Gear Announcements
Mitakon 135mm F/1.4 Leaked, Possible Nikon Announcement, & Sony 14bit RAW Update Today {Daily Roundup}
Welcome to our roundup series where we will hit on several gear news and rumor topics each day. This gives you a chance to get caught up on all of the day’s news and rumors in one place. Make sure to check back daily for the latest gear news, rumors, and announcements.
Mitakon 135mm F/1.4 Leaks Online
It seems that Mitakon intends on bringing us the fastest lenses possible. According to a new leak, it seems as if the Chinese company will be launching a new 135mm F/1.4 lens in the future, and lens that would no doubt peak the interest of any 135mm fan.
As you would expect, the lens is enormous, and looking at the images it appears that it will come in Canon, Nikon, and Sony mounts at the very least, but given that it is manual focus – other mounts are likely as well.
I mean just look at it on the Sony body in the image above, it’s almost comical. That said, the web res images posted from this lens online look great ( but the jury is still out until we get a production copy and see the RAW files full res). Unfortunately, we have no pricing or availability shared in this leak, so we have no clue how long until this lens is available.
Mitakon’s 50mm F/.95 runs in the $100 range and is not known as one of the best optical performers at that price range. It will be interesting to see what sort of optical performance this new 135mm comes with, and what sort of price tag is attached.
I am a huge fan of the 135mm focal length, the Canon 135mm F/2L is right up there with my all-time favorite lenses, so I will be eagerly awaiting a chance to give this bad boy a try.
What do you guys think of this? Any chance you may think of adding something like this to your kit?
Possible Nikon Announcement Coming Tomorrow?
The rumors say that there may be some sort of surprise Nikon product announcement tomorrow, but as of this posting they have little idea what it could be.
According to the report over on Nikon Rumors, things have been really quiet on the Nikon rumor front until they came across this post from European camera store PCH, which indicates some sort of new Nikon equipment coming on Monday the 19th.
The first issue is that today is Sunday the 19th, making tomorrow the 20th. But the other thing is that could this be a case of something lost in translation? Couldn’t they just be getting a shipment of new Nikon stuff on Monday.
NR seems pretty sure that all the major announcements (D5, etc) won’t be coming until the spring. So that leaves surprise announcements and consumer level stuff. It is also possible Nikon makes some development announcements like they did with the 24-70mm VR.
Photo Plus is this week, so an announcement from Nikon is very possible. IT will be interesting to see what, if anything, team yellow comes out with.
Sony a7R II Uncompressed RAW Firmware To Be Released Today
Rejoice Sony a7R II owners, today is the day that we get our uncompressed RAW firmware update. I woke up nice and early to download the firmware update to try and do a post on it for this afternoon, but -of course- Sony has not yet made the firmware update available.
So stay tuned for a nice comparison post and initial thoughts post on the new uncompressed raw files once the update is made available. In the meantime, if you are looking to update your Sony a7R II you can head on over to Sony’s support website to get the update (once they make it live).
I am curious to see just how much better the RAW file quality is, and how that relates to the file sizes. 42MP is a lot, and the compressed RAW files are already on the larger side, so I am a little scared to see how big these uncompressed files are going to be.
What are your thoughts on today’s roundup? What news/rumors did we miss? What would you like to see covered in future roundups? Leave a comment below and let us know what you think!
having had a little longer to ponder this, gem.. and having used the unbelievably excellent Nikkor 135 f/2 DG.. I’d be getting one of those instead: uber-bokeh control and a pocket full of cash saved..
possibly my most favourite lens used.. and one that I can’t justify buying as it’s too specialist for my work..
Nikon Rumour was actually the first batch of the new 24-70mm availability in a parisian store.
great job…
Update: the Mitakon 135mm f/1.4 lens will be extremely limited production, weigh over 6 pounds and cost $3k:
http://goo.gl/bphQd7
I need to go look up the Mandarin word for “Ooof”.
An very uneducated guess as to the Nikon announcement….. A new “pro” body crop camera to replace the old 300s?
New Nikon FF 8xx? :)
Is Nikon finally going to offer the world the FF rig with that new Sony 42MP BSI sensor that everyone is waiting for?
Or did Sony contractually box them out from getting that supersensor until X months after the A7R II release?
If so, Sony = Vader, Nikon = Lando, “This deal keeps getting better all the time”, etc.
However they termed it, clearly Nikon gets the sensor when Nikon gets the sensor. There are a whole variety of scenarios… Sony gets it when it’s available, Nikon gets some samples but had to wait for “full production” to release a camera. Or who knows, maybe it’s not even available to Nikon and other inner-circle customers just yet.
Funny, I was predicting that Sony might flex this kind of muscle. Until the RX1RII announcement, I could image it might just be that Sony wanted to roll this sensor out in-house, being the world’s first BSI full frame chip, where they could pay close attention to the chips, maybe deal with early revision issues that need to get fixed before they sell it openly, etc. But now that it’s in another Sony product, even one as nichey as a $3300 P&S, I’d bet it’s production-worthy. Still could be production limited, so not enough to supply Nikon just yet.
Or maybe they’re just using their skills in sensor making as another competitive advantage. After all, Sony’s been hungering after being taken as a serious camera company for years. This might have just done it… so why send that prematurely to Nikon?
I’m sure Nikon has the sensor in house and are developing a camera body with it, they may just have a time window to kill off before they can commercialize it or need some time to dial-in how it works with the rest of the hardware/firmware.
Mitakon is bringing the crazy to FF mounts? Oh, good gravy, just what we need — lead pipes *on steroids*.
That also looks like a 105mm filter. Ouch. Those don’t exactly grow on trees…
It’s the 18th, tomorrow’s the 19th
You are correct, sir. Somehow my computer’s time/date (changed out my MoBo this weekend) got all screwed up and I was thinking it was the 19th. bwuahaha.
Man… thought I was time traveling reading this article. Bummer.
The a7r II was released without uncompressed raw? .. wtf? Really?
Stephen, all three of the new A7 ‘II’ rigs have compressed RAW output I believe. Enough people (correctly) got miffed about it that Sony is releasing a firmware tweak to get 14-bit uncompressed RAW files.
Here’s what the current (pre-firmware) shots look like with the compression:
http://goo.gl/sM7CrV
Hopefully the fix puts the issue to bed, but one wonders what might happen to *something else* a result of it — buffer size, burst rate, etc.