After images started leaking last night, Canon today officially announced three new lenses for the EF lineup: the 24-70mm f/2.8L II, 24mm f/2.8 IS, and 28mm f/2.8 IS. Compared to the first version, the new 24-70mm weighs 100 grams less (it’s 850g), costs $1,000 more, still doesn’t offer IS, uses 82mm filters (instead of 77mm), extends at the telephoto end (instead of the wide end like the previous version), features a zoom lock, and connects with the hood at the extension. As we noted yesterday, the 24mm and 28mm are the first non-L series EF prime lenses — and the first wide angle ones — to have image stabilization built in. The IS provides four stops of stabilization.

The 24-70mm will be available starting on April 17th with a price tag of $2,300, while the 24mm and 28mm will be available in June with price tags of $850 and $800, respectively.

The months of rumors and speculation are finally over: Nikon has announced its long-awaited D800 FX-format DSLR. As was revealed back in October 2011, the camera offers a staggering 36.3-megapixels — the world’s highest in a 35mm DSLR. Other specs include an ISO range of 100-6400 (expandable to 25,600), 91k RGB 3D color metering, a speedy 51-point AF system, a 3.2-inch LCD screen, 4fps continuous shooting (5fps for DX shots), 1080/30p HD video recording, and… in-camera two-shot HDR.

Here’s a quick product tour of the new camera:

There will also be a second camera called the Nikon D800E that eschews the lowpass (anti-aliasing) filter found in the D800. This leads to slightly sharper photos at the expense of introducing color moire and chroma noise.

Here’s a short film titled “Joy Ride” by Sandro that demonstrates the filmmaking capabilities of the D800:

The Nikon D800 will be available starting in March 2012 with a price tag of $3000, though you can already start preordering them over at Amazon. The D800E will arrive in April for $3300.

(via Nikon)

Pentax officially announced its new K-01 mirrorless camera today after leaked photos emerged yesterday. The system features the world’s thinnest interchangeable lens: a 40mm lens that’s just 1cm thick. The body, on the other hand, isn’t exactly the sleekest camera we’ve seen. It’s designed by “acclaimed and influential” designer Marc Newson, who hadn’t designed a camera before this one (he spends much of his time designing airplanes). The camera features a 16.28MP sensor, an ISO range of 100-25600, 1080p video recording at 30/25/24fps, and an aluminum body available in yellow, black, and white. The system starts shipping next month, with the body priced at $750, the lens priced at $250, and the combo priced at $900.

Here’s a short interview with Marc Newson in which he talks about taking on this camera design project:

(vai BusinessWire via The Verge)

Pretty much everything we wanted to know about the Fujifilm X-Pro1 was leaked over the weekend, but now the camera finally transitioned from the world of rumors into official reality. Fujifilm unveiled the X-Pro1 at CES today, and confirmed the leaked specs. They also announced plans to release 9 additional lenses within the next three years. Sadly, the usefulness of the official announcement ends there — there was no word on how much things will cost when they become available late February (the price will be announced later this month).

Update: The price of the camera, based on a briefly-online Amazon product listing, is rumored to be $1,700 for the body only.

Unlike Nikon, which jumped headfirst into the interchangeable lens mirrorless game last year, Canon appears to be content with simply upping the sensor size in its existing compact cameras. Today the company announces the G1X, a new camera into the G-series line that offers a sensor large enough to compete with existing mirrorless camera systems.

If you thought the image quality offered by Canon G cameras was good, get this: the G1X has a 1.5-inch sensor that’s 6 times larger than the one in the G12:

The 14.3 megapixel (CMOS) camera features a 28mm lens (4x optical zoom) that opens up to f/2.8, manual controls, 6fps, ISO 12800, RAW capture, a 3-inch swiveling LCD screen, and 1080p HD video recording. Here’s a quick video intro:

The G1X will hit store shelves in February for $800.

