Backchannel posted a highly emotional post from Lytro Ceo Jason Rosenthal. It’ quite unusual to read about the “personal” struggle of an enterprise. Jason confirmed Lytro will no more “classic” photocameras. They will purely focus on virtual reality instead. And I wanna quote a part of his text where he talks about the hard life of a CEO:

On the good days, building a company feels lonely, scary and confusing. On the bad days, I’ve wanted to vomit and curl up into the fetal position rather than deal with my reality.

We wish you good luck Jason! Long live Lytro!

Paolo Namias sent me this:

Dear Sirs
I’d like to present to you our project: “The ultimate Test of Lenses”
All the current tests you can read in internet use a camera to test the lenses, but in this way you cannot measure the real performances of the lenses.
Our method is different: we test each lens by itself, we use an MTF optical bench, so the performances we measure are real.
And our software shows how the performances change according to the different sensor’ size.

The interface is very interactive, you choose the aperture, or the focal length, and you see how the performances change.
You can compare different lenses, very easily.

As an independent laboratory, we do no accept advertising. That guarantees even more our independent judgment.
We finance the project by selling the tests at low price (€ 5 each).

At present we achieved a beta version, and we launched a Crowdfunding to complete our work.
I’d appreciate if you would like publish our project to help us to realize the final version in the English language.
With the donations the people get tests saving money.
http://kapipal.com/projects/the-ultimate-test-of-lenses

Our laboratory MTF Lenses LAB was born more than 30 years ago and we have online a database of about 450 lenses, that we constantly enlarge.
But our story begins 122 years ago, when Rodolfo Namias, my grandfather, published the magazine Il Progresso Fotografico, January 1894; he was a researcher, and the magazine was the media to be in contact with other researches in the world.
I join some photos of that old times.

I thank you for your support
Paolo Namias
http://kapipal.com/projects/the-ultimate-test-of-lenses

Panasonic announced a nice new MFT camera today. It’s the GX80 with 16MP sensor and new 5 axis stabilization system. The specs in short:

• 16MP Live MOS Sensor
• Micro Four Thirds System
• 2.76m-Dot 0.7x Electronic Viewfinder
• 3.0″ 1.04m-Dot Tilting Touchscreen LCD
• UHD 4K Video Recording at 30/24 fps
• Built-In Wi-Fi Connectivity
• ISO 25600 and 10 fps Shooting with AF-S
• DFD AF System, 4K Photo Modes
• 5-Axis Image Stabilization, Dual I.S.
• Lumix G Vario 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6 Lens

Store links:
Black GX80/85 at BHphoto. Amazon. Adorama. WexUK. ParkUK.
Silver GX80/85 at BHphoto. Amazon. Adorama. ParkUK.

Previews:
Hands-on at Dpreview. GX80 preview at ePhotozine. Preview at WexUK. Hands-on at ParkCameras. First look at Whatdigitalcamera. Preview at Photographyblog.

Hasselblad Germany just confirmed there is an event on April 15. And in the text presentation Hasselblad says that Chief Developer Roland Lord will report about their new products. I guess we will see the new Hasselblad Medium Format Camera with 101 Megapixel Sony sensor! And rumor has it this will be a cheaper camera than the Phase One IQ3 101MP camera.

UPDATE: This should be a H6D-100 with

• Higher frame rate > 1.5 frames a sec
• High resolution touch display similar or better than Phase, so that focus checking can be done easily
• USB 3.0
• Dual memory slots (CF and SD)
• Possibly video (720p or 1080p or 4K)

–

Specs via LL.

date info via Photorumors. Price rumor part via me :)

Let’s start the week with some firmware news:

1. Fuji released a major firmware update for the X-Pro1, X-E1, X-A1/2 and X-M1 (download at fujifilm.com/support/digital_cameras/software/fw_table.html)
2. Panasonic 2.5 firmware update for the GH4 at av.jpn.support.panasonic.com/support/global/cs/dsc/download/fts/dl/gh4.html

Today is April Fools Day! So let’s check some of the “amazing” and “fun” news we found:

Nikon annonce un hybride full frame: le NikoM! (Lepidi).
Worst Sony a6300 Camera Review ever by Erik Stenbakken
Nikon will soon announce a rebranded Canon EOS 80D (CanonWatch).
Exclusive: a new pro camera from Sony! (Addicted2light).
GlobalFilter – Universal Screw in filter that removes Rolling Shutter! (Blog.cvp.com).
New Olympus Dog Filter (Twitter).
Sony develops the world’s first ghost catching device – The Proton Pack™ (SonyAlphaRumors).
BREAKING NEWS :: Fujifilm X-T2, Fujifilm X-T2 PRO and Fujifilm X-MF1 officially registered in China! (Fujirumors).
Sony A6300 vs Mini A7R II (TheDigitalDigest).
Sony announce impressive new features on current cameras and new A7 cameras!!! (Philip Bloom).