Olympus scandal: Former bosses to pay $529m over fraud

You remmeber the big Olympus scandal? Well there is some news. BBC reports:

Six executives sacked by Japan’s Olympus have been ordered to pay more than half a billion dollars in damages after a massive accounting fraud. The camera and medical equipment firm brought the case against ex-chairman Tsuyoshi Kikukawa and 15 others.
A Tokyo court found Kikukawa and five others liable for $529m.
The ruling comes comes six years after former chief executive Michael Woodford exposed his colleagues for falsifying accounts to conceal losses of $1.7bn.
The scandal was one of the biggest financial frauds in Japan’s history, but Kikukawa and two other executives who pleaded guilty never went to jail. Instead, they were given suspended sentences of up to three years.
An Olympus spokesman declined to comment, saying the former employees could appeal against the ruling.
One of the six men found liable by the court has since died, but his family could still be held responsible for his share of the damages, according to the AFP news agency.

The good news for Olympus is that for the first time in 7 years the imaging division managed to make a profit in 2016! Read the full 2016 financial year report.

The Neptune Convertible Art Lens System

There is a new Kickstarter project for a “convertible” lens system:

The Neptune Convertible Art Lens System consists of a lens base that’s mounted to your camera and several convertible lens components. By interchanging the front components, you can shoot photos or videos at three different fixed focal lengths — 35mm, 50mm and 80mm. An Art Lens System unlike any other; it offers you all the freedom of a zoom lens without compromising on prime lens quality, and it’s the only convertible Art Lens out there to work with a range of modern-day analogue and digital cameras. Each component is assembled by using the finest multi-coated glass and crafted to produce exceptionally sharp focus and strong, saturated colors for stunning high-definition images — even when you’re shooting close-ups at 0.25m/9.8” with Thalassa (35mm), 0.4/15.7” with Despina (50mm) or 0.8m/31.5” with Proteus (80mm). This is an Art Lens System that lets you take beautifully intimate shots, allowing you to get near enough to capture every last detail of your subject. And because it’s so small and lightweight design, you can take it with you everywhere.

The Neptune Convertible Art Lens System: Aperture Comparison from Lomography on Vimeo.

Cool!

The next announcements from Sony is probably coming very soon…

Sony A9 will ship by end of May at BHphotoAdorama, Amazon, Calumet.de. Park UK. Wex UK. Jessops.

The A9 rumble is still ongoing on the web. But it seems like Sony is not done yet and we are receiving hints about another announcement coming soon. Probably within the next 4-6 weeks Sony will announce some new E-mount lenses and probably one new camera too. We got no solid info about possible specs but so more in general some of this stuff might be announced soon:

16-35mm f/2.8 GM (very likely)
new RX camera
new 135mm FE lens

What’s definitely NOT coming yet is a new A9r or a new A7III.

Next Olympus and Panasonic cameras…

So what’s coming next for the MFT folks?

  1. Olympus will announce a new E-M10III camera sometimes this summer.
  2. Olympus will also announce one or two new f/1.2 PRO MFT lenses this year
  3. Panasonic will announce a new MFT camera this fall (maybe a new GX or GM)
  4. Panasonic will also release the new 50-200mm f/2.8-4.0 Leica lens this fall (see lens in the middle on the image on top)

So far that’s all we know!

This camera beats the Sony A9 and shoots five trillion images per second

There is the Megapixel race, the High ISO race and in those days the talk is all about frames per second race. The Sony A9 killed the headlines with the amazing 20fps shooting without blackout.

But just for fun…did you ever wonder what’s the fastest camera on earth? Well here it is:

A research group at Lund University in Sweden has developed a camera that can film at a rate equivalent to five trillion images per second, or events as short as 0.2 trillionths of a second. This is faster than has previously been possible.

Latest rumors on Fuji: new 200mm lens in the works and X80 coming by end of this year!

We got two new Fuji rumors:

  1. Fujrumors reports there will be a new 200mm lens in 2018.
  2. New X80 APS-C fixed lens camera will be announced by end 2017.

One more Fuji rumors: Do you know that Fuji has one more BIG camera announcement by end of this year or early 2018 at max? it’s the High End X-T camera trimmed for speed and video. Well this camera will also feature a new X-Trans sensor!