Preorders are now open at BHphoto, Adorama, WexUK.

Lexar announced the launch of an ‘indestructible’ SD card made entirely of stainless steel. Something like the Cybertruck of SD cards 🙂

The ARMOR GOLD SD Card with a stainless-steel construction that is 37x stronger than typical SD cards, it is designed to withstand grueling usage out in the wild while offering up to 210MB/s^[1] write speed and Video Speed Class 60 (V60) to seamlessly capture 6K footage.

There is yet no info about when those cards will be available to market.

Additional note: Lots of Lexar gear has big discounts on their Amazon page (Click here) and at BHphoto.

This week, Johnnie and Nino dare a long, hard look into the crystal ball to speculate and ponder about the cameras and lenses that they expect to be released in 2025. What are the big news we expect from Blackmagic Design, Canon, DJI, FUJIFILM, Nikon/RED, Panasonic, Sigma, and Sony?

2024 is over and BCN finally shared the accurate data showing the top 10 best selling cameras of this year:

1. Sony VLOGCAM ZV-E10 – 16.0% market share
2. Canon EOS R50 – 11.6% market share
3. Canon EOS R10 – 6.7% market share
4. Sony α6400 – 5.8% market share
5. Sony α7C II – 4.9% market share
6. Nikon Z50  – 4.3% market share
7. OM Digital Solutions OLYMPUS PEN E-P7 – 3.9% market share
8. Nikon Zf 40mm f/2 (SE) Lens Kit – 3.4% market share
9. Sony VLOGCAM ZV-E10 II – 3.2% market share
10. Panasonic LUMIX G1000 – 3.1% market share

Reminder: BCN collected the real sale data of nearly half the Japanese Store.

SG will soon be launching a new 24mm f/6.3 full frame pancake lens. The image above shows the edition number ‘00001’ and is the L-mount version. But Z-mount will be available too for a price of 299 Yuan (about $65).. It’s obviously a manual focus lens and I’m not expecting outstanding optical performance.

via Weibo

As you know BCN collected the real sale data of nearly half the Japanese Store. And they now shared the BCN Awards with detailed market share for each category of electronics. Here are the market share data with the 2023 market share in parentheses.

Digital Cameras (Mirrorless)

1. Sony 35.8% (34%)
2. Canon 26% (28.3%)
3. Nikon 14.5% (Unknown, took over the third spot from OM Digital which had 12.5% in 2023)

Digital Cameras (fixed lens)

1. Canon 23.4% (22.6%)
2. Kodak 21.2% (20.7%)
3. Fujifilm 15.8% (18.1%)

Digital Cameras (SLR)

1. Canon 69.4% (77.1%)
2. Nikon 20.9% (17.1%)
3. Ricoh 9.7% (5.8%)

Lenses

1. Tamron 17.5% (15.4%)
2. Sigma 16.8% (17%)
3. Sony 15% (15.2%)

Digital Video Cameras

1. DJI 48.1% (wasn’t ranked in top three last year and took the world by storm)
2. Panasonic 23.8% (36.4%)
3. Sony 23.4% (38.7%)

Action Cameras

1. GoPro 34.3% (53.7%)
2. DJI 32.1% (15.9%)
3. Insta360 26.9% (18.1%)

What we learn from this:

1. Sony managed to increase the lead over Canon from 5.7 to 9,8 percent
2. Nikon surpassed OM Digital and now is on third spot
3. Nikon has 20.9% in the “dying” DSLR market
4. DJI took the video world by storm. Thank the Osmo 3 for that!

The very large Japanese camera store Yodobashi has listed the 20 best-selling camera kits for the whole of 2024:

1. Sony α7C II Body
2. Sony α7C II Zoom Lens Kit
3. Canon EOS R50 Double Zoom Kit
4. Canon EOS R6 Mark II Body
5. Nikon Z8 Body
6. Sony A7 IV
7. Canon EOS R10 RF-S18-150 IS STM Lens Kit
8. Canon EOS R5 Body
9. Nikon Zfc 16-50 VR Lens Kit
10. Sony α7R V Body
11. Nikon Z50 Double Zoom Kit
12. Sony FX3 Body
13. Sony α7 IV Zoom Lens Kit
14. Nikon Zf 40mm f/2 (SE) Lens Kit
15. Sony α6700 High Magnification Zoom Lens Kit
16. Nikon Z30 Double Zoom Kit
17. Canon EOS R6 Mark II/RF24-105 L IS USM Lens Kit
18. Fujifilm X-T5 Body
19. Canon EOS R50/RF-S18-45 IS STM Lens Kit
20. Olympus PEN E-P7 EZ Double Zoom Kit