Panasonic mirrorless FF Discussions/News/Rumours

Rebadged Leica SL

This rumour you mean. It is FT4 = rumor from known sources. But how do you know it is better looking then the SL? What do you know? Do you have an NDA?

This is a strange contrast to the (widely hyped) Canon and Nikon FF mirrorless releases - Now we are seeing some really interesting stuff from both Panasonic and Fujifilm (plus a blast from the past with the S3 showing up)...

A couple of questions...

•Which way will the focus ring operate? Leica and Sigma direction is like Sony Canon Olympus Contax. Panasonic direction is like Nikon Pentax Samsung Fuji. Will the Panny lenses focus opposite direction as the Sigma Leicas?

•Why does the weather seal diagram camera show two top control dials, one on each side of EVF hump, but the photo of the camera only has one control dial on the left side?
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I must say, Panny has done a great job imitating the a99/77 body style. They even tout "optimal button layout" showing the AMount style traditional thumb swing arc motion. Almost looks like an a900 and a99II had a baby and named it Lumix.

EDIT:
I know the focus ring direction can be changed on fly-wire lenses. My Samsung 11-18mm had a firmware update that changed the direction from Sony style to Nikon style (as all other Samsung lenses are). No provision for changing it back.

And my Sony 18-105/4 got a FW update a while back, allowing the zoom ring direction to change with menu option.

I think it would be smart to allow user to select focus and zoom ring direction, along with sensitivity levels, linear, or accelerated. Would be more attractive to move from another brand, and retain my muscle memory. Not that I really have any muscles to speak of, and my memory is kind of fading lately.

Edited by Photosopher - 26 September 2018 at 02:34

waldo_posth wrote: Not to forget Sigma - they have announced to produce an FF-Foveon sensor for L-mount! See here!

Well I hope the engineering is better in the mount camera than their previous attempts.

I hope their software o develop the raw files is better too.

And forget about high ISO work with that model.

I admire the concept of Foveon, but I don't want to buy one of their cameras.

The FF Mirrorless camera category has gone from being scorned and despised to basically over a night being very crowded.
Now it is suddenly the newest, latest and most hot thing in the market!

With a total of SIX companies now to compete in this market, it is hard to believe that all of these would be successes.

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Particularly since not ONE of these new ML FF systems even ATTEMPT to compete with Sony!
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Have anyone, somewhere among all these new mirrorless FF system offerings, found ANYTHING more useful than what is already out there offered by the E-mount FF cameras? Something that is really usefull for most users? Would large bodies and even larger lenses be the right way to accomplish ever lasting blissfull user happiness?

It seems as not one of these new cameras are able to even reach the Me Too-level, since they left out so many things that Sony already have managed to do. So what's the point (for users)?

Instead of trying to focus on what would be most useful for users, they pick out a few things that would be much easier for THEM to do. E.g. one of the complaints agains Sony's Mirrorless FF system is that some of its FF lenses are too big and heavy. Accordingly, Sony have began to focus on reducing weight and size for their lenses (they said that was not their number one priority in the beginning).


And what do all these newcomers do?
"We INCREASE the mount diameter, so we can build HEAVIER and LARGER lenses! Surely that would be enough to get all photo interested people to be completely overwhelmed!

Check the intervju made with President Kazui Ushida 2017-07-07:
"We want to overwhelm with the performance of the lens ..."

Well, since the lenses for Sony E-mount often perform better than the Nikon F and Canon EF lenses, it is perhaps not the MOST important E-mount "issue" to address...


Obviously there may be advantages for Nikon users to get Z6 or Z7, since I don't think there are any good Nikon F to Sony E-mount AF adapter available yet. For Canon EF there are adapters, although not quite as good as with native lenses. But that would be the case for adapting Canon DSLR lenses to Canon mirrorless FF cameras too (or adapting Nikon DSLR lenses to Nikon Z system).

And these new, big, heavy, expensive and optically good lenses (particularly good in the image borders they say) will not have what high IQ lenses need most of all - a focus system as accurate as is needed when increasing lens resolution. Rignt now this accuracy and speed is available ONLY with Sony's dual AF motor lenses and On-chip processing system, which is capable to focus with razor blade precision. What good is a very high IQ lens if the camera isn't capable to nail pin-point focus?

Just to be clear - Nikon Z and Canon EOS R native lenses will, in many cases, be able to focus with better accuracy than their DSLR lenses will be able to do with their cameras with Dedicated AF systems. But they clearly has not the technology to deliver the hair sharp focus precision possible with special dual AF motors and unbelievable effective On-chip AF calculations (which are orders of magnitudes more difficult to do than the "clean" signal coming from Dedicated AF plates) available with Sony mirrorless cameras.

And these 4 newcomers, besides a number of goofies, even left a number of fragile areas undefended, even for the future. E.g. they all make the possibility to design attractive APS-C cameras very improbable. Have they any defence at all against e.g. a possibly coming APS-C mini-A9? Which Sony may find to be a god idea? :-)



Edited by Swede101 - 30 September 2018 at 15:16

The upward pressure has killed 1" interchangeable systems (although Pentax Q seems to still sell in small quantities in Asia, but killed in other markets), and will no doubt increase the pressure of m4/3 systems. But not as hard of APS-C I would say. The number of sold APS-C cameras are still clearly higher than the number of FF cameras - both within the DSLR and the Mirrorless categories (although the value for each sold FF camera is usually, but not always, higher).