White E-P2 announced in Japan

Via 43rumors.com.

The Olympus E-P2, initially only available in black for markets outside Japan, has now been available also in silver for quite some time. Recently, an all-black special edition with black FL-14 flash and black 17mm f/2.8 lens was announced. And now, another original E-P1 colour will be available for the E-P2 — the very retro-looking white version. DCWatch just published an announcement from Olympus Japan, according to which the E-P2 in white will be available from October 15th.

The new white Olympus E-P2. Picture provided by DCWatch.

Also, an accessory lens cap featuring the famous “F” logo of the original Olympus PEN F will be available, according to DCWatch.

Here’s an English translation of the original article @ DCWatch.

HOT! First sample pictures of Voigtländer Nokton 25/0.95 for MFT!

I just got back from a weekend celebrating my grandfather’s 90th birthday, and although I’m tired and not really in the mood for working on this site, here’s something that’s so exciting I need to post about it right away!

43rumors recently published a link to a japanese website showing what seem to be the first sample pictures from the new Voigtländer Nokton 25mm f/0.95 for Micro Four Thirds – the first dedicated fast manual prime that MFT users have been waiting for since … well, since forever.

Here’s the link to the original Japanese site, and here’s a Google English translation.

P.S.: They also have a picture of the lens on a black E-P2 + VF-2, which looks really sexy and desirable!

UPDATED: The E-P2 comes all in chocolate!

According to 43rumors.com, tomorrow will be an exciting day for fans of Olympus’ Micro Four Thirds lineup. For one thing, two new lenses will be announced. One will be the long-awaited Micro version of the Zuiko Digital 40-150mm f/4-5.6 tele zoom, the other will be a new super tele zoom with 75-300mm focal range (150-600mm in full-frame terms), surpassing Panasonic’s announced 100-300mm super tele zoom by 25mm on the “wide” side.

Also exciting will be a new black E-P2 kit, featuring an all-black M.Zuiko Digital 17mm f/2.8 pancake lens and an all-black external flash – probably a black version of the FL-14. All products are rumored to be announced to tomorrow, so stay tuned!

The Olympus E-P2 "Special Black Flash Edition" | Image courtesy of Olympus Corp.

UPDATE: Now it’s official! You can find the announcements for both tele zooms as well as the two new black E-P2 kits on dpreview now:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/1008/10083110oly75300lens.asp
http://www.dpreview.com/news/1008/10083109oly40150mmlens.asp
http://www.dpreview.com/news/1008/10083105olyep2kits.asp

Olympus E-P2 now in silver/black

Via dpreview.com. Olympus have just announced that the E-P2 will also be available in silver/black from mid-May. So far, outside of Japan the E-P2 was only available in full black. Interestingly, when the E-P2 was first announced, Japanse websites also showed a sliver model with a brown grip – possibly to disambiguate it from the silver E-P1. Since the E-P1 has been discontinued, I guess Olympus aren’t afraid anymore the two cameras could be confused by anyone.

Image courtesy of Olympus.

I like that silver/black design a lot more anyways, since it can be pimped so nicely with one of these black leatherette body kits! :-)

E-P2 quick review by dpreview

Holy lion of zion! You guys surely took your time! The E-P2 was released when? Oh yeah – back in January, right. Let me do the math here, that’s … three months. Ah, whatever … better late than never, right?

So what they did is reviewing the E-P2 in their new ‘quick review’ format, which was developed for models which are merely updates to a previous model, and thus do not stand apart much. The quick review concentrates on the main differences between the ealier model and the one in question – in this case on the plug-in EVF, the accessory port and the firmware changes.

The major upgrade from the E-P1 is the high-res electronic viewfinder, which makes for the 3% difference in dpreview’s rating of 69% for the E-P2 compared to 66% for the E-P1.

But in fact all this was public knowledge already, so this quick review is kinda futile imho … but for completeness’ sake … here it is.