According to Fujirumors, Fujifilm is delaying the announcement of the upcoming X-T6; however, Fujifilm has not announced that they’re announcing any camera. How can something be postponed that hasn’t even been publicized?

Let me put it this way. Let’s say that you are the manager of some office somewhere, and you tell your secretary to pencil in some time and date for a meeting that will take place some months in the future. You tell the secretary not to tell anyone, only to pencil it in so that the time is blocked out and there won’t be any scheduling conflicts. The secretary later tells someone in confidence that there will be a meeting at the date and time that was penciled in, and that person blabs it to the whole office. Later, you realize that the initial date and time you picked for the meeting won’t work, so you instruct your secretary to block off a different day, which is still well in the future. Now your secretary once again tells their friend, who once again blabs it to the office, who are now bemoaning that the meeting has been postponed. But, since it was never announced, was it ever really delayed?

And that’s the problem with rumor sites. I enjoy getting a little sneak behind the curtain as much as the next person. The heads-up is exciting. Speculating on what will be can be fun. But there’s also a negative side to the coin. It slows sales of currently available models. It can give people false ideas or skewed expectations of upcoming products. It throws a curveball into a product launch that was carefully choreographed. I had a conversation about this topic with Ken Rockwell once, and he said, “There’s always something new coming out tomorrow, but you can’t take pictures with it today so it doesn’t matter.”

Can you pick up an X-T6 and photograph with it today? Tomorrow? Next week? Next month? Obviously the answer is no. Someday, yes—that time will get here before you know it. So be patient, and enjoy the gear that you can pick up and use today, which are the cameras and lenses you already own, or maybe that you will buy today at your local camera store.

Unfortunately, because the rumor of the supposed announcement was spread online, and now a new rumor has been published of a delay, people are creating all sorts of conspiracy theories—mostly by trolls, and most of which are not true. It might be simply that the penciled-in date was never all that solid to begin with. The large 7.1 magnitude earthquake that struck near a Fujifilm facility about 10 days ago is the most likely explanation. According to Digital Camera World, “Fujifilm’s Kyushu location in Kumamoto, Japan manufactures color filter components used in Fujifilm’s X-Trans camera sensors, as well as films that are used in manufacturing LCD screens and slurries or polishing materials used for semiconductor manufacturing.” This facility was evacuated after the earthquake, and may have been damaged.

When will the X-T6 be announced? Who knows. When Fujifilm is ready, they’ll announce an X Summit, and during the X Summit they’ll announce whatever it is they’re ready to release. Maybe it will be an X-T6, maybe it won’t. I’m looking forward to the next X Summit and gear announcement as much as anyone else, but let’s not forget that today we can create amazing pictures with the cameras that are already in our hands.