Panasonic announcing Full Frame mirrorless !!

Fuji is into medium format so not sure how motivated they might be to 'fill the gap' between APS-C and that? Olympus has long been rumored to be releasing a new 'high end' camera in early 2019. Few rumors as to nature of Oly offering though. Obviously in the film era Olympus was known for the quality of their optics and compact size of their 35mm cameras. Whether they have the resources to duplicate that in FF mirrorless is questionable without some sort of partnership. No news of any kind out of Pentax!?
 
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The problem all these companies have is that they lack an existing FF DSLR userbase to move across in the fashion of Canon and Nikon.

Perhaps you could argue Panasonic are in a somewhat better position given their position in the video market? a FF version of the GH bodies appealing to high end video use?

I spose using the Leica L mount might well play into that to with users of that camera buying a video body or just the general quality of lenses? whilst it was designed for APSC first I suspect it might have fewer problems than the Sony E-mount as well, throat size is 49mm rather than 44mm so half way to the larger Canon and Nikon mirrorless mounts.
 
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Apr 23, 2018
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Hehe, rumors were correct. So now we have 4 FF mounts for mirrorfree interchangeable lens camera systems.

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Interesting note on "L-mount". According to wikipedia, moutn parameters are 20mm FFD and 48.8mm inner diameter (throat width). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leica_L-Mount

In the L-Mount press release however, "diameter" is stated as 51.6mm (with FFD 20mm). I wonder, whether that is outer diameter rather than "throat width/clear opening diameter" ? German language press release: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13nq7ScgaNGMOz1BZV5GybVfW1yF08eIZ/view
https://www.l-rumors.com/
 
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Apr 23, 2018
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Olympus, Fuji...where are you? Quick, the bandwagon is pulling away!

Oly is definitely screwed and doomed. Even if their largest share holder Sony were to allow them to use E-mount for FF cameras and lenses ... too late now, not enough financing.

Fuji is large and profitable enough to trod on indefinitely and APS-C is under far less pressure than mFT. But they will remain confined to tiny market shares, no matter how many f/1.2 crop lenses they launch. And GFX was a mistake all along - tiny, shrinking market with extremely well entrenched, strong market dominator (Phase One).

Ricoh/Pentax - clearly doomed by now. They missed the mirrofree boat completely. And parent company Ricoh nowhere near as strong as Fuji.
 
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In the last few weeks, we now have a glut of FF mirror-less players. Yet, here are my personal feelings tongue-in-cheek about all of them:

Sony: Format abandonment when under pressure, frequent planned obsolescence, unproven feature bloat and fine print
Nikon: Poor product decision roadmap (1 series, action camera lineups, aps-c compacts), not quite sure what to release, when and for whom
Sigma: Foveon and accompanying strange colors and ergonomics.
Leica: Niche product line, expensive and target market out of the mainstream
Panasonic: DFD unproven and slow compared to the competition. Not sure of the sensor and 4K60 will be yesterday's news by 2019. Competitors will have a serious head-start with a lens system only somewhat fleshed out by 2020 unless people go with the expensive Leica option.
Canon: Product segmentation, obvious feature omission, technological limitations

Well, it's great all of the Japanese manufacturers have one or more things wrong with their products. I consider Leica Japanese in this context given the Pana-Leica involvement in the SL system. FF is a small enough market to begin with to see so many new players simultaneously surface. I'm relying on Sony to put in at least a good 2-3 years fight in this next era so I can recoup my investment on upcoming work in 2019-2021. I am getting comfortable and don't want to jump ship yet..
 
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Jul 28, 2015
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Panasonic: DFD unproven and slow compared to the competition. Not sure of the sensor and 4K60 will be yesterday's news by 2019. Competitors will have a serious head-start with a lens system only somewhat fleshed out by 2020 unless people go with the expensive Leica option.

'Unproven' ? By you maybe.
Slow? Not in my experience. How quick do you need it?
 
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jolyonralph

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Panasonic: DFD unproven and slow compared to the competition. Not sure of the sensor and 4K60 will be yesterday's news by 2019. Competitors will have a serious head-start with a lens system only somewhat fleshed out by 2020 unless people go with the expensive Leica option.

