Fujifilm purchasing Kodak patents

kodak

 

As petapixel reports, Kodak sold valuable imaging patents for $525 million to various companies. “The deal involves more than 1,100 patents related to the capturing, manipulating, and sharing of digital photographs.” Fujifilm is part of the consortium that purchased Kodak patents.

“Although this sale leaves Kodak empty-handed in terms of digital imaging patents, the company is still loaded with patents related to other areas of its business… Now that the sale has been completed, Kodak is free to move forward with its plans of conquering the world of commercial printing.”

via Petapixel

(thx Cynan for linking this news to me)

Walimex/Samyang 8mm 2.8 fish-eye lens with native Fuji X-Mount

What you see here above is just 2/3 of the whole image. If the photographer had published the whole picture, then you could have seen his shoes! That’s the 8mm focal length of the Walimex 2.8 fish-eye lens for Fuji X-mount.

what a stretched depth!

Hi

Another Fujirumor follower send me an email. This time it’s a Walimex 8mm 2.8 fish-eye lens on a X-PRO1! Read his experience and see the pictures here. (translated version) Also this time I made a short translation for you.

This are some extracts of his short review:

This Walimex 8mm 2.8 fish-eye lens is a MF lens with no electronic contact that transfers lens setting information to your camera, so there is no EXIF data. It’s a very compact lens, like the 35mm 1.4 of Fuji (click here to see the Fuji lens). You don’t need any lens mount adapter. He takes the images with a X-PRO1 in JPEG.

The image quality is absolutely amazing, with great colors and, as the tester says: “for me the sharpness is more than enough!” Sometimes he had some lens flares, especially with the sun in 45° to the lens, but with such a lens they are not that easy to avoid.

All in all he really recommends this lens. It’s fun to shoot with it!

To see his pictures on flickr click here.

The lens in this test is available at ebay-Germany (the seller delivers worldwide. Thanks for this clarification, Colin) right now, in black and silver (see them here on slidoo) or directly in ebay.de: Walimex pro 8/2.8 fish-eye black and in silver.

Here there are more Walimex lenses I found via slidoo.com (click here to see them all)

For the UK market, our reader Kim sent me the AmazonUk link to the Walimax lenses (click here)

There are more fish-eye lenses for your X-series, available also in USA. Take a look at this super-wide lens for your Fuji X here.

PS.: For another review with the Samyang 8mm click here.

 

 

 

 

X-E1 firmware 1.02 coming soon?

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Our reader Georg just received his X-E1. He checked his firmware version. Take a look at the image above. Body version firmware 1.02. He sent me a link to this German Forum, where another guy claims to have the 1.02 firmware.

I checked Fujis site, but the 1.02 firmware is still not available there (click here).

This could mean that Fuji is about to release the new firmware update soon. But, as Georg says: “one bumper: there is still no selectable shutter speed in auto iso.“

Thanks Georg, and leave a comment if you also have the 1.02 firmware on your X-E1

P.S.: set minimum shutter speed in auto ISO is leading our X-series future improvements wish list poll. Keep on voting. Choose 3 options.

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Black and White: thoughts and pics

Riflessifotografici mirror

image courtesy: riflessifotografici.it

From riflessifotografici: “Waiting for the full test of the Fuji XE-1, here is a short reportage made along the streets of the most characteristic district of Rome. The images were all made with Fujinon XF 18-55 mm.” There are 9 very beautiful Black and White images shot by Donato Chirulli (click here to see them). It was hard for me to choose one to post here ;-).

And regarding BW… I just stumbled on the very personal considerations and plea for the black and white photography of olafphoto.com. He says that with the digital photography technology, nearly everyone has gained access to the world of photography. That’s ok. But he says that now “photography has become a form of visual -fast food-,” snapshots taken without any thought, and posted in the web. “Snap and share.”

But there is a little area of photography that remained relatively untouched by this problem: black and white photography. “Your senses immediately awaken to search for something more, something deeper and more profound.” I don’t want to anticipate more. Just read his post, and look at the beautiful shots taken with the X-PRO1 here at olafphoto.com.

image courtesy: olafphoto.com

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