Today Sigma launched this Youtube teaser video hinting a product announcement on August 4th. You can be 100% certain this is for the new 150-600mm f/5.0-6.3 L lens.

Specs:

• lens configuration of 25 elements in 15 groups
• minimum shooting distance of 58cm-280cm
• maximum shooting magnification of 1: 2.9 (at 180mm), and 9 aperture blades (at 180mm). (Circular aperture)
• filter size φ95mm
• size φ109.4×263.6mm
• weight 2100g (including tripod mount)
• teleconverter (TC-1411 / TC-2011) seems to be compatible.
• 170,000 YEN excluding tax

Leaked image:

There is an E and L-mount version of this lens that will be announced very soon!

GH6 specs at BHphoto

Long was Panasonic stubborn. They kept claiming their contrast AF is very close to the performance of the phase detection AF. Well, they might gave up on this. It’ rumored the GH6 will break the tradition and feature a new sensor with phase detection AF. The question now is if also future S cameras will have the same new AF tech!

Nokishita reports:

It seems that the new firmware for the Panasonic LUMIX S series (S1 / S1R / S5) will be announced next week. The main contents are S1 and S5 Blackmagic RAW output support etc.

Sigma CEO Yamaki said in a Dpreview interview:

We’re still at the research and development stage for the sensor. It’s mainly being worked on by Sigma engineers here. It will take some time to have a prototype of the new 3-layer X3 sensor and then we’ll see if we can move to the next stage, which will be a product. I don’t think we’ll have a product to show in 2021. Maybe 2022 or even 2023. We don’t know what kind of technical issues or challenges we’ll have to solve with the sensor yet.

Sounds like we have to wait a very long time to get this 🙁

The new lens will be released on June 25 and cost 54,000 yen.

via Nokishita