In the short, corybantic history of the agenda camera it has generally been the smaller, beneath aerial contour manufacturers who accept taken all the risks and experimented with added anarchistic designs and solutions. For admitting all the abstruse advances in the aftermost decade the majority of agenda cameras accept designs that chase the aforementioned basal adapt as their analog predecessors: they're about the aforementioned cameras with a sensor in the abode of film.
This is abnormally accurate in the changeable lens camera sector, area the big players (coincidentally those who led the bazaar in the canicule of film), bedfast by the charge (desire) to absorb affinity with their bequest analog systems, aftermath agenda SLRs that would feel reassuringly accustomed to any columnist from the backward '80s or aboriginal '90s who by best or accident had absent out on the agenda revolution.
This year has apparent the aboriginal austere challenges to the ascendancy of the distinct lens reflex (a architecture that can trace it roots aback over 100 years, and that hasn't afflicted fundamentally back the 1950s) in the changeable lens camera bazaar - acknowledgment to the addition of Micro Four Thirds by Olympus and Panasonic. Samsung has been abaft a actual agnate arrangement ('NX'), based on a beyond APS-C sensor and slated for barrage some time in 2010.
So back we aboriginal heard from Ricoh that they capital to appear and appearance us a new arrangement camera we accepted it too was activity to be aberration on the 'mirrorless' design. Then we started to get hints that it was absolutely a absolutely new abstraction (or, as mentioned at the basal of this page, a actual old abstraction resurrected).
The changeable lens assemblage camera
Where Micro Four Thirds and agnate systems aim to cut aggregate by removing the mirror box, which slims bottomward the camera anatomy and somewhat reduces the admeasurement of the lenses (though by how abundant depends on the sensor admeasurement used), they still end up appealing big already you add zoom lenses (and if we're talking about continued zooms or telephotos the advantage is all but absent - ample sensors crave ample lenses). Thus the abstraction that these 'hybrid' cameras can action SLR affection and versatility accumulated with bunched camera admeasurement is artlessly not possible.
Ricoh's acknowledgment to this botheration is, to say the least, novel. Rather than affairs a camera anatomy with a anchored sensor, the GXR arrangement uses changeable lens/sensor units - every lens comes in a closed assemblage complete with sensor, shutter, aperture, processing agent (there's additionally one in the camera body) and the motors all-important to focus the lens (and drive the zoom apparatus if present). You are, essentially, affairs a new 'camera' every time you buy the lens: the GXR anatomy is little added than a carapace absolute the screen, agenda slot, controls and flash. This abolitionist amend of the 'interchangeable lens' has some important consequences:
* Altered lens units can accept altered sensor sizes and technologies (CCD or CMOS, for example)
* By application a abate (compact camera) sensor the GXR arrangement can action actual baby zooms
* Lens units can be advised for specialist applications (video optimized lens and sensor for example)
* The all-embracing achievement of the arrangement is about authentic by the lens unit, not the body
* Each lens has its own shutter
