Story: Hasselblad wanted to colalborate with Fuji. But had to go with Sony at the end.

You still remember the Hassleblad Lunar announced at Photokina don’t you? It’s basically a Sony NEX-7 with luxury case that will be priced at $5000. Not something for us normal human beings. Anyway, what you may don’t know is that according to Quesabesde (translation here) Hasselblad wanted Fuji as partner! Sony was only the second best choice.  The reason why Fuji ejected the partnership is yet unknown. Fuji and Hassi worked together on many film cameras like for example the famous [shoplink 100117 ebay]Hasselblad X-Pan (Here on eBay)[/shoplink].

Anyway, if the Hassleblad Lunar is the kind of thing we can expect from the Hasselblad-Sony partnership than you have to admit that Fuji had good reasons to reject it. But let’s not draw those kind of conclusions yet, There might be more coming from Hasselblad than just a luxury NEX-7.

 

Mirrorless sales raised in UK!

We usually have very detailed sales reports from the Japanese market but almost zero info about the rest of the world. But than to the latest report released by GfK Retail and Technology UK we now have some interesting details from the UK market. According to the report Mirrorless camera sales raised by 14% in 2012 while DSRL camera sales raised “only” 2%. And it is also interesting to know that bridge camera sales went up 5% and superzoom compacts surged 20%.

Would be nice to have some info about market shares too but those were not released yet.

via Amateur Photographer.

Pentax confirms (again) that they are working on a Full Frame camera.

This is likely the tenth time Pentax says that they are working on a new Full Frame camera (Source: Pentaxforums). But that timeit’s said that Pentax has already a working prototype. And seeing how hard it is to really compete in the Pro segment against the Nikon-Canon dominance I would not be surprised to see a Mirrorless Full Frame from Pentax. The advantages would be clear:
1) No real competition yet (Leica doesn’t count). And no Canon-Nikon hegemony to deal with.
2) It would have the famous “WOW” factor. It would be a unique product and certainly many would look at it.

So let’s go Pentax…just (finally) do it! :)

P.S.: It is rumored that Samsung may announce a FF mirrorless in Spring. While more reliable rumors are coming from the Sony front where a new NEX-FF system will be launched in 2014.

Terrific fast Ibelux 40mm f/0.85 coming in E, MFT, M, EOS-M and X mount!

Need for speed? f/0.95 from Nokton or SLRmagic are not enough for you? Than look at that super fast new Ibelux 40mm f/0.85 lens displayed at the Cp+ show in Yokohama! It’s made by Kipon and the German company IBE. It will come in July in E, MFT, M, EOS-M and X mount! Price hasn’t been decided yet but it should be somewhere between 950 and 1200 Euro. This is the fastest lens ever released for a modern digital mirrorless system! If you have any doubt about the real final image quality than you should know that the German company IBE (Click here) has a long history of very high quality video lenses. So let’s hope the lens is somewhat decent at full aperture. But at f/0.85 aperture and 40mm aperture I can imagine myself expressing plenty of badwords before I can manage to focus on the right spot!

P.S.: Save this search on Slidoo to get notified when it’s available on eBay.

 

Canon admits: We haven’t sold as many EOS-M cameras as expected…

Dpreview posted an interview with Masaya Maeda Managing Director at Canon. And he just said two interesting things about the EOS-M system

1) The Canon EOS-M didn’t sell as expected, but has good market shares in Japan and South-East Asia
2) Nevertheless there will be new lenses for the EOS-M system within 2013.

And one more prediction comes from MR-Maeda: There will be “an increase in the number of full-frame models”. Sure about it Mr. Maeda??? Micro Four Thirds shows us how successful the exact other direction is.

New Sony E-mount roadmap. And new Fuji X cameras update.

Sony just posted that image of the E-mount roadmap and promises to release more than five new high quality E-mount lenses within 2013! That includes a new Zeiss and a new G lens! And they also say that from now on you can expect a minimum of five new E-mount lenses to be launched every year. Sounds great!

And there is an important Fuji news too. They just released the new firmware for both X cameras:
Fuji X-E1 firmware 1.04 (Click here to visit the download page).
Fuji X-PRO1 firmware 2.03 (Click here to visit the download page).

Double MFT news. New “hidden” E-P3 successor and New Nokton 42.5mm f/0.95.

Finally a tiny bit of excitement at the CP+ show in Japan :)
First, Olympus showed that “hidden” Olympus E-P3 camera successor. This is actually the only new camera announced at CP+ show this year. Of course, there is a small detail that we actually don’t know any detail about it :)

The only real serious complete announcement comes from Cosina-Voigtlander. They just displayd the new 42.5mm f/0.95 lens. What a nice lens!