Panasonic issued the full year financial report (PDF available here) and a plan to restructure the company (PDF available here). The financial report contains no info about how the camera business is doing. But there is an important news:

Panasonic announced a major asset restructuring plan, abandoning the unprofitable, hopeless, and weakly competitive TV business, dissolving Panasonic Electric Company and reorganizing it into three independently operated companies according to categories, thereby activating the vitality of this century-old Japanese company. The home appliance sector was organized as the “Smart Life Company”, the air conditioning sector was organized as the “Air Quality Air Conditioning, Food Distribution Company”, and the lighting sector was organized as the “Electrical Engineering Company”.

The ‘Smart Life Company’ includes the camera business, and I think the only good news is that they only want to sell the TV business for now. For now I think the Lumix business is here to stay and the next two camera announcements might help Panasonic to make new strong sales!

The Panasonic S1R successor will be announced on February 25. I got no info about any other product launch…but maybe we will get a new lens too?

Reminder: One more new Full Frame L-mount camera will be announced in April.

Image on top shows the “old” Sigma 800mm f/5.6 lens

According to a Weibo source, Sigma will be presenting two new lenses at CP+. One is a zoom lens and one is a fixed focal length lens. The fixed focal length lens is said to be a new 800mm f/6.3 full-frame lens for Leica L and Sony E mount cameras. There is no information about the zoom lens, but it could ‘just’ be the full release of the previously teased Sigma 28-45mm T2 Cine L mount lens (listed here at BH).

This is not an info coming via my trusted sources, if you happen to know more about the Sigma announcement use this contact box or contact me via lrumorscameras@gmail.com. Thanks!

Hi folks! I have very good news for you coming from THREE trusted sources:

1) Panasonic Lumix S1rII is coming in February
Same Leica SL3 specs but WITH decent quality video

2) Panasonic and Capture One will make a special joint press release at the S1rII launch
Probably this means that Capture One worked closely with Lumix to get you the best possible RAW editing quality.

3) One more Panasonic Lumix L-mount Full Frame camera will be announced in April
I have been told this is unlikely to be the S1HII…but still something very interesting! I don’t know if this will be the successor of this camera or a full frame version of this epic fixed lens camera or a Lumix S9 with integrated EVF.

I have not received any confirmation about the introduction of new lenses, but we know that Panasonic has a few on their roadmap. I’ll be working hard now to bring you details on the two new cameras. In the meantime, you can help me:

If you have any rumors about that camera feel free to share them anonymously using this contact box (try to use a nickname to be recognized in future) or via lrumorscameras@gmail.com.

P.S.: The lens roadmap:

Viltrox has officially confirmed via social networks that they are trying to obtain the license for the L-mount system. There are a large number of Chinese lens manufacturers, but Viltrox stands out for the outstanding image quality of its lenses. It would definitely be welcome news if Leica grants them access to the L-mount alliance.

This week on January 16 Leica will announce the new SL3-S L-mount camera. According to my sources this what to expect:

• It uses the same 24.6MP sensor of the current Leica SL2-S
• Tweaks have been made through the processor engine so that high ISO images do look even better
• The one advantage over the SL3 is that the SL3.S will have C2PA support.

I know, this is not an exciting camera for most of my readers. But don’t worry, the next Lumix camera is coming soon!