In an interview with Reuters Fujifilm’s camera division head Takeshi Higuchi said that Fujifilm may re-enter the interchangeable lens camera market with a product that is fully developed in-house (mirrorless camera and lenses). I already started receiving tips about a possible mirrorless interchangeable lens camera from Fuji.
This just in:
July 1, 2011
Dear Valued PENTAX Customers and Partners,
We would like to hereby inform you that we, HOYA Corporation, have made an agreement regarding the business transfer of our PENTAX Imaging System Business to RICOH Corporation today, July 1, 2011.
The effective date of the business transfer is set for October 1, 2011. The business areas to be transferred as PENTAX Imaging System Business are digital cameras, interchangeable lenses, digital camera accessories, binoculars and security-related products, including R&D, design, manufacturing and sales for those product categories.
This 2001 Pentax roadmap confirms that the Pentax Q and the Pentax NC-1 are just different names for the same camera. Except the two new P&S cameras, there are no other announcements scheduled till the end of the year, but keep in mind that this roadmap is labeled “Compact Product Timeline 2011”.
“Japanese optical glass-maker Hoya said on Friday it would sell its Pentax camera business to copier and printer maker Ricoh , in a deal the Nikkei business daily said was worth about 10 billion yen ($124.2 million).”
Read the details on Reuters and also the notice of sale on Hoya’s website.
Hoya executives said publicly in the past that they would like to sell Pentax on several occasions.
Update – I just received the official press release:
Here are the top 10 most visited PhotoRumors posts for June 2011:
Lytro just just published a brief Q&A session and it seems that we should expect to see the first light field camera by the end of the year:
Hasselblad got new owners and they are planning a “rapid expansion of cutting edge capture products and is set to target new imaging markets”. Read the full press release for more details:
I had to pick a new winner for the Fuji X100 camera from Adorama because the previously announced person did not complete all the required steps in order to be part of this giveaway.
The new winner of the Fuji X100 camera is Michael Penn. Congratulation!
This upside down PDF document contains Q&A on the freshly released Pentax Q camera. Some of the answers indicate that there may not be a second mirrorless camera from Pentax this summer. I did express this concern in previous posts – the Pentax NC-1 and Pentax Q were probably different names for the same camera. Here is the Q&A recap:
I received this email form the person behind a new project called TriggerTrap – see the video below for a better understanding of this product:
TriggerTrap is a universal camera trigger. The device itself can do timelapse photography, and it can trigger your camera based on laser and sound. It can also do non-linear timelapse photography: You can choose to extend or reduce the gap between each photo automatically, to enable the illusion of your animation speeding up or showing down.
With the above, Triggertrap is already a really exciting product, but I think it is made doubly interesting by the Aux input. This will enable photographers to connect just about anything to their camera. Think about it: You press your car horn, it takes a photo. Your phone rings, it takes a photo. The sun rises, it takes a photo. Anything is possible – and that’s why this camera trigger is so eminently hackable and exciting to experimental photographers all over the world!
