A couple of years ago there was that big 3D hype. Panasonic even launched a [shoplink 302598 ebay]special 12,5mm lens for Micro Four Thirds system.[/shoplink] But the hype got killed by the fact that the consumer didn’t care about these kind of products.

But now everything is changing! Micronews reports that for the Pokemon GO game “3D cameras would make a better job at catching the small monsters.”. As a consequence “the share of Lenovo did take a good 10% upward due to this rumor. With the recent release of Phab 2 Pro, Lenovo integrated a PMD made 3D camera making it the first Google Tango enabled phablet.”

The day may come soon where camera manufacturers will make a special Pokemon GO camera????

via Image Sensor World.

Samyang announced the new Full Frame 20mm f/1.8 lens. it will be available for all mounts including Sony E, Fuji X, MFT and even for the “dead” Samsung NX system. There is also a Cine version of the lens with t/1.9 aperture. The price of the non Cine lens is 549€ while the Cine versions cost a bit more 599€.

This is the image of the Cine lens version:

Two mirrorless cameras got marked as discontinued by BH: The Fuji X-A2 and the Panasonic GH3. There will be certainly a new GH5 camera (probably some time after Photokina). But it’s unclear if Fuji will still keep the “A” line still alive…

SAR spotted news on the Japanese site Kakaku. A Sony lens engineer said that Sony is close to launch a new FE lens with STF feature:

Sony’s Smooth Trans Focus (STF) technology has a very unique effect on defocused light sources, changing the way defocused areas appear depending on how it is adjusted. Smooth Trans Focus (STF) employs a special “apodization” element that controls the parts of the image that are not in focus. This does not affect the focused part of the image, only what is out of focus, and is set independently from the camera’s focus and aperture via the STF ring.  

This will be a lens similar to the Fujifilm XF 56mm f/1.2 R APD Lens.

One more thing: I am pretty sure this will not be the only lens Sony will launch at Photokina!

The new CIPA data for June has just been released. And the camera shipments for Japanese manufacturer did hit a new record low in terms of sales number. Of course the Kumamoto Sony sensor production stop is the main cause for this.

It is expected that sales will “normalize” in September-October.