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Panasonic generates X series electronically focused lenses

Isn’t there something missing? Naw. It’s just in a collapsed state. Similar to the design of Olympus’s M.Zuiko 14-42 I and II, Panasonic’s LUMIX G X VARIO PZ 14-42mm/F3.5-5.6 ASPH./ POWER O.I.S. stores itself for enhanced portability and compactitude. Yup, compactitude.

This new designation, X, indicates this and the LUMIX G X VARIO PZ 45-175mm/F4.0-5.6 ASPH./POWER O.I.S. are electronically focused, you know, like camcorders or point and shoots. The GF3x, when it ships, will be a good, wholesome GF3 bundled with the X 14-42.

 

More photos after the break.

 

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Sony Handycam NEX-VG20 Completes Sony Announcements

That handsome piece of tech is the final bit of today’s Sony media blitz, the Handycam NEX-VG20. The successor to the NEX-VG10, this camcorder likewise mounts any NEX lens up front to power the whole optical train. It’s got a 16 megapixel APS sensor in there, presumably a tuned version of the one power the NEX-5N EVIL. It can use that sensor for either HD video or grabbing stills. it records 24p or 60p in the AVCHD format. The rest of the stuff inside is such a blitz of Sony marketing mumbo jumbo that I can’t help but recreate the key terms below for your enjoyment:

  • Cinema Tone Gamma™
  • Cinema Tone Color™
  • Quad Capsule Spatial Array Microphone
  • Xtra Fine LCD™ 
  • TruBlack™ technology 
  • built-in Optical SteadyShot™
Trademark-fest aside, Sony has also tweaked the ergonomic and usability of the camcorder, moving the fucntion dial so it can be used with the LCD closed, “hard” touch buttons for better haptic feeback, a redesigned carrying handle, etc…
It’ll come packaged with the SEL 18-200 for around 2200, or body only for closer to 1600. Press release after, you guessed it, the jump.


Sony Adds 3 E Mount Lenses, a New A-to-E Adpater, and New EVF

In addition to the two nex NEX bodies, Sony is further expanding its NEX system with a few news lenses, a new Alpha mount adapter using the same pellicle technology as their SLT Alphas, and a new FDA-EV1S external viewfinder with the vastly improved 2 million dot (anyone tired of reading that yet? I’m certainly tired of typing it, anyway) OLED 0.5″ display buried inside.

The most exciting of the three lenses is probably the one bearing the name of Mr Carl Zeiss instead of the Sony brand, and this one is the CZ Sonnar T* E 24mm f1.8. See pros, I told you there’d be some nice stuff to perk up that NEX-7 here.

The other two lenses are both Sony branded, and are both “OSS,” indicating they add in-lens stabilization to the mix. The first is the E 50mm F1.8 OSS, which works out to a 75mm 1.8 portrait prime. The other s the more pedestrian E 55-210mm F4.5-6.3 OSS, which exists as the consumer-level telephoto compliment to the 18-55mm kit lens.


If you’ve got a bunch of Alpha or Minolta A glass around, but don’t like the crippled AF functionality offered by the current mount adapter, Sony’s new mount adapter has the solution to your woes. It has Sony’s SLT semi-translucent mirror built in, which can direct a portion of the light to an autofocus sensor, which is also built in. It is named, in a rare moment of lucidity for the camera industry, the LA-EA2, or “Lens Adapater, E to Alpha, revision 2.” Craziness.



Sony Announces Pro-Geared NEX-7 EVIL


Sony is expanding its NEX line upwards with the new NEX-7. Notable (and welcome) additions to this pro-geared NEX model are a fatter, chunkier grip and a built-in 2 million dot 0.5″ OLED electronic viewfinder. The kind you actually put your eye up to when you want a more stable shooting position and to block sunlight so you can check framing and exposure better. Right there on the back, next to the usual 3″ LCD.

The NEX-7 appears to share similar 24 megapixel sensor as the A77, but tops out at a piddling 10 frames per second (it fixes both AF and AE at the beginning on continuous shooting, unlike the Alpha models). The simple controls of the other NEX models expand for the better on the NEX-7, with the addition of two command dials on the top shoulder in addition to the jog wheel around back, forming what Sony is branding (because Sony, like Apple, brands everything) its “TRINAVI” user interface.

