Hot week coming: Leica will announce the M10 on Jan 18. Fuji big announcement day on Jan 19.

We got two major announcements next week and here are the latest details:

1) Leica will announce the M10 on January 18. The camera will feature many minor improvements (like better viewfinder) but the sensor will be the “usual” 24MP FF.

2) Fuji has a big announcement day on January 19. We know we will get the GFX pricing, X-t20, X100F and new XF lenses. Latest rumors say there will be a firmware update too. And Fujirumors also posted the X-T20 specs.

And we expect more announcements from Sony, Panasonic and Olympus right before the CP+ show. More about that soon on MR…

The RED Helium is the new DxOmark sensor king!

So far the Sony A7rII sensor had the best score at DxOmark. But the newly tested Red Helium and Red Epic (read test here) are now the king of the DxO ranking. DxO writes:

The RED Helium 8K is the most impressive sensor we’ve ever tested. Rating 10 points above the best of the full-frame DSLRs, it stands alone as our top scorer. Its image quality is even more impressive given its very high maximum frame rates. Our only caveat is that the Helium 8K sensor appears to benefit from some noise reduction to enhance its RAW image quality.

We can likely explain the Helium 8K’s improvement over our previous top scorer, RED’s own Dragon, by a combination of both better sensor technology and temporal noise reduction. The upgrade to 8K video and improved image quality across the board make it a clear upgrade from the RED Dragon – and a clear winner. The Helium 8K is an impressive achievement by RED. For those with the budget, its top-of-the-line image quality, high frame rate, and 16-bit RAW capture capability absolutely make it worth considering as a competitor to high-end DSLRs and medium-format cameras for still image capture.