange distance of mirrorless cameras and incorporated a patented optics system to expand the image circle of the lens without compromising the image quality. The enlarged image also corrects the vignetting and maintains the optical performance of your lens in the medium format system.

The Magic Format Converter (MFC) is particularly useful for ultra-wide angle lenses. Vignetting tends to be stronger when we adapt an ultra-wide angle full frame lenses onto the GFX sensors. By using the MFC, GFX users will be able to enjoy an ultra-wide angle of view without the need to crop away all unusable corners of the images. When the MFC is used with our Laowa 12mm f/2.8 Zero-D lens, it will become a roughly 17mm f/4 lens in GFX-50S. The angle of view will be around 116° (equivalent to appr. 13mm lens in 35mm format), making it one of the widest lens available for the GFX system. The MFC opens up a lot more ultra-wide angle lens options for the new Fujifilm GFX camera and increases the compatibility of full frame lenses to the Medium Format cameras.

The 2nd member of the Laowa Magic Converters line-up

The Magic Format Converter is the second member of the Laowa Magic Converter line-up. Venus Optics had announced the Magic Shift Converter (MSC) last year and the MSC shares the same patented optics system as the MFC. The MSC can expand the image circle of full frame lens and convert the lens into a shift lens for using in the Sony Full Frame E-mount cameras. The MSC is expected to be ready to ship in June.

This is somehow a surprise: The Photokina team just announced that it will now take place annually as of 2018. One year the event will take place in September and the year after in May. Then again September and then May. So forth so forth…

I am surprised by that move because the photo camera industry slowed down their release circles. Photokina also said that “the entire range of products, applications and services of relevance for imaging shall in future be presented in Cologne”. So maybe the May event will be focused more on “non conventional” photographic tools (virtual reality and so forth).

This is the official press text:

Photokina takes the next step and will take place annually as of 2018. It will in future thus optimally reflect the fast-paced nature and the ever briefer innovation cycles of an increasingly digitalised industry. As of 2019 the trade fair will also have a new date in May. In addition to innovations from the core areas of the imaging workflow, the entire range of products, applications and services of relevance for imaging shall in future be presented in Cologne.

For the 2018 event, only the series of days is changing: it will take place from Wednesday, 26.09. to Saturday, 29.09, and thus enables a more compact, more intensive trade fair experience.

You will learn everything more around the next step of photokina in the recent press release (.pdf) .