First full pciture of the new Olympus OM-D

The first complete image of the new Olympus OM-D E-M5 was leaked by Amazon Japan earlier and has since been removed but not before people were able to grab the image!

What do you think? I love the retro styling for the most part, it certainly looks a lot like some of the classic OM cameras if not most slab styled SLRs of the 60's and 70's. The only thing I'm not sure about is the (hopefully removable) hand grip, I'm sure it will be great in terms of function but it seems at odds with the rest of the styling like it's too modern compared to the rest of the camera.  I really like it on the whole though, retro styling can get boring and overly contrived in some peoples eyes but I think that when done well it looks great, there has been a lot of nice looking retro style cameras recently so this seems to be an increasing trend.

I like the fact that there is a battery grip too, that certainly makes the camera seem more of a serious tool.

Olympus OM-D incoming!

Olympus has begun a teaser campaign for it's upcoming OM-D camera that will become the range topper for their mirrorless cameras. There was a time when Olympus themselves hailed the E-400 series of SLRs as the new OM so I think that speaks volumes about the future of that product line!

Details remain somewhat sketchy but it seems the high end camera will have a 16mp sensor, a high resolution EVF and a magnesium body. It's also certain to be weather sealed following the recent release of the new weather sealed zoom lens. I'm sure it will be a beautiful thing and I hope the sensor can do the rest of the body justice, I used to have an E-420 and while the sensor wasn't so great the camera was very well made and a joy to operate, the finish and perception of quality blew away equivalent Nikon and Canon bodies at the time.

There is a leaked image of the camera over at 43 Rumours which doesn't give away too much but you can see the camera will have a large amount of external controls and retro design touches.

Apparently the camera will be announced officially announced on the 8th of febuary.

Kenko (Tokina) display cool little 400mm mirror lens at CES - PLEASE be good!!

 

Kenko/Tokina displayed a new T-mount 400mm F/8 mirror lens at the 2012 international CES that looks very interesting! The aperture is pretty slow but this helps the lens to be very compact and from looking at photos of the lens attached to a camera it looks small even by mirror lens standards and could possibly be the smallest 400mm lens I've ever seen! Having a T-mount this lens will be adaptable to just about any camera you can think of but will it deliver anywhere like decent IQ?

It seems a lot of people relying on google translate have come to the incorrect conclusion that the T-mount to Micro 43 and T-mount to NEX adapters were the big story when obviously the lens is the big deal! Likewise the $200-250 price estimate applies to the lens and not just the adapter! There is no current release date although it looks like they are aiming to have it on the market some time this year.

I'm very interested by this lens so hopefully it will perform quite well optically but I wont get my hopes up, there are some great mirror lenses out there but not many!

 

Photo from DC.Watch

Sigma to announce two new lenses for Micro Four Thirds AND Sony NEX!

 

Tomorrow Sigma will announce two new lenses for the Micro Four Thirds system and the Sony NEX system, these will be the first third party autofocus lenses available to users of M43 cameras.

There's a 19mm F/2.8 and a 30mm F/2.8, neither of them are particularly exciting in terms of specs but we can forgive that considering how unique they are for the time being, no doubt they are designs that were relatively cheap and easy to make but there's nothing to say they won't give stunning IQ and at least Sigma haven't gone for a really safe bet with a superzoom like Tamron have done with their debut NEX offering.

Sigma make some really fantastic lenses so while I agree these don't look earth shatteringly impressive I have confidence they will combine good value with strong image quality so I'll be looking forward to some reviews and samples!