Sony to launch the NXcamcorder on March 23. Panasonic AG-AF100 gets a serious competitor.

Dear Panasonic, you are no more swimming alone in the pool with your AG-AF100. Sony is ready to launch the new Super 35mm NXCAM on March 23! The Sony will feature a new APS-C Exmor sensor and it will take E-mount lenses. But the real big news is that the NXCAM is fully modular…like a [shoplink 100117]Medium format Hasselblad[/shoplink]! You can add and separate grip, EVF and other useful stuff!

The body alone will be priced under $7000 which sounds good. But we still don’t know how much the accessories will cost (Let’s hope price will be decent!).

Mirrorless market growing worldwide (Japan leads the change)

The GFK Group just relased a few interetsing data about the worldwide mirrorless market:

Japan: “CSC sales in Japan accounted for one third of all changeable lens cameras sold during December and one quarter for 2010 as a whole. The global share of CSCs almost quadrupled in 2010 compared to the previous year to stand at 11%, or almost one million of all changeable lens cameras sold.“

World: “Whilst Japan leads the way, other regions have seen consumers rush to adopt this new camera type. Western Europe (8%), LATAM (19%) and Asia Pacific (18%) have all witnessed a significant increase in share for CSC products.”

With the entries of Pentax and Nikon we can expect an even greater share in 2011. Samsung already said that they expect mirrorless to surpass the DSLR market share within 2015.

Samsungs future at Whatdigitalcamera


The guys from Whatdigitalcamera had a small talk with Samsung. In short those are the key news:

– Samsung will make a 700mm NX lens (which should be released in 2012)
– Samsung says that the mirrorless will surpass the DSLR market in 2015
– Samsung produced 18million lenses in 2010 (really so many?)
– Samsung will release a Super High Definition 4K video camera within 2013

As usual Samsung has big goals but until now the NX sales are very low compared to the more popular Micro Four Thirds and NEX systems. The lens roadmap looks very good but in my opinion they need better sensors and third party lens makers to join NX. Hey Schneider where are your NX lenses?

Fuji goes mirrorless with a digital TX system? What we all hear so in german restaurants :)

An anonymous source just got info about a new Fuji mirrorless camera in a very unconventional way:
“I was sitting in a German restaurant yesterday and listened to a conversation of a Japanese guy with a German guy in -broken – English about Fujifilm working on a digital / like panorama camera with a larger extra wide sensor and the possibility to switch to normal image ratios. The special point was about a nearly doublewide sensor for improving panorama image quality.
Have you heard something about such a camera already?“

So is that the future Fuji TX system? No idea! But it sounds good :)

Links:

Sony has 15% of the DSLR Market Share (NEX-3 discontinued)


Bloomberg reports that “Sony may control about 15 percent of the global market for single-lens-reflex cameras by the end of March, Masashi Imamura, president of the Personal Imaging & Sound Business Group, said in an interview in Tokyo yesterday. ” UPDATE: (Does Sony sum mirrorless and DSLR to reach the 15%?)

And Sony is certain to grow further with the help of new products that will be introduced soon. The next camera should be the NEX-C3 (Source: SonyAlphaRumors). The rumor is backed up by the fact that Sony Japan officially discontinued the [shoplink 100079]NEX-3[/shoplink]!

Leica official statement about the “Mirrorless Rumor”.

Some news from Leica is coming via Amateur Photographer:
“In a statement issued this afternoon a Leica spokesman said: ‘Leica has been producing mirrorless cameras since 1954 (starting with the M3, and even before this, if you consider the screw mount cameras).
‘With the , we have the most compact, full format, mirrorless camera with interchangeable lenses on the market.
‘Of course, we won’t stop with the M9, but it is definitely too early to discuss a successor to this model.’“

What do you think?