Not now Sigma are in the team. They've already announced next year they'll start selling L mount versions of their lenses. Considering how they produce generic lenses and then bolt on a mount to the lens at the end of the production process (which makes it easy for them to do mount conversions too) it shouldn't be difficult for them to launch pretty much their entire range for L from the start.

And they have SA mount and EF mount adaptors to L coming too.

If the're smart they'll do a Nikon F mount G autofocus adaptor too and then they could have the only system that would be able to autofocus with lenses from Sigma, Canon AND Nikon.
 
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'Unproven' ? By you maybe.
Slow? Not in my experience. How quick do you need it?

I didn't intend to qualify my tongue-in-cheek comments, but I spent a few years shooting m43 and last shot on a E-M1II and GH5. I was talking about its Video AF performance. When shooting with the GH5 I found it was always somewhat unreliable compared to its peers. I spent much time doing my own camera tests before taking it on hired work trying to determine the best settings. I started shooting with the GH5 in March/April 2017. I found out Panasonic finally released firmware v2.3 that fixed those AF issues in June 2018. That's more than a year of poor performing AF. so that was my feeling when I was commenting on DFD in general...
 
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Talys

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Oly is definitely screwed and doomed. Even if their largest share holder Sony were to allow them to use E-mount for FF cameras and lenses ... too late now, not enough financing.

Fuji is large and profitable enough to trod on indefinitely and APS-C is under far less pressure than mFT. But they will remain confined to tiny market shares, no matter how many f/1.2 crop lenses they launch. And GFX was a mistake all along - tiny, shrinking market with extremely well entrenched, strong market dominator (Phase One).

Ricoh/Pentax - clearly doomed by now. They missed the mirrofree boat completely. And parent company Ricoh nowhere near as strong as Fuji.
You do realize that the overwhelming majority of people who are buying ILCs don't actually buy something with a full frame sensor, right?

I think MFT will do just fine. It has a healthy market with fierce defenders and advocates.
 
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Jul 28, 2015
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Oly is definitely screwed and doomed. Even if their largest share holder Sony were to allow them to use E-mount for FF cameras and lenses ... too late now, not enough financing.

Fuji is large and profitable enough to trod on indefinitely and APS-C is under far less pressure than mFT. But they will remain confined to tiny market shares, no matter how many f/1.2 crop lenses they launch. And GFX was a mistake all along - tiny, shrinking market with extremely well entrenched, strong market dominator (Phase One).

Ricoh/Pentax - clearly doomed by now. They missed the mirrofree boat completely. And parent company Ricoh nowhere near as strong as Fuji.

Sony sold half its holding in Olympus 3 years ago - notably when they wanted money to move into medical imaging themselves. Rumours of the demise of Olympus cameras has been around for years so I don't see this as anything new. I think they will continue to defy expectations of the armchair expert.
I think Fuji is happy where they are. They have a very committed bunch of followers and I can see why - to me they have taken over Pentax's role of quirky and doing things their own way and doing it very successfully. I really like their (what some call retro) styling with easily deployed physical dials and I don't think they need to go FF.
Pentax have been slowly withering for years but somehow hang in there - based from what I see on excellent glass.
 
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Oly's press release event was painful to listen to (because it was info sparse and very slow paced) but they intend to focus on high performance small systems and I think they'll have more of that market to themselves soon enough. Their flagship is still my favorite camera to use, fast comfortable and well-featured and the IQ is PDG for a smallish sensor.
If they drop an even faster shooting body with global-shutter sensor into a high end body like the EM1 for their anniversary product in 2019 I'll be on it.
Lots of great lenses in the MFT suite but still waiting for a wide TS option.

Pentax had a very good mirrorless APC years ago. the K-01. Ugly brick of a camera but it worked well with the native K-mount legacy glass. Pity it didn't have even a bad EVF, the rear display was nearly useless in daylight. Their tiny q-mount cameras actually deliver pretty good IQ again for a PnS size sensor, lots of useful features and dang, they're just plain cute! Again, handicapped by lack of EVF.

I haven't played with a Ricoh GR but they have a passionate fan base.

Pentax K-1 is a lot of camera for the $ and IQ and build quality is top notch with more features than you can shake a smart phone at.

What these companies seem to have in common is a lack of marketing!
 
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