What a strange day.
Maybe it's because yesterday was a holiday and some sort of alcoholic beverage was consumed by some. Or maybe not.
Let's start with head-scratcher number one: Metabones announced the Devil's Q666 Speed Booster for the Pentax Q series cameras. The name comes from the fact that, if you can find a Nikkor f/1.2 lens somewhere, it'll mount on the adapter and produce the equivalent to f/0.666 on the Pentax Q.
The head scratching part? The Pentax Q-S1, the most recent model, is listed as discontinued at almost every vendor I know of.
Okay, there are other head scratching parts of the announcement. You'd have a 2.3x crop factor on the Q-S1, so that 50mm f/1.2 AIS you managed to find in your closet will be a 130mm (equivalent) f/0.666. Talk about your narrow depth of field...
Head scratcher number two: the absolutely mind-boggling Yashica Y35 digiFilm camera just announced on Kickstarter. After a tease campaign about an unprecedented camera, yes, Yashica has managed to actually live up to the term unprecedented. What you get is a small sensor (1/3.2") compact camera with 35mm (equivalent) f/2.8 lens and a non-aligned "finder" to figure out your composition with ;~). Oh, and you have to buy cartridges which simply tell the camera what ISO/color/filter settings to use. Want to shoot in black and white? Great, change the cartridge. High ISO? Change the cartridge.
There's no review system on the camera, and it shoots on SD cards.
At least it's on US$124, though that is probably US$124 more than most people would be willing to pay. In essence, it's likely about as good as a smartphone camera, only you don't get precision alignment, you have limited shutter speeds (5), you still have to do the card transfer thing to get images where you want them, and you now have to carry cartridges around with you to change any setting.
Novelty items abound aplenty in Japan. Add one more to the crowded shelves.
