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Saturday, 1 September 2018

PANASONIC FULL FRAME CAMERA !!


43 Rumors is predicting a Panasonic 'Full Frame' system camera announcement on September 25th. While this is just that, a rumour, Andrea rarely gets these things wrong. However, the following assumes this is true, even though there is a chance it might not be.

First off, I think this is great news. As a 'Full Frame' system mirrorless camera owner with a Leica SL (Typ 601) I welcome more options (less heavy and less expensive!!). For me the Sony FE system is too flawed and badly designed. I tried it (several times!!) but always ended up frustrated. The new Nikon Z7 is better, but I think it's way too expensive and my thought was, what can this do that my Lumix G9 can't, apart from the extra pixels?? Since I can easily upsize my G9 images, with virtually no loss of quality, I decided the answer was not a lot. Canon are about to announce their system in a few days and we'll see what that offers but since Panasonic developed the G9, one of my favourite ever digital cameras, I was VERY interested to read that they are entering the FFMC market.

I guess the reason for all of this is that Sony are shipping a lot of FE system cameras and lenses. Other manufacturers obviously want a share of this potential market. And since I'm far from the only one who finds Sony FE somewhat underwhelming, that market could be up for grabs. And it does seem that 35mm sized sensors are popular. Partly because of the history of 35mm photography and because of the perception that larger sensors output better quality images. Which is not necessarily true but as a general rule normally is. Lens wise, the great advantage of 'FF' is with wide angle lenses. m4/3 is a great system as far as I'm concerned, but wide-angle lenses are in short supply and the 2x crop factor means that adapted options are almost impossible to find. As a serious wide-angle user FFMC is good news.

As I stated above, I really like the Lumix G9, in many ways it is my perfect camera in terms of what it offers me and it's a pleasure to use. If (and I repeat IF) Panasonic put together a G9 type 'full frame' version then I would be very interested in that. OK, there is going to be a wait for a lens system, but it is to be hoped that Metabones et al. get some adapters out pretty quickly to allow the use of 35mm sized lenses, including all those sitting in my camera cupboard.

There is also, of course, the fact that Panasonic work very closely with Leica, who are after all the inventors of 35mm. Cameras like the Leica Q (Typ 116) have a lot of Panasonic tech. in them, as (probably) so does the Leica SL and certainly the best Lumix m4/3 lenses are Leica badged, whatever that means. Andrea was speculating that the new Panasonic FF could have the Leica TL mount from the SL. While I would personally love that, I'm not sure it would happen. Though I can see great benefits for both companies,  things like that don't normally happen.

However, all in all I think it's going to be very interesting to see what Panasonic have in mind, even though it's going to be a while before anything is available for sale. and there is of course the intriguing question of whether Olympus will get involved. Now they have very real experience with 35mm, in their film camera days and they would be obvious candidates to produce a 'FF' camera. They apparently have a 'high end' camera coming out in the new year.

Finally, a lot of the comments on the 43 Rumors site were worrying about what will happen to m4/3. Well it's obviously not going away. It is after all the whole reason that Panasonic are camera manufacturers. Any idea that they will ditch the format for 'FF' is ridiculous, just like the idea that Nikon will ditch DSLR's. Lot's of camera manufacturers handle more than one format quite successfully, so there is no reason Panasonic can't do the same. And all of this illustrates where camera manufacturers have to go in the face of their smartphone competition. There is clearly no point in producing 'point and shoot' and small cheap compacts, smartphones have that covered, the future is high end cameras that offer capabilities smartphones will be unable to match. The market for interchangeable lens system cameras is obviously shrinking, BUT it's not going away, even though it may reduce to the came levels that bought the film camera equivalents all those years ago. Anyway, whatever happens with that, as serious photographers we may well have a better choice of gear in the not so distant future. And since when was that a bad thing??


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