The LCD around back is the same 3″ 921,000 dot found on this entire generation of Sonys, and it’s of the tilt flavor. The “Photo Creativity Touch” mode is gone here, Sony assuming if you’re after a camera of this spec you’re probably not looking to have your hand held along the way. The body will be made of well-finished metal, like the other models below it. The NEX-5 felt like it could be used to beat up muggers in a pinch, and then document the incident for the cops after, and I expect no less from this NEX-7. All the usual Sony features are shoved in there as well (3D, Sweep panorama, 1080 video, smile detection, yadda yadda yadda.) There’s no in-body IS on the NEX seires, you’ll have to look to the new lenses if you need to fix those caffeine jitters (like yours truly).

The NEX-7 seems like a really cool camera, and later this year you’ll be able to find out if it lives up to the specs for $1200, or $1350 if you need an E mount 18-55 to get started. Hard core pros, though, might skip the 18-55mm until they’ve read about some of the new lenses announced for the E system in my next post.

Pictures and press release after the jump, as always.

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Sony Updates NEX-5 with NEX-5N

Next up in our day of announcements is the Sony NEX-5N, which suggests that this is more a tweak to the NEX-5 than an actual replacement model. Which means I’ve got to dig up a comparison table here for you all.

But, before we get into that, some information about the NEX series. The NEX cameras are Sony’s interchangeable lens compacts, sometimes called EVILs (Electronic Viewfinder, Interchangeable Lens). These cameras lack the reflex mirrors of DSLRs, but have DSLR sensors. As a result, they have DSLR quality in smaller, compact bodies, but lack an optical viewfinder. The lack of viewfinder is handled with full-time Live View via the rear display, or with electronic viewfinders that use smaller displays to mimic the traditional optical viewfinder.

So, now then, the NEX-5N:

/tr>

Spec NEX-5 NEX-5N
Megapixels 14 16.1
 Sensor Size  APS-C (1.5x crop)  APS-C (1.5x crop)
 Mount Sony E  Sony E
 LCD  Tilting 3″ 920,000 dot  Tilting 3″ 921,600 dot
 HD Video  1080  1080
 3D/2d Sweep Panorama  Yes  Yes
 Continuous Shooting  7fps  10fps
 ISO  100-12,800  100-25,600
“Photo Creativity Touch” No Yes

So, that’s the bulk of the notable stuff. That “photo creativity touch” is a simplified display menu to help people unfamiliar with the technical aspects of photography to get better photos by controlling things like depth-of-field and not things like “aperture.” Sony’s also claiming the AF performance is improved over the non-N model. The NEX-5 uses all NEX accessories, including the older Alpha lens adapter and hotshoe mounted electronic viewfinder. Although, you’d probably rather use the newly announced ones, which add a translucent mirror and AF to the mount adapter and switch the EVF over to a stupidly sharp 2 million dot OLED one.

The NEX-5N will cost either $600 or $700, depending on whether you need an E-mount 18-55mm or not. More pics and press release after the jump.

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One New Alpha Lens: DT 16-50mm f2.8

This is a quickie before we move on to the NEX/E-system announcements from today, but in addition to two Alpha cameras (the SLT-A65 and SLT-A77), Sony has added one lens to its Alpha line-up, in the form of the DT 2.8/16-50mm SSM. As always, the name says it all, if you know the code. Slipping on my Super-Special-Secret-Sony Decoder Ring here, I can tell you that DT means this is for APS-C bodies only, no full frame. As such, it’ll always be subject to a 15x crop and winds up looking the same as a 24-75mm. The f2.8 constant aperture is self-explanatory and shows that this is a serious lens despite being crop-only. The last part, SSM, just lets you know it uses super-sonic motor focusing, for fast and quiet AF.



Six new Coolpix cameras announced today! Hot Dog! Part 3-in-1

Before we get to the P7100, let’s rub a peeper over the S6200, S8200, and S100.

The S100 is a touch-screen compact packing a 16MP CMOS sensor, lens specs that look similar to the AW100 (28-140 equiv, f/3.9-4.8), optical image stabilization, and MPO format 3d images. That touch-control screen is a 3.5″ 820,000 dot OLED. Shiny.

