Rumor/news roundup: Five Zeiss FE manual lenses. Olympus PRO lens delay. E-M1 and Fuji fw updates.

 

Image ont op shows some general Zeiss lenses.

Have to catch up with some bigger news:

Rumors:
Really amazing. Zeiss will launch five manual focusing E-mount Full Frame lenses at Photokina 2014 (Source: SonyAlphaRumors).
Olympus 40-150mm PRO zoom coming second half of 2014 (Source: 43rumors).

Firmware:
Fuji is going to release a massive firmware upgrade (Source: Fujirumors).
New Olympus E-M1 firmware update (Source: 43urmors).

 

 

Leica CEO says: Not sure DSLR will still be alive in 10 years. No way we go MFT.

Hoppyman from Leica Camera Forum found an interesting interview with Leica CEO Alfred Schopf (made at www.zinio.com/camera). These are some of the key info unveiled by the CEO:

DSLR vs Mirrorless: …”to be honest, I’m not 100 percent sure where the D-SLR market is going to be in the future. The mirrorless cameras are coming on and on and on and I’m not entirely convinced that in ten years time we will have a D-SLR market

About a future Leica mirrorless (non rangefinder):  “We will have one, definitely. And it will, of course, be quite different to M system. We want to have autofocus with such a system and we may well have an APSC size sensor rather than a bigger one…….It will be a German built camera, however I’m not sure we can make all of the lenses made in Germany because we are talking about a different price range to M system so I could imagine that we do some fixed focal length lenses in Germany and maybe with the zooms we will co-operate with a partner” He stresses that Leica won’t be building on Panasonic’s Micro Four Thirds format!

About the Film Camera future:We are now the world’s biggest manufacturer of film cameras on the planet- because we are the only one, more or less. As long as we get orders we will continue. At the moment we get between 600 and 700 orders per year…………

Yep, their new mirrorless camera is coming, and if the CEO isn’t fooling us it will be definitely not a Micro Four Thirds mount camera!

Fuji XF 10-24mm lens to be released in February.

Let’s start the week with a small bad news. A couple of months ago Fujifilm, said the new XF10-24mm f/4.0 OIS lens would be available in winter 2013. We were hoping to get this lens right for Christmas but instead we will have to wait til February to get it :(

By the way, in February we expect Fuji to launch that OMD alike X-mount camera too! It’s going to be a nice month for X-mount fans. Save your money :)

Sony says faster Sony FE lenses are “in development”

In an interview with DC.watch (google translation here) the Sony A7-A7r developers explained that a Sony A7 with NEX-7 alike design would have become considerably larger. And the EVF placement in the middle is an advantage if you sue larger A-mount lenses (you eye is on the optical axis).

There is also a hint about the FE lens roadmap: They confirm that faster Sony FE lenses are in development (faster than the Zeiss FE 55mm f/1.8!). Great news!

New Leica mirrorles system camera comes in February?

Leica and Panasonic are known for working together on the compact camera front. And now multiple trusted(!) sources confirmed that they are working together to realize Leica’s first mirrorless (and non rangefinder) system camera! The camera will be launched pretty soon (likely in January-February).

The sources told us that they will share the specs soon. It means dear Leica fans…stay tuned on MirrorlessRumors! :)

Rumors: New Samsung APS-C sensor coming in 2014. New Samyang Fuji X lenses.

Samsung released a new PDF document (download here) describing some of their future goals.  On page 17 you can read about the launch of a new ASP-C sensor for their mirrorless system. There is no word on specs yet. P.S.: Notice the absence of any Full Frame sensor hint (found via Photorumors).

And Samyang announced that all their lenses will be available in X-mount (found via Fujirumors).