Waiting for the Panasonic GF1 announcement (latest: press release posted!)
And now time to shift focus to the Panasonic GF1, with a new "waiting for" marathon! The GF1 is a camera that has so far generated interest from photographers of all sorts of different persuasions. This is a live update that will be updated throughout the night.
12:01am NYC - the official announcement is out! *** NEW ***
The camera is officially announced! We continue the coverage at the official Panasonic GF1 announcement page!
11:40pm NYC time: Press release published!
e-photo-zine has just published the press release.
+ contrast-AF claims 0.3 seconds with standard Lumix G lense
+ 3-inch LCD display with 460k dots
+ 12-megapixel LiveMOS sensor
+ smaller than G1: 35% in volume, 26% in weight
+ four body colors as seen below
+ Venus Engine HD
+ AVCHD Lite (up to 29m:59sec in some countries - presumably due to taxes/tariffs?)
+ face-recognition (6 faces) - live recognition (up to 3 faces)
+ the word RAW is not mentioned in the press release, but specs are NOT included
New Accessories
+ tilt-shift DMW-LVF1 - new live view finder 1.04x (0.52x*), 202,000-dot, 100% field of view.
10:35pm NYC time
Peter Fang predicts that there will be a Leica version of the GF1 on 9.9.09. See his prediction on his Twitter feed. Please note this is a prediction!
On the same topic, Leica users are discussing this possibility in the L-Camera-Forum, where you are only allowed to upload Leica-made pictures or else they get deleted.
10:29pm NYC time
Nothing new... You can sort out time-zones and time differences via TimeAndDate.com.
8:18pm NYC time: dpreview is innocent
This is likely an organic leak, and dpreview is innocent. Here is why:
The advertising people who set up the ads likely put in the wrong start date (or were given the wrong start date). The ads went live. The forum users noticed it and generated excitement. dpreview stuff noticed the excitement and had to act quickly. The fastest way to get rid of the offending ad was to remove the code for that particular location on the page. That's why there is an empty spot right now. Amazon has set-up a company that handles advertising on both Amazon and dpreview (ClickRiver.com) and they are the ones who handle advertising, not dpreview.
If this was a planned leak, they could have simply set up the ad to run for 5 minutes or for a specific number of impressions. Then dpreview wouldn't have to remove the ad-code, which, considering their volume of visitors, is probably costing a lot of money in lost ad-revenue.
8pm NYC time: Impatient Banner ads reveal four body colors and shape!
But that's not all! A dpreview forum user has captured all four banner ads, which reveal black, red, white and gray body colors. And an Avril-look-a-like model, which perhaps puts the "GF" in GF1 to promote it ;-)
The number of body colors a camera has are often an indicator of the expectations of the manufacturer in terms of appeal and sales. So if Panasonic is offering four of them, especially considering their own historic body-color patterns, that is a good sign (on paper) for the GF1. They may be hoping that the GF1 will have a "TZ3-like" break-out success. (For the non-Panasonic hardcore fans, the TZ3 was the first compact-funzoom camera from Panasonic that had a mass-market breakout success, and as you may recall it was the #1 camera in France for a period of time).
You can follow the live discussion of this leak at the Micro 4/3rds forum at dpreview.
7:55pm NYC time
If you are new to the GF1 excitement, you can catch-up with the early August leak.
The current Micro Four Thirds family
And while we wait impatiently, you can get acquainted with the current Micro Four Thirds family:
+ Micro Four Thirds news - [all together]
+ Olympus E-P1: [reviews] [mini-blog] [stock-status]
+ Panasonic G1: [reviews] [diary]
+ Panasonic GH1: [reviews] [diary] [mini-blog]
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