The S6200 is a compact sporting a 10x optical zoom (25-250 equivalent, f/3.2-5.8) in a 1″ x 2.3″ x 3.7″ frame. The LCD screen is 2.7″ diagonal and holds 230,000 dots.

The S8200 is a compact SuperZoom -and by Super I mean 14x Optical Zoom (because digital zooming is still kinda baloney) – which makes for a 25-350mm f/3.3-5.9  equivalent lens.  Shooting modes like HDR, Easy Panorama, and 1080p HD video all make an appearance.  Pictures after the break.

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Sony Finally Replaces A700 with SLT-A77 Translucent-Mirrored Camera

We’re going to continue our announcement party today with the SLT-A77, but first we need to have story time. So, fluff those pillows, grab a juice box, and gather ’round.

The year was 2007, and I’d just begun my tenure as Roberts’ resident web guru. It was an exciting year for the digital world. Canon had announced their EOS-1D Mark III, Nikon had announced the D40, their first true consumer DSLR, Olympus announced the E-410 and E-510 twins and with them the return of live view and the introduction of the interactive rear menu, and Sony finally released its first DSLRs after having acquired the failing Minolta brand: the quirky entry-level A100 and the prosumer A700.

Since then, Sony has announced 20 Alpha models. They have added full-frame cameras, and invented the pellicle-mirrored SLT series. But it took them until today, 4 years, for one of those Alphas to finally replace that A700.

So, was it worth that kind of wait? A lot has changed since the A700 hit the market. Live view is no longer seen as a rare gimmick, but now a de facto gimmick. Full-frame has become a prevalent consumer product. Nikon wowed the world with its 51-point AF 3D matrix that acted more like magic than what we knew of AF at the time. Olympus and Panasonic shook things up by announcing a new breed of camera that had the DSLR sensor–but not its mirror–in a point-and-shoot sized body. The megapixel race died off in favor of the high ISO race. HD video in DSLRs became a thing, and then became the norm.

So, after all that, what’s the A77 bringing to the table?

Well, right off the bat it’s using Sony’s new-fangled fixed mirror technology, which allows for traditional fast phase-detection AF, but since the mirror isn’t flapping around it can keep focusing while shooting and can shoot notably faster. It also means there’s no optical viewfinder, and instead there’s an electronic one piping out the sensor’s full-time live view.

In this case, that electronic viewfinder is a 0.5″ OLED one (not LCD) with 2 million friggin’ dots of resolution. And that continuous shooting rate is a very commendable 14 frames per second (which was unheard of when the EOS-1D Mark III claimed to reach it back in 2007, and hasn’t been seen since). It’s got 24 megapixels, 19 AF points, a 3″ 921,000 dot tilt/swivel LCD, ISO 50-25,600 expanded (100-16,000 native), 1080 video with a built-in mic over the pop-up flash, a shutter life of 150,000 actuations, and a maximum shutter speed of 1/8000 second. There’s a weather-sealed magnesium body wrapped around it all, with a top-deck LCD and available grip for a second battery. It also includes Sony’s now-typical sweep panorama and 3D shooting modes, as well as all the face-detection bells-and-whistles you could want. And, there’s GPS built in to geotag your photos, no accessory or dongle required.

Interested parties should look into stashing away $1400 for the body only, or $2000 if they’d like to buy it with the newly announced 16-50mm f2.8 DT standard zoom (DT means it’s crop sensor only, and with Sony’s 1.5x crop that’s give it the same field-of-view as a 24-75mm). But, since you’ve had four years to save up, that shouldn’t be so hard, right?

More images and a press release after the jump.

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Six new Coolpix cameras announced today! Hot Dog! Part 2

And now we’ll take a look at their newest Coolpix with an integrated projector. Those of you with dull lives and long memories may remember the first Nikon with projector and the video Derek and I generated for it .

Ah, the sweetness of things past.

The S1200pj has a lot more going for it than the initial offering. For one it’ll take video input from an assortment of Apple iProducts – the iPhone®, iPad®, iPod touch®, iPod nano®, and iPod® photo. Pretty much any flat surface can become a 5′ diagonal display for your comicbook reader or any video not streaming via Flash.

Pictures after the break.

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