In Germany: 8% of all system cameras are mirrorless!

It is very difficult to get an accurate idea about how well mirrorless cameras are selling in european and american markets. Only the japanese market shares exact percentages and we know that almost 40% of all sold system cameras in Japan are mirrorless. But finally the Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung (GfK) studied the german digital camera market. According to their research 8% of all sold system cameras are mirrorless (year 2010)!

In 2010 nearly 10% of all Germans bought a camera. The sales growth was about of 1.05 percent (total of 8.65 million cameras sold). The demand for SLR cameras and system cameras with interchangeable lenses increased up to 960.000 cameras (up 6.7 percent). Analysis shows that the buyer system for cameras with interchangeable lenses preferred are those that previously photographed with compact cameras. Consumers do professionalize their photo equipment constantly and buy all three to five years a new camera.

via Photoscala.

The five new Samsung NX lenses are now official (no surprise)

That wasn’t really a secret anymore. The press release with images have been already posted here two days ago but now it it officially official :)
Samsung will release five new lenses during 2011:
18-200mm F3.5-6.3 ED OIS (May)
16mm F2.4 (July)
60mm F2.8 Macro ED OIS SSA (August)
85mm F1.4 ED SSA (October)
16-80mm F3.5-4.5 OIS (December)


Source: Samsungimaging

Read the whole press release after the break:

Read more

New NX roadmap leaked by Samsung itself!

Image source: Blog.Naver.com

Unlike other mirrorless companies Samsung doesn’t want to make a big secret about their future plans! At a korean presentation (Source: naver.com) Samsung showed a powerpoint presentation with the future camera and lens roadmap! Those are the key points:

1) The NX line will have three categories, NX100, NX10/11 and NXclassic (what is that?)
2) A new 700mm lens
3) New GPS module
4) there will be five new lenses this year. The first to be released is the movie pro 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 (May), than we have the 16mm f/2.4 (July) and than the 60mm f/2.8 and 85mm f/1.4 in August. A fifth lens, the 16-80mm f/3.5-4.5 will be announced within 2011.

You can see the full presentation at Blog.Naver.com.

It sounds like the roadmap we leaked weeks ago is correct. Take a look for yourself (Click on it to enlarge):

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…