The tide is coming : ) I mean new mirror-less cameras : ) It started at the end of 2011, and the announcement of V1 and J1 cameras by Nikon was one of the promising signs. The more I think about their new sensor standard, the more I like it. IMHO, Nikon hit a sweet spot with this sensor in term of the image quality and sensor size. I wish they use it in a compact camera.
Canon came out with G1 X big sensor compact. Either Canon was impressed with success of the Fuji X100 camera, or just decided to upgrade their famous G camera line... I wish Canon would use a smaller sensor in such camera, something similar to the sensor used in Nikon 1. First, the lens can be brighter (and I suspect significantly brighter than current F5.8 on the long end of the zoom), and the macro can be better. IMHO, in it's current form the G1 X lacks the most attractive features of advanced compact cameras such as very bright lenses (think Olympus XZ-1 or Fujifim X10) and ability to take pictures at very close distance. Anyway, the release of such camera is great news, and I hope that the other companies will produce something similar (truly compact camera with zoom lens and big sensor).
Fujifilm announced a new "premium" interchangeable lens camera, X-Pro1. Preliminary reports suggest that the image quality is very good, but the price will be high compared to other mirror-less interchangeable cameras. The camera has the hybrid optical viewfinder as the famous X100 (the viewfinders on these cameras are not identical).
It seems that Olympus finally decided to release the advanced micro 4/3 camera. The announcement is expected within the first week of the February. The rumors and speculations about the new camera are quite wild. It seems that Olympus will use a new sensor in the camera. The camera is expected to be weather-sealed because of recent release of weather-sealed M.ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 12-50mm F3.5-6.3 EZ lens. I don't like F6.3 on the long end, but I am curios about the camera because it was rumored that it might take 4/3 lenses... Anyway, the addition of new series of cameras is very welcome development, and I am curious to see "OM-D"-style products.
Hopefully, Samsung will bring the new NX20. The NX10/NX11 look like a very nice cameras to me, so it would be really good to have an updated version. But to be fair, I am not interested in cameras with high number of pixels. I hope Samsung will use an updated viewfinder on their new model.
There are rumors about new line of mirror-less interchangeable lens camera from Pentax. Maybe Sigma will release new compact camera(s) with their Foveon sensor. They just need to crop their new sensor from SD1 and use it in a cheaper DSLR body and a compact camera : ) I hope Nikon will release more things for Nikon 1 system including a small body with knobs and dials :-) The rumors say the company has more than just D800 to announce next month....
I hope that one of the camera makers will produce a camera of my dream: something like Fuji X10 with manual zoom lens and bigger sensor (similar to the size of the Nikon 1 sensor). Make it 10-12 megapixels, use good battery, put two supermacro modes, on both wide and tele end, as Minolta did on A2. Make lens bright and collapsible as on Fuji X10. The optical viewfinder on the X10 while nice is not that useful for me, and I would prefer to have either EVF of hybrid viewfinder. Keep knobs as on mid-range DSLRs: some people like to change the parameters a lot.
Hopefully at some point the camera companies will break the camera stereotypes established with 35mm film cameras. I mean the T shape inherited from film days that is reproduced in essentially every digital camera. The only "improvement" is a collapsible lens, so some cameras look like - (soapbox). It is always puzzled me why digital cameras cannot be build around lens instead of body, with electronic viewfinder on top of lens and tilt monitor on one side, as digital video camera. I think with such design a camera will be quite portable / compact even with bright lens and relatively big sensor.
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