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Panasonic GF2 rumored to be announced this week, released early 2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Nov 2010 14:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Panasonic confirms December 27 ship date, $4,995 price for AG-AF100 Micro Four Thirds video camera

Panasonic confirms December 27 ship date, $4,995 price for AG-AF100 Micro Four Thirds video camera originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Oct 2010 01:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Miquel Àngel García, 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.

García 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, García 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 García, “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. García 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 más ópticas Cuatro Tercios [Quesabesde]

See Also:

• Olympus EP-1 Pen Gaining Fans Daily
• Sony Fights Micro Four-Thirds With Lens-Changing Compact
• Cosina Joins Micro Four Thirds Team, Announces ƒ0.95 Lens
• Olympus 600mm Zoom-Lens is World's Tiniest
• 5 Reasons to Ditch Your Digital SLR

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

Olympus isn’t saying much (and that’s understating things greatly), but it’s using this year’s Photokina trade show in order to tease a new integrated compact camera that’s meant to serve an exceedingly narrow niche. So far as we can tell, this new “flagship” compact camera is the world’s first with an “integrated Zuiko lens,” meaning that it’s actually not a Micro Four Thirds rig. We’re still waiting to speak with someone at the company to find out exactly what the purpose is here, but we’re getting the impression that it’s meant to provide extreme resolution in the palm of your hand — no need in grabbing the D3X if you can capture the next LeBron James mural with something this small, right? The press release insinuates that we won’t know much more until CES 2011 (or sometime in Q1 2011, anyway), but at least we know that the accessory port will enable it to play nice with PEN peripherals.

Continue reading Olympus teases Zuiko-equipped compact camera, leaves us desperate for details

Olympus teases Zuiko-equipped compact camera, leaves us desperate for details originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Sep 2010 08:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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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 ƒ3.5-5.6 zoom and a 20mm ƒ2.8 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.

NX product page [Samsung: Not yet listing NX100]

See Also:

• Samsung NX10 Limited Edition in Black and White
• Zero to Hero: Five New NX Lenses Put Samsung in the Game
• Micro Four Thirds
• Sony Fights Micro Four-Thirds With Lens-Changing Compact
• 5 Reasons to Ditch Your Digital SLR

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