Olympus Imaging and Panasonic Corporation jointly announced the Micro Four Thirds standard in 2008 and have been working together to promote the standard ever since.

This month, more companies declared their support for the standard and will be introducing products that support it.

Blackmagic Design (Port Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) is an Australian company established in 1984 that manufactures electronic equipment for broadcast and video production. Its Blackmagic cinema camera features a 2.5K image sensor, a built-in SSD recorder and compatibility with quality EF or Passive Micro Four Thirds lenses.

For its part, JK Imaging (Los Angeles, CA, USA) is the company that entered into a multi-year agreement to license the Kodak brand name for certain consumer products, including digital cameras, pocket video cameras, and portable projectors. JK Imaging plans to launch its first products in the second quarter of 2013.

Established in 1968, Photron (Tokyo, Japan) manufactures, sells and services professional film and video equipment. It has a range of high speed imaging products includes megapixel image resolution recording at up to 12,500 frames per second (fps), four megapixel (2K x 2K) cameras, high-definition 1080 resolution for broadcast imaging and ruggedized systems with miniature camera heads for on-board automotive safety testing.

Established two decades later, ViewPLUS (Tokyo, Japan) is a camera provider that distributes Point Grey's range of industrial cameras -- including the Grasshopper, Flea and Ladybug -- in Japan.

These companies join SVS-VISTEK (Seefeld, Germany), a company established in 2001 that develops, manufactures and distributes professional machine vision components and systems. SVS-VISTEK announced last year that its engineers had developed a prototype version of a camera that incorporated a standardized Micro Four Thirds lens mount.

Further details on the Micro Four Thirds standard can be found here.

Related items from Vision Systems Design.

1. Prototype camera sports Micro Four Thirds lens mount

Engineers at SVS-Vistek (Seefeld, Germany) have developed a prototype version of a camera that incorporates a standardized Micro Four Thirds lens mount.

2. Machine vision's future centers on CMOS and consumer advances

Understanding trends in machine vision and image processing helps system integrators and manufacturers chart their technology development for the next generation of products.

-- Dave Wilson, Senior Editor, Vision Systems Design