Above: Leaked Panasonic S1rII info

This is when to expect the official product presentations:

Sigma: Feb 25, 1pm Berlin time (maybe a new 800mm f/6.3)
Zeiss: Feb 25, 2pm Berlin time (Otus 50 and 85mm f/1.4 RF-E-Z mount lenses)
Panasonic: Feb 25, 3pm Berlin time (Lumix S1rII, 44MP, 40fps, 8k)
Sony: Feb 26, 3pm Berlin time (16mm f/1.8 G and 400-800mm f/6.3-8.0 G)

Also Cosina, Viltorx and other lens manufacturers will announce new lenses between Feb 25 and Feb 26.

What you see here is the first image of the Zeiss Otus 50mm f/1.4 lens (preorders open here soon). This is the RF mount version, and as you know E-mount version will be available too. It’s definitely going to be manual focus only and I speculate the price will be around $4,000 like the original OTUS DSLR lens series.

Announcement will happen on February 25 at 13:00 London time!

Lensvid analyzed the official CIPA shipment data and concluded:

2024 was the first year since 2017 where we have seen a year-to-year increase in the number of cameras sold/shipped globally – from 7.8 million in 2023 to 8.3 – an increase of over 6%.

And they attempted a forecast:

Looking ahead to 2025 we don’t expect big changes. If anything we believe that unless some big global changes occur this year (again), we are going to see mostly more of the same with possibly a slight increase in sales (especially with mirrorless cameras at the expense of DSLRs) and maybe even an increase in compact cameras thanks to the interest in the X100 line from Fujifilm (and possibly a new RX1 replacement) and some of the instant cameras (even basic compacts have seen a renewed interest, especially in Japan).

Six years ago, Zeiss announced the last ‘photo-orientated’ lens…it was this massive $4,000 masterpiece. After that, Zeiss only produced industrial, film and smartphone lenses and no more joy for us “pure” photographers. But finally Zeiss posted this official teaser on Instagram which gives us new hopes that we might get a new lens (or lenses) at the CP+ show:

A SonyAlphaRumors source reported this:

Half a year ago, a guy I know who works for Zeiss in PR (and was also involved in marketing for the unfortunately failed ZX1) told me Zeiss is bringing out new lenses in a few months. Now if you look at zeiss imaging on instagram they are teasing something with an owl, so I guess it might be something Otus line related. May guess is an Otus line for mirrorless cameras as E-Mount and the like.

So it definitely sounds like we are getting new photo-oriented Zeiss lenses soon!

Topaz announced the new Photo Ai 3.5 (Click here) and the new Gigapixel 8.2 (Click here) updates.

Press text

We’re excited to announce another major update to Photo AI with a new take on our lighting enhancement, a new way to run Super Focus on any machine, crash recovery, and more!

• We’re announcing a version 2 of Adjust Lighting which is vastly improved to deliver a more natural, vibrant, and reliable results across the board.
• Now anyone can run Super Focus in the cloud at lightning speed on any device, even if you don’t have a good GPU.
• And for those who can, Super Focus now runs 40% faster on Apple devices. This combines with our previous speed boosts – it is now faster than ever.
• If you encounter a crash with Photo AI, your session and work is now saved with crash recovery so you can get back to creating beautiful images.

The Gigapixel v.8.2 update now has batch Cloud Rendering, faster speeds on Mac, improvements to the Redefine model, and more.

• High creativity Redefine Cloud Rendering result improvements
• Batch process multiple images at once with Cloud Rendering
• Redefine is now 2x faster on Mac (latest MacOS 14 or 15 required for use)
• Upscale images based on their longest side

KORIN launched a new AntiTheft But resistant camera bag on Kickstarter (Click here). They have launched successful campaigns in the past, and I’m sure this one will sell well too. If you want the ultimate peace of mind, watch this video to see how it works: