Hasselblad “hints” a new portable medium format camera development

Hasselblad announced a new $32,995 H6Ds medium format camera. What’s more interesting for us is that CEO Perry Oosting clearly hinted that they are working on a new kind of “portable” medium format camera. He told at ePhotozine:

“The new H6Ds we are launching have the best in class ergonomics in terms of handling, but they aren’t the most portable.. Portability will be key – but how and which ways it will be portable is yet to be announced.”

Sounds likely that this will be Hasselblad first mirrorless medium format camera!

Sony is going really PRO with a new A9 camera!


A Sony A9 rendering (not the real thing)

In just one week SAR got two rumors about a new Sony high end E-mount camera. This should become the new Sony A9. A bigger and more powerful FF camera. Probably the first camera that could play in the league with the very big Canon and Nikon DSLR cameras. Here are the two rumors:

Rumors One:

“The next generation flagship mirrorless camera from Sony will be a giant leap. It will drop a huge bomb in the imaging industry. It will not be A7III or A7RIII. It will be a new model above A7 series. I would say A9 (let’s name it as the new model). So the new A9 will have dual XQD card slot, no CFast version, only XQD. A9 can do UNLIMITED RAW burst, UNLIMITED. The camera wont pause for buffering.”

Rumor Two:

a7Riii the new sensor will be between 70 – 80 Megapixels. They are working on improved IBIS as well. Although officially the new lenses per the 24-70 F2.8 GM and the others have been tested for QC at 60+ Megapixels and 6K+ Video they achieve even better results than that.

Sounds great!

 

Lytro gives up his photobusiness (focus on Virtual reality)

Bildschirmfoto 2016-04-07 um 07.53.57

Backchannel posted a highly emotional post from Lytro Ceo Jason Rosenthal. It’ quite unusual to read about the “personal” struggle of an enterprise. Jason confirmed Lytro will no more “classic” photocameras. They will purely focus on virtual reality instead. And I wanna quote a part of his text where he talks about the hard life of a CEO:

On the good days, building a company feels lonely, scary and confusing. On the bad days, I’ve wanted to vomit and curl up into the fetal position rather than deal with my reality.

We wish you good luck Jason! Long live Lytro!

Support this: The ultimate Test of Lenses!

Bildschirmfoto 2016-04-06 um 08.56.26

Paolo Namias sent me this:

Dear Sirs
I’d like to present to you our project: “The ultimate Test of Lenses”
All the current tests you can read in internet use a camera to test the lenses, but in this way you cannot measure the real performances of the lenses.
Our method is different: we test each lens by itself, we use an MTF optical bench, so the performances we measure are real.
And our software shows how the performances change according to the different sensor’ size.

The interface is very interactive, you choose the aperture, or the focal length, and you see how the performances change.
You can compare different lenses, very easily.

As an independent laboratory, we do no accept advertising. That guarantees even more our independent judgment.
We finance the project by selling the tests at low price (€ 5 each).

At present we achieved a beta version, and we launched a Crowdfunding to complete our work.
I’d appreciate if you would like publish our project to help us to realize the final version in the English language.
With the donations the people get tests saving money.
http://kapipal.com/projects/the-ultimate-test-of-lenses

Our laboratory MTF Lenses LAB was born more than 30 years ago and we have online a database of about 450 lenses, that we constantly enlarge.
But our story begins 122 years ago, when Rodolfo Namias, my grandfather, published the magazine Il Progresso Fotografico, January 1894; he was a researcher, and the magazine was the media to be in contact with other researches in the world.
I join some photos of that old times.

I thank you for your support
Paolo Namias
http://kapipal.com/projects/the-ultimate-test-of-lenses

Bildschirmfoto 2016-04-06 um 08.57.39

Panasonic launches the new GX80 with 5 axis stabilization

Bildschirmfoto 2016-04-05 um 06.45.24

Panasonic announced a nice new MFT camera today. It’s the GX80 with 16MP sensor and new 5 axis stabilization system. The specs in short:

  • 16MP Live MOS Sensor
  • Micro Four Thirds System
  • 2.76m-Dot 0.7x Electronic Viewfinder
  • 3.0″ 1.04m-Dot Tilting Touchscreen LCD
  • UHD 4K Video Recording at 30/24 fps
  • Built-In Wi-Fi Connectivity
  • ISO 25600 and 10 fps Shooting with AF-S
  • DFD AF System, 4K Photo Modes
  • 5-Axis Image Stabilization, Dual I.S.
  • Lumix G Vario 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6 Lens

Store links:
Black GX80/85 at BHphoto. Amazon. Adorama. WexUK. ParkUK.
Silver GX80/85 at BHphoto. Amazon. Adorama. ParkUK.

Previews:
Hands-on at Dpreview. GX80 preview at ePhotozine. Preview at WexUK. Hands-on at ParkCameras. First look at Whatdigitalcamera. Preview at Photographyblog.

Hasselblad Event in Berlin on April 15: New medium format camera priced below the Phase One?

Bildschirmfoto 2016-04-04 um 16.38.29

Hasselblad Germany just confirmed there is an event on April 15. And in the text presentation Hasselblad says that Chief Developer Roland Lord will report about their new products. I guess we will see the new Hasselblad Medium Format Camera with 101 Megapixel Sony sensor! And rumor has it this will be a cheaper camera than the Phase One IQ3 101MP camera.

UPDATE: This should be a H6D-100 with

  • Higher frame rate > 1.5 frames a sec
  • High resolution touch display similar or better than Phase, so that focus checking can be done easily
  • USB 3.0
  • Dual memory slots (CF and SD)
  • Possibly video (720p or 1080p or 4K)

Specs via LL.

date info via Photorumors. Price rumor part via me :)