(via Canon)

After nearly a year of rumors, speculation, and leaks, Nikon has finally announced its new flagship D4 DSLR. The specs were already leaked, but here they are: 16.2MP, ISO that expands to 204,800, 10fps stills (11 if AE and AF locked), 51 AF points, a new full frame sensor, 1080/30p video recording, a 91K pixel meter (up from 1,005 pixels in the D3S), backlit controls, a 3.2-inch LCD with an ambient light sensor, a 0.12s startup time, and dual card slots (CF+XQD). It’ll cost $6,000 when it hits store shelves in late February.

Nikon has also announced a new AF-S NIKKOR 85mm f/1.8G FX-format lens, which will ship starting in March for $500.

Hope you guys had a good holiday season. Welcome to 2012! As is our tradition, here’s our annual “state of the blog” post, in which we’ll briefly share on how this blog grew in the past year and where it is now.

Blog

Over the last year, 1,999 posts were published on this blog, up from 1,240 last year. 30,725 comments were left on these entries (up from 14,992) for an average of 13.8 comments/post (up from 12.1).

Traffic-wise, we received 23,280,270 page views (up from 9,286,447) from 9,449,286 unique visitors (up from 4,649,342). We now have 19,045 RSS subscribers (up from 9,677). Here’s a chart of our subscriber count since the beginning:

We also did 15 giveaways (down from 16) in which we gave away gear and software worth a total of $5,909 (up from $4,942). These giveaways received a total of 12,003 entries (up from 9,312).

Twitter

On Twitter, we currently have 99,435 followers (up from 79,425) and 7,195 tweets (up from 4,715).

On WeFollow, PetaPixel is listed as the #2 most influential for photography, #4 most influential for photographer, and #7 most influential for blogs.

Facebook

Our official Facebook page now has 20,016 likes (up from 6,893).

Store

Our online store now has 4 items (up from 2), and we have more on the way.

Thanks for Reading

It has been an awesome year of finding and sharing photo news here at PetaPixel, and we hope you’ve enjoyed the content we had to offer. Thanks so much to everyone who visited, subscribed to, retweeted, and commented on PetaPixel in 2011! We look forward to all the new things we’ll be seeing and sharing on this blog in 2012, and hope that you’ll be here with us as the year unfolds!

Image credit: NYE 2011 London Fireworks by futureshape

Fujifilm officially unveiled the XS-1 today after details and photos of the camera first appeared last month. Unlike the X100 and X10, the XS-1 isn’t a rangefinger-esque mirrorless camera but is instead a beastly bridge camera. The camera packs the same 12-megapixel 2/3-inch sensor as the X10, and features a 26x zoom lens that’s the 35mm equivalent of a 24-624mm lens. As if that range wasn’t enough, they also decided to include a macro mode that allows the camera to focus from just 1cm away.

Here’s a short promo video showing off the camera:

You can find out more about the camera here.

It’ll be available starting in February 2012 for £699 in the UK, which is roughly $1,100.

Canon’s historic announcement is here, and as most people predicted, it’s geared towards filmmaking rather than photography. The company just unveiled its new C300 cinema camera in an effort to break into a Hollywood digital filmmaking scene that’s dominated by the Arri Alexa and the RED EPIC. While it’s not particularly powerful in any specific category, the new camera comes in EOS or PL lens mounts, shoots 1080p video with a 4K sensor, has dual CF card slots, and offers high quality footage in a relatively small form factor.

In addition to a new lineup of lenses, the EOS version of the camera will be compatible with existing EF lens collections:

The camera will be available starting in January 2012 for around $16,000.

(via Engadget)

Image credits: Photographs by Engadget

GoPro has unveiled the HD Hero2, the followup to the highly popular HD Hero from 2009 that has been adopted by daredevils around the world. The new camera is similar in design but offers major upgrades: more angles of view (90°, 127°, and 170°), 11-megapixel still photos (up from 5MP) at 10fps, a helpful LCD display instead of a single character code system, a mini-HDMI port, and a faster sensor that allows for faster frame rates (e.g. 960p at 48fps, up from 30).

The Hero2 is available in three different kits (outdoor, motorsports, and surf) for $300, and the price of the old Hero has been reduced to $200.