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Micro Four Thirds Alliance Expands: Venus Optics, YONGNUO & MEDIAEDGE Joining

February 24th, 2020 Jump to Comment Section 1
Micro Four Thirds Alliance Expands: Venus Optics, YONGNUO & MEDIAEDGE Joining

The Micro Four Thirds System standard just added a few new members: YONGNUO, MEDIAEDGE and most notably Venus Optics just joined the standard. The latter company is responsible for the well-known Laowa brand. In the year 2008, Panasonic and Olympus originally jointly announced the Micro Four Thirds System. Since then, it has grown to 44 alliance partners, as listed on their https://www.four-thirds.org website.

Lens Collection from the MFT System Standard Group (Credits: Olympus Corporation / four-thirds.org)

Lens Collection from the MFT System Standard Group (Credits: Olympus Corporation / based on an image by four-thirds.org)

Some words about the companies that just joined the formation:

Venus Optics

Venus Optics (i.e. Anhui ChangGeng Optics Technology Co., Ltd., better known under their brand Laowa) is a company that was formed by photography experts and lovers in China in 2013. Since then they have created a wide range of photography lenses with lots of specialized products. Among the newest photography lenses are the Laowa 4mm f/2.8 Fisheye MFT, Laowa 17mm f/1.8 MFT, Laowa 17mm f/4 Ultra-Wide GFX Zero-D and the Laowa 65mm f/2.8 2x Ultra Macro APO. The newest cine lens is the Laowa 12mm t/2.9 Zero-D Cine lens, which according to the company, is the widest t/2.9 lens that unrestrictedly covers full-frame and even vista vision size (larger than full-frame) at the same time. Among these specialty lenses, the brand presumably became best-known for their Laowa 24mm f/14 2X Macro Probe lens (our review here). For more information, feel free to take a look at https://www.venuslens.net

Laowa by Venus Optics - Photography Lenses - New Products (Credits: Venus Optics)

Laowa by Venus Optics – Photography Lenses – New Products (Credits: Venus Optics)

YONGNUO

YONGNUO is a Shenzhen (China) based brand that is most known for its photography products such as flashes, flash triggers, remotes, and LED lights. They are also responsible for a couple of other products such as entry-level lenses, camera accessories and a mobile phone clip-on camera with Panasonic CMOS 4/3″ sensor and respective mount (MFT).
More information: http://www.hkyongnuo.com/e-index.php

YONGNUO Macro Flash YN14EX (Graphic based on images by: YONGNUO)

YONGNUO Macro Flash YN14EX (Graphic based on images by YONGNUO)

MEDIAEDGE

The MEDIAEDGE Corporation is in its 18th year of existence. They have specialized in the field of the development of imaging systems for numerous industries and all sorts of businesses and solutions. They are engaged in both software and hardware development and work from their base in Japan.
Among their topic-related products is the 4K MEDIAEDGE QDCam featuring an MFT mount, 240fps slow-motion recording (at 1080p) and global shutter. The first announcement of this camera occurred in August 2019.
Further information about MEDIAEDGE: https://www.mediaedge.co.jp and https://www.mediaedge-corp.com
(The first website should be available in English and Japanese. As of this writing, when we tried to access it, the English language button didn’t change the language.)

MEDIAEDGE - Micro Four Thirds QDCam (4K and 240fps @ 1080p) (Image collection credits: MEDIAEDGE)

MEDIAEDGE – Micro Four Thirds QDCam (4K and 240fps @ 1080p) (Image collection credits: MEDIAEDGE)

Micro Four Thirds – Thoughts and Questions

Joining the MFT System standard is a reliable indicator in the direction that the companies participating will eventually produce more products embracing MFT sensors and mount technology. Current new releases of the 4mm and 17mm LAOWA lenses, as well as the announcement of the 4K MEDIAEDGE QDCam, support this argument.

Which lenses, cameras, products, and solutions would you like to see from the companies joining the Micro Four Thirds System standard?
How future-proof would you consider the relevance of MFT mount, sensors and thus also lenses, converters and so on?

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