GADGET REVIEWS Just another GADGET NEWS

Olympus SLR boss Toshiyuki Terada has said that the company will make no more entry-level SLRs. Speaking in an interview, Terada said that “We do not have concrete plans to replace the E-620 and other recent SLRs.”

But don’t worry, Olympus isn’t about to dump the SLR category altogether – yet. While Terada says that “the entry level SLR class can be completely replaced by the Pen system in terms of performance,” the company will continue to support the higher-end SLR market for the immediate future.

In fact, Olympus plans on adding ever more powerful cameras to the Pen lineup and sending all of its customers, even the pros, over to the mirrorless Micro Four Thirds format. And that’s not all. Olympus is also planning on a new range of high-performance compacts.

The first of these cameras will appear next year and will have a very fast lens and “good image quality in comparison to other compacts.” It will also have an electronic port that will be compatible with existing Micro Four Thirds accessories, such as the plug-in optical viewfinders. It seems that the sensors will be smaller than those found in the Micro Four Thirds bodies, but the machine translation (from Polish, which I find impossible) makes this unclear. Any Polish readers care to help out?

I guess there are no surprises here. The mirrorless format is better than an SLR for the majority of photographers, and Olympus has always been a leader in next-gen camera tech. One thing is certain: now that film-shackled camera design is finally being abandoned, we might start to see the full potential of digital photography.

We talk to Toshiyuki Terada of Olympus [Fotopolis via Photorumors via Photography Bay]

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Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Miquel ngel Garca, head of Olympus Europe, has stated that his company will no longer make new Four Thirds lenses. In Japan, the smaller, mirrorless Micro Four Thirds cameras have already captured 40% of the market, and these cameras and their smaller lenses will be Olympus focus in future.

Garca spoke to Spanish site Quesabesde at this year’s Photokina show, and the whole interview is worth reading (it’s in Spanish, but Google’s translation is pretty good for once). While you will of course still be able to buy existing Four Thirds lenses, and Olympus hasn’t yet said it is giving up on Four Thirds bodies (like the brand-new E-5), it is clearly moving away from SLRs altogether. In fact, Garca thinks that interchangeable-lens compacts will break the Nikon-Canon duumvirate of the global camera market.

“But it is very important to have broken the DSLR market status quo” says Garca, “There are two brands that for years have been allocated 80% of the global market. And this will change.”

Olympus is, in some ways, like the Apple of the camera industry. Since the original half-frame Pen film camera, through the tiny SLRs it has made over the years and the Trip series of high-end compacts, Olympus has been an innovator. Garca mentions that his company was the first to add sensor-cleaning and live-view to its cameras. But Olympus is even more like Apple in its willingness to drop old technologies when it sees they are dying.

I have mentioned before that the SLR is destined to be a niche tool, something for professionals who need its flexibility, while the rest of us switch to mirrorless compacts. The commenters on that post vehemently disagreed, but it seems that at least one camera company thinks the same way.

No estamos desarrollando ms pticas Cuatro Tercios [Quesabesde]

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Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Samsung’s new NX100 is a cut-down version of its mirrorless NX10, coming on a like a compact camera to the NX10’s slimline SLR design. Like its older brother, the new camera has an APS-C-sized, 14.6 megapixel sensor and shoots 720p video. What it lacks is the bigger camera’s electronic viewfinder (although Samsung will sell you an add-on which slots into the hotshoe). But that’s not the point. The real news is in the lenses, which use something called “i-Function” to make the camera easier to use.

I-Function puts buttons on the lens itself. Hit the switch and you can then cycle through settings like white-balance, ISO, shutter speed, aperture and exposure compensation, controlling them by turning the focus ring on the lens. Yes, it has taken years of research and innovation (the word “innovative” is used six times in the press release) to finally put an aperture ring back on the lens, just where it had sat since time began.

Samsung is also changing the descriptions of its lenses. Now you can buy a “landscape lens” or a “portrait lens”, and these i-Function lenses will tell the camera what they are so the camera can configure its own settings. This is called lens-priority mode, and compatible lenses will have little icons on them to let you know just what they are. I really like the on-lens control idea, but the auto-settings business seems a little gimmicky, and maybe even pointless on a camera clearly aimed at an enthusiast, not a point-and-shooter.

There will be accessories, too. Joining the viewfinder will be a GPS unit, and there are two lenses at launch, a 20-50mm 3.5-5.6 zoom and a 20mm 2.8 pancake lens. Other NX lenses will work, too, but you don’t get the fancy new features.

Pricing and availability are yet to be revealed. Given that an NX10 can be had in a zoom kit for $700, my guess is that the street price will be $500 to $600. The camera will come in black and (as seen in the gallery below) brown.

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NX product page [Samsung: Not yet listing NX100]

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Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Olympus has revealed two new lenses today, both for the Micro Four Thirds format. One is a 40-150mm 4.0-5.6 which will sell for just 330 when it is launched in October. This has a silent AF-motor for movie-shooting but is otherwise rather pedestrian thanks to those mediocre maximum apertures.

The other lens is way more interesting. It too has rather poor light-gathering abilities when wide-open (4.8-6.7), but that is excusable as it runs from 75-300mm. In 35mm terms, that’s a 150-600mm monster. Still not impressed? The lens weighs just 430-grams (15-ounces) and is only 116mm (4.6-inches) long.

For comparison, look at some SLR lenses. Nikon’s longest reaching zoom is the 200-400mm 4, which weighs 3360-grams or a wrist-breaking 7.4-pounds and measures 365mm or 14.4-inches. That, though, is still short of the Olympus’ 600mm far-end. To get to that number, you need to choose a prime lens from Nikon.

The Nikkor 600mm 4 weighs five kilos (11-pounds) and is a John Holmesian 166mm (17.5-inches) in length. To put that in perspective, the diameter of the Nikon is almost four times the length of the Olympus. Also, the Nikon will cost you $10,300.

This astonishing difference is due only to the lack of a mirror in the Micro Four Thirds cameras, and the smaller sensor (half the size of a 35mm-frame and around two-thirds the size of a typical DSLR). These lenses would have been possible on Leica rangefinders, too, but were impractical as there was no way to see through the lens and frame your shot. Digital live-view has changed that.

The 75-300mm Olympus will cost just 900 ($1,140, but certainly less when sold in the US) and will be in stores in December.

Olympus releases M.Zuiko Digital ED 75-300mm lens [DP Review]

Olympus introduces M.Zuiko Digital ED 40-150mm lens [DP Review]

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews