Around this time of year he rumor mills really start to turn the greasy wheels. July, August and September are often months that see the key players in the industry announce new products either for immediate delivery, or increasingly in recent years , for deliver before Christmas. In the last few years a wealth of websites have cropped up to deal with rumors for specific camera brands. A few of these sites have good track records in tracking down new information long before anything official is released by the manufacturers. Some of the other sites……. well they don’t have the best of luck. Often there are snippets of correct information but it’s muddled in amongst bogus specs and rarely are things correct many months out. Once things get close to an official announcement the rumors start to get a closer to the real deal.
I’m sure we are going to see weekly updates on these sites with supposed specs on new gear, one thing for certain though is that Sony, Nikon and Canon can be expected to make some major announcement in this time frame.
Sony looks set to bring an A77 to the market in July featuring their pellicule mirror technology to an APS-C camera with some decent specs to sit above their A55.
Nikon will be replacing the D3 and the D700 at some point. It seems likely that at least one of these will be in August. Before the Pixiq tradeshow was cancelled, Nikon and Canon were probably planning on releasing things at that show.
You guys know that for me it’s the Canon gear that I’m most interested in. The website Canon Rumors has had so many conflicting reports over the months it’s hard to make sense of it. We will certainly see an official release of the 200-400 f4 L IS which was announced as in development some months ago. We have also been waiting for an eternity for a 24-70 f2.8 replacement. Its been reported that there are several patents and test versions out there, some with IS and some without. I’d say this one will finally come alongside some sort of 1dsMKIII replacement. There has also been some reports that the 1d and 1ds line will be merged. Not sure about that one! And of course it’s about time for a 5dMKIII too. On top of that there has been rumors of a 35mm f1.4 II and the much needed 50mm f1.4 II. My bet would be on the 35mm to come first.