Next cheap chinese lens for m43 and NEX (Zhongyi Optics)

Image source: xinhuanet

Not only big and well known companies do produce lenses for mirorrless systems. More and more Chinese companies are now entering the market by offering cheap manual lenses. The most famous of them is certainly which makes the 35mm lenses for M43 and NEX.

Zhongyi Optics from China is developing a 28mm f/2.8 lens for Sony NEX and M4/3, which will be 4 group 5 lenses design and use rotary aperture like the loreo lens in a cap. The size will be similar to the existing 16/2.8. Price will be around CNY 500 (around 80 USD).

“Nikon Coolpix Pro”. Is that the name of the upcoming Nikon mirrorless system?

The image of the mirrorless hoax from April 1th 2001

Exactly ten years ago on April 1th someone invented the nice fool’s day hoax camera you see above. He named the camera “Nikon Coolpix Pro“. The creator of the hoax will be suprised to hear that ten years after Nikon could use the same name for their REAL mirrorless system that will be announced in April! According to one of our new sources Nikon will announce a small sensor mirrorless system based on the current but with interchangeable lenses! This is an unconfirmed rumor and it has yet to be confirmed by trusted sources. The only prove that backups the rumor is the fact that Nikon fulfilled many patents of a mirrorless camera using very small sensors (Example: Patent 20090167927 at freepatentsonline). The sensor could have an approx 2.5x cropfactor.

A small step back:
A month ago a trusted source told us that Nikon will announce a “PRO” mirrorless system in April. If the “Coolpix Pro” rumor is correct than we might did the mistake to think the system would feature at least an APS-C sensor. So will Nikon fool us and simply use smaller than m43/APS-C sensors and call it PRO because it has a lens mount? As one of our friends told us: “having such a small sensor invalidates the PRO naming ;~)“.

A few months ago Makoto Kimura from Nikon said that “We want to propose a domain that is different from SLRs and compacts. We want to create a new market.”. Let’s see if that new tiny sensor mirrorless system will become popular…or not!

Reminder: Also Pentax will launch a small sensor mirrorless system in March (Click here to read more about it).

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A possible mirrorless roadmap for March-June

Time for a rumors resume. What should we expect to be announced within the next few months? The basic baby-graph I made above shows the timetable based on current rumors. As you know rumors are subject to change so don’t expect that to be 100% accurate.

And here is a list of links to the single rumors:
Sony NEX-C3 at SonyAlphaRumors. Zeiss 24mm at SonyAlphaRumors.
Olympus May announcement at 43rumors.
Pentax NC system at Mirrorlessrumors.
Nikon April announcement at Mirrorlessrumors.
Panasonic G3 at 43rumors. Panasonic 25mm at 43rumors.

P.S.: Where are you Canon?

Kodak to Sell CMOS Sensor Business? Another good reason for Leica to use Sony sensors?

We already know that Kodak financial results are getting worse and worse. In an meeting with Wall Street analysts on Feb. 3, Kodak CEO Antonio Perez told that Kodak will likely sell its CMOS image sensor business, which is based in Rochester. Is that another good reason why Leica is shopping for a non-Kodak sensor for their fullframe mirrorless system? Anyway, that news makes the Sony-Leica sensor partnership rumor even more credible…

Samsung shows the upcoming new NX lenses!

I was wondering why Samsung didn’t show anything new at CP+. But here they are the upcoming new NX lenses. Form left to right you have the 50-200mm, 18-200mm , 85mm f/1.4, 60mm Macro, 16mm f/2.8 and the Silver 20mm and 20-50mm lenses. You can find more pictures at SLRclub here and here. Those are all nice lenses but my question now is: Will there be third party lenses too? Sony and Micro Four Thirds just got the support from Sigma, Zeiss and Cosina. So will Samsung do everything alone?

Someone else goes mirrorless….Gizmon!

There is a new and unexpected player in the mirrorless market, Gizmon! The name of their camera is Half-D and you can find more about it at gizmon-image.com. The camera has three different apsect ratio, landscape, square and vertical. Ten different color modes (like sepia) and it can take videos. It comes along a macro lens, three fisheye converters and a “tunnel-effect” lens. If google translate didn’t fool us than the camera shoulg have 2 Megapixels, a 1,5 inch LCD, ISO 100-400, VGA video. And look at the image below…it’s so small! And yes, it really looks like a mini copy of the ! Image samples are available here: cameratalk.jp.

What do you think about it?

Nikon sends a new message in a bottle!

Nikon is again dropping short pieces of messages about their upcoming mirrorless launch. In an Interview at ORF (Austrian television) Wolfgang Lutzky from Nikon Austria said that Nikon would enter the mirrorless market and they could give more news about that at the next presentation of financial results in March. P.S.: Nikon’s financial year ends on March 31, 2011.

That statement fits perfectly with what our sources told us. The new mirrorless ystem will be launched in April!