There's been quite a few interesting announcements so far in the leadup to Photokina, and we've got at least two more next week.

Here's my take:

Canon 50D: Nice, nothing spectacular but it puts Canon's mid-range back in the game in a serious way. There's nothing groundbreaking here, but the new sensor and processor are competitive with the competition, which the 40D wasn't quite. Keeping the basic 40D body was a good choice and the only real weakness of the body (the poor LCD) has been fixed.

Nikon D90: It's a baby D300 in exactly the same way the D80 was a baby D200. HD Video broadens the market for this body and breaks new ground (unusual for Nikon) but otherwise this is an evolution of the D80 and D300 bodies.

Sony A900: this will make a big splash, but as usual the launch isn't quite there as the CZ 16-35 won't be here until January. The body looks excellent, and a 100% finder in the semi-pro FF market is unique, let alone one that rivals the 1DsmIII and D3 for size (at .74x magnification). Unfortunately Sony's high ISO NR still sucks, but at least you can turn it off now (A firmware update brings that and increased bracketing steps to the A700 as well). No NR shots look very good. But the 16-35 should have been available at the same time as the body. Sony's done very well with bodies, but they need to get the lens side of things under control. They're still lacking a normal f2.8 zoom for the A700 (rebadge the bloody Tamron 17-50 guys, it's not like most of the DT line isn't Tamrons anyways) and a lot of their lenses are very overpriced (70-200G, I'm looking at you in particular).

Panasonic G1: Possibly the most interesting launch so far. The first EVIL(electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens) camera. Initial lenses look uninteresting, but there's a 20/1.7 (40/1.7 equivalent) on the roadmap for 2009 and the register of M4/3rds is short enough that Leica M lenses can be adapted easily. If the 20 shows for PMA I'm going to seriously want one of these as a light carry camera with the 20 and either a 40mm or 50mm adapted M mount lens (Hmm, 40 'cron? Sounds tasty). I don't like the styling, would have preferred something more like a miniature L1, but I understand why Panny went all conventional this time.

Upcoming announcements:

Zeiss ZE lenses: Almost assuredly the current ZF/ZS/ZK line for EF mount with auto aperture. Big win for the Canon shooters as several of the ZF line handily outperform their Canon equivalents (especially the 35/2 and 18/3.5) and the lens prices are in L range (not too ridiculous but not cheap either).

Canon 5DmII: The wild card. Nobody yet knows what this will be, but it's either going to have to be cheap or something spectacular to overshadow both the D700 and the A900. I'm expecting something akin to a lower-res A900 with near D700 noise performance. No way Canon will introduce a 8fps capable body with 1-series level AF in this bracket, so the D700's real advantage is going nowhere.