As you all know, Steve Jobs passed away. I have to say I am not a huge Apple fan, there are things I like about Apple and things I do not like. But I don’t want to talk about that right now. What I will miss from Steve Jobs is the ability and the courage to create something “new”. He didn’t fear to create something unexpected, unexplored and most of the times something very simple and easy.

And this is what I sometimes miss in the camera industry. Micro Four Thirds was one of those (few) great inventions that moved me to create that website. But I still see to much fear in the eyes of  Panasonic and Olympus (but also other camera makers). It looks like they are all taking boring “calculative” decisions. That’s the wrong way to become successful. Apple was almost dead as company back in the nineties, with no vision and almost no hope. A couple of right decisions, with very clean and revolutionary ideas brought them back to live and success. So please camera makers, there is so much you can do right now! Do not fear, just do dream a bit more!

P.S.: Here are just a couple of things I think you should work on:
– Social integrated cameras (for low-end consumer)
– Easy and simple menus with less complicated options and expandable via a sort of APP store
– Software (APP store) and hardware (modular) expandeable cameras
– Large sensor mirrorless system (See Fuji X)

And so on…

Our friend Seb farges made the new video yous ee on top: “I’ve found on Ebay for 41€ a [shoplink 25880 ebay]Berthiot anamorphic 2X lens[/shoplink]. I have attached it to a C-mount Fujian 35mm 1.7 with a ring and scotch tape ([shoplink 25881 ebay]The lens is in Stock here on eBay [/shoplink]). The result is, at my opinion, very sharp, event @ the 1.7 Fujian aperture I’ve always have on this movie. When I put it on the Fujian, the picture goes wider, maybe going from 35mm to 16mm. I do not use ETC at all, and there’s a very light light vignetting. I’ve streched it with Premiere in post production with the “transformation effect” with 50 scale height, it seems to be the good ratio (2x lens = 2.66:1 format). This ratio is like this because it’s a 2X on a 16/9 720P. I’ll try on the 4/3 VGA Anamorphic hacked GH1 next time, the ratio will be look more like a regular 2.66.”

New Waterproof housing for the E-Pm1 and E-PL3 at DC.watch.

Subal housings for Panasonic GF2 and GF3 at Wetpixel.

Shana Tova by Megapixel.co.il (happy new year in Hebrew). P.S.: Shana Tova to all our jewish readers!

Have you heard about the 4/3 to m4/3 adapter by Viltrox? Me not! But one of our readers sent us the link to those adapters: http://www.viltrox.com/index.php?c=msg&id=148

pt4pano developed a special adapter for MFT-Cams to take full spheric panoramas. Look here, here and here.

Olympus PEN Mini E-PM1 : Promo Lollipops! (Openpn).

Now guys, abandon your hopes. Fuji really shaked (or shocked!) the world now and will do their own mirrorless system. They will not join m43 for now! And what’s so special with Fuji’s system? They will make a mirrorless system with ueber-large sensor that will deliver an image quality higher of that delivered by any full frame(!!!) system!!! You can see the official presentation at DC.watch if you don’t believe it! The resolution and Signal-to-Noise ratio will top all current full frame sensors. There are no detailed info about the sensor size and specs but they promised that they will show a mockup at the CES event in January. Now let me say chapeau to Fuji! They really now how to shake the digital camera world. First with the [shoplink 19929]Fuji X100[/shoplink] and now with a complete high-end mirrorless system. I wish Olympus and Panasonic would have such a courage!

P.S.: This could be a real challenge for Leica!

One more deal news: The Fuji X100 is in Stock at Amazon for the normal price (Click here)!

It is official! Fuji just announced that they will launch a new interchangeable mirrorless system in Spring 2012. There are no info yet about specs and price. So we still don’t know if they will join the Micro Four Thirds system or not! Fuji said they will reveal the specs before the launch only and that the clear goal is “to archieve the highest image quality possible“!

Damn, I really hope they join m43! We would archieve three important goals with Fuji, new different styled cameras (high quality a là [shoplink 19929 ebay]Fuji X100[/shoplink]), new lenses and a new sensor partner for Olympus!

P.S.: There is still no official press release on Fuji’s website but it should come any time soon. The image I posted on top is from the current fxied lens [shoplink 19929 ebay]Fuji X100[/shoplink].

UPDATE: I found two german press releases at SystemKameraForum and Photoscala.

Yasuhara (Click here) announced a new fisheye lens for Mirrorless cameras (and I bet they meant Micro Four Thirds too). It will be called “Madoka 180” (180 degrees). The image on top shows on of the two image samples you can find on their website. Click on image to view the full size version.

So after the [shoplink 14820]Panasonic 8mm fisheye lens[/shoplink], after the amazing tiny [shoplink 25327 ebay]Samyang 7.5mm fisheye lens[/shoplink] we will get our third fisheye from Yasuhara. Hm, is it not to much? Good that Olympus dropped the fisheye lens they had on the 2011 m43 lens roadmap :)

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The Panasonic lens costs around 600-700 dollars/Euro and is available at [shopcountry 14820].
The Black Samyang 7.5mm lens is available on [shoplink 25325 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink].
The Silver Samyang 7.5mm lens is available on [shoplink 25326 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink].

Our friend Vitaly Kiselev asked me to promote two of his new “actions” on Personal-View.com. I am glad to help him!

First there is a design contest: http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/1036/unique-design-your-own-gear-contest. The cool thing is that the “Winner receive the item made according to his design. And grants company right to produce such items in large scale if they like to.”

And than you can find 24 hours deals at http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/1029/catchit-deals-one-day-only-renew-each-day#Item_1

Travis made the video on top and sent me the following text (Thanks!): “Here is a video shot entirely with a hacked GH2(34 mb/sec no adverse affects settings) and the new m4/3s [shoplink 23110]25mm F1.4[/shoplink] and [shoplink 23577]45mm F1.8[/shoplink] lenses. Every clip was shot in 720p @ 60 FPS so that I could do slow motion for some of the clips. With streaming videos you can’t tell the difference between 720p and 1080p. In fact it is pretty hard to tell the difference between 1080p and 720p in the original files.

There is only one clip in the entire video that was color graded in post processing. See if you can pick it out. The rest of the clips were either in Vibrant mode with all auto settings or in shutter priority mode with the smooth profile(-2 sharpness and noise reduction).

I had the 14mm F2.5, 20mm F1.7, 25mm F1.4, 45mm F1.8, and 14-140mm lenses with me. However, the 25mm and 45mm lenses were the only ones that could give me the shallow depth of field I was looking for in this video. It is not ultra shallow like a full frame camera can do but I think it gives a nice affect.

The 25mm F1.4 is a must have lens for video. It is simply fantastic for nice sharp videos with rich color. The 45mm F1.8 is great too. However, neither of these lenses have image stabilization so you need to have a steady hand to shoot hand held  videos like these.

I got the 25mm F1.4 from H and B digital last week. They had great customer service and their next day air shipping was a reasonable price. I got the 45mm F1.8 from Samys.com. They are an equally good company for customer service but their next day air shipping is more expensive since they are on the other side of the country from me. It was well worth the $1060 for these lenses though. They really legitimize the m4/3s format because they now have almost a complete set of lenses across all of the necessary focal lengths.”

How the GH2 is still top dog for video quality (EosHD).

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS22 review (TechRadar).

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS18 Review (Photographyblog).

Some pics taked with a G1 (for land pictures) and a GF1 (for underwater pictures) at www.toukan.fr.

A triple PEN and GF review at Colorfoto.de: E-P3 test, E-PL3 test and GF3 test.