New 1" sensor from Aptina

Aptina has announced a new 14MP 1" sensor with even faster shooting speed. I wish Fuji X30 would have it... I dream about all-in-one weather-sealed camera with good bright lens, viewfinder and supermacro options on both ends of zoom. It does not need to be tiny.  Fuji X10 / X20 is significantly smaller than Olympus C-8080. OK, C-8080 has slightly longer zoom, but Fuji has very bright lens. I don't care about optical or hybrid viewfinder, EVF more than enough.

Fujinon XF55-200mm F3.5-4.8 R LM OIS: announcement, samples etc

Fuji announced the first mid-tele zoom lens with image stabilization for the Fujifilm X system, XF55-200mm F3.5-4.8 R LM OIS. The zoom range is equal to 83-300mm, and the minimal focusing distance is 1.1 meters, so it might have a nice close-up ability. Some people already tested the lens, and it seems that the autofocus speed is on par with XF18-55mm lens - that's very good news for me. The sample photo taken with Fuji XF55-200mm lens are also available. 

It is the biggest and the heaviest lens in their current lineup, 118mm long, 580 grams / 1.28 lb. The lens wouldn't be available for some time. The prices should be around $700 in the US. The lens is positioned between cheap "standard" plastic tele lenses and high quality lenses such as 70-200mm F4 from Canon and Nikon or ZUIKO 50-200mm F2.8-3.5 from Olympus. The XF55-200mm is slightly faster than a typical kit zoom, but the major difference supposed to be in the quality. I cannot recollect any other high quality tele lens for mirrorless cameras except for Panasonic Lumix G X Vario 35-100mm F2.8 OIS but the zoom range is quite different from the Fuji's.

I have ZUIKO 50-200mm F2.8-3.5 SWD lens, and I do like it. ZUIKO is significantly brighter at long end, but Fuji cameras are less noisy, so I can use iso 800 instead of 100 on my Olympus E-30, and in-lens image stabilization may help, too. Generally I am not interested in shallow DoF. The Fuji lens is twice lighter, too.

The solo reason to chose Olympus OM-D E-M5 over Fuji X-E1

Blackfellow Falls | Fuji X-E1 & XF18-55mm

The track goes behind the waterfalls. It was very sunny day but the place (Springbrook national park, near the border between Queensland and New South Wales) got 30-40-50mm of rain in previous couple days. I went on the Twin Falls track, and it was quite wet. Obviously, I kept the camera in the bag near the waterfalls but occasional drops from trees and rocks made a few very unpleasant moments.  This short track passes behind several waterfalls, one cave and several overhanging rocks... In such situation I dream about OM-D E-M5 with 12-50mm lens. Weather sealed camera and lenses....

This year is quite wet in Brisbane. In three and half months the city got close to 800mm of rains, more than half of its annual rainfall. The start of the wet season was pretty dry, but it was compensated later.

Twin Falls | Fuji X-E1 & XF18